So, the NSA is claiming that their anti-privacy drift net, “helped foil more than 50 attacks.”

A few days ago, they were claiming around 20.

And, of course, “Helped foil” isn’t defined, because … Secret.

Recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance programs have helped disrupt more than 50 “potential terrorist events” around the world over the last 12 years, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who described the spying operations as tightly regulated and extremely useful.

The officials, testifying Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, identified two new cases — an alleged plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, and a U.S. resident who helped finance a terrorist group in Somalia — that they said proved the value of collecting domestic telephone calling records and monitoring foreign Internet traffic.

Most of the plots were foiled by surveillance of foreigners overseas, the kind of spying the NSA has done since it was created in 1952 to monitor communications and other so-called signals intelligence.

The surveillance programs “are critical to … our nation and our allies’ security,” said Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the NSA and the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command. “They assist the intelligence community efforts to connect the dots.”

It’s possible that General Alexander was telling the truth, but considering the fact that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper deliberately perjured himself before Congress without any consequence, I would be inclined to believe that best, this is an example of “truthiness”, and they chose a number and cherry picked cases to hit that number.

It’s possible that the General is telling the truth, and not engaging in spin.

It’s also possible that I greeted my Sharon^* in in bed this evening, wearing nothing but a towel with a chrysanthemum between my teeth.^†

The US state security apparatus has used secrecy and deception to justify their program secrecy and deception. Absent a massive and complete declassification of data, Alexander, or Clapper, or Brennan, or for that matter, Barack Obama, are simply not credible sources.

Secrecy and hoovering up everything are an end in and of itself for the NSA and its ilk, and it is up to the political leaders to reign them in.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
^†Actually, not possible. She is violently allergic to the insecticide pyrethrin, which is a naturally occurring substance extracted from chrysanthemums. I have no comment on whether I did so with a rose between my teeth.^‡
‡Let me state for the record that a moment of stunned silence, followed by a nervous chuckle, might be the world’s most effective form of birth control.
^ψJoe McCarthy made claims that there were numerous Communists employed by the State Department. His numbers kept changing.