The Ethics and Efficacy of Post-9/11 Mass Surveillance: Evaluating the degree to which post-9/11 programs of mass electronic surveillance as leveraged by law enforcement have achieved their purported counterterrorism objectives

The post 9/11 era has witnessed an explosion in the use of state surveillance for the purposes of law enforcement. In the past few decades, the means and methods of state surveillance have become increasingly pervasive, effective, and cheap, thanks (i) to advancements in technology, (ii) the broadened post-9/11 statutory authority for the US intelligence community (“IC”) to leverage surveillance methods against both domestic and foreign targets, and (iii) increasingly routine law enforcement access to data from major technology and telecommunications companies subject to US jurisdiction. The expansive post-9/11 surveillance regime was explicitly built out of the pragmatic purpose of identifying unknown terrorist operatives and preventing terrorist attacks. These programs have raised constitutional objections related to the Fourth Amendment as well as having raised ethical concerns related to Panopticism and digital authoritarianism. A key defense of warrantless surveillance provided within this argument is that 1) mass surveillance programs effectively mitigate the threat of international terrorism within the domestic United States, and 2) the government does not possess comparably effective alternatives to mass surveillance in mitigating the threat of international terrorism within the domestic United States. This thesis aims to provide quantitative evidence to investigate the following claims at the center of this debate: 1) Does evidence exist to support the claim that the government's expanded surveillance authorities post-9/11 have been integral in mitigating the threat of international terrorism within the domestic United States? 2) Does the government arguably possess reasonable alternatives to mass electronic surveillance that mitigate the threat of terrorism within the United States with comparable efficacy? 3) What controversial uses of the law enforcement's expanded post-9/11 powers have emerged in the 20 years since 9/11? 4) What limitations exist in measuring counterterrorism value narrowly through examining the US criminal record? 5) What persistent limitations exist in conducting scholarship in this area and what are possible areas for additional transparency from the government? By examining these questions, this thesis hopes to contribute to ongoing debates about the balance between national security and civil liberties and offer insights into the role and consequences of surveillance in contemporary law enforcement.