US lacks proof that mass surveillance is effective – Snowden

Although certain aspects of government surveillance can produce useful intelligence, the United States has no proof that the practice is effective and therefore it should not be used, whistleblower and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has said at a security conference, Sputnik reported.

"Mass surveillance has no proven track record and it should not be a part of our [US] policy," Snowden said Friday during a Cato Institute surveillance conference via a video-link from Russia, stressing that the practice "should not be pursued, it should not be funded because it takes resources away from methods and mechanisms in investigations that we know work and that we know are effective."

The whistleblower also argued that mass surveillance is particularly ineffective in the context of terrorism and that human sources are often the best way to prevent terrorist attacks.

"Despite all the mass surveillance that has happened [to prevent a terrorist attack]…they [the US government] did not stop the Boston marathon bombings, in fact, they may have contributed to causing them because they gave us a false sense of security," Snowden said.

"They [the US government] made us think that these individuals [terrorists] were not associated with terrorism despite the fact that we had intelligence from human sources….we [the United States] didn't do a good job," the whistleblower added.