Mass surveillance failed to detect the terrorist plots it was meant to prevent.

Evidence

The United States continues to be a target of terrorist attacks but largely has been spared tragic consequences by the incompetence of most of the terrorists carrying out the plots. As we have seen, these attacks involved two would-be suicide bombers on planes headed for Detroit and Florida and a botched attempt on New York’s Times Square. All these attempts failed because the terrorists were unable to detonate the explosives. The tragic completed attack at the Boston Marathon killed three and maimed dozens more. The massive surveillance program did not detect these plots. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2336

Categorization

• XREF: Counterweight to the NSA’s claimed 50 foiled plots (2337); reinforces the reader’s interest in evidence-based assessment of how security rhetoric maps to outcomes.
• QUESTION: What specific failures of detection explain why plots escaped the dragnet, and was disengagement present in justifying the program despite its record?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2336