[TheGuardian] ‘Snooper’s charter’ will cost British lives, MPs are warned

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Former NSA security chief-turned-whistleblower says plan for bulk collection of communications data is ‘99% useless’ […] The “snooper’s charter” legislation extending the mass surveillance powers of the intelligence agencies will “cost lives in Britain”, a former US security chief has warned MPs and peers. […]

The former NSA director testified that while targeted data collection operations could help prevent terror attacks, “overcollection” of mass data undermined security and had consistently cost lives because of this “analysis paralysis”.
Binney told MPs that the 9/11 attacks on the US could have been prevented if the NSA had filtered the relevant data and not attempted to collect everything.[…]

At the same time, it reduces the privacy burden affecting the large number of innocent and suspicion-free persons whose communications are accessible to our systems.” […]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/snoopers-charter-will-cost-british-lives-mps-warned