The Obama administration 's argument that NSA surveillance programs such as PRISM and Boundless Informant had been necessary to prevent acts of terrorism was challenged by several parties . Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt of '' The Guardian '' said of the case of Najibullah Zazi , who had planned to bomb the New York City Subway , that interviews with involved parties and U.S. and British court documents indicated that the investigation into the case had actually been initiated in response to " conventional " surveillance methods such as " old-fashioned tip-offs " of the British intelligence services , rather than to leads produced by NSA surveillance . Michael Daly of '' The Daily Beast '' stated that even though Tamerlan Tsarnaev , who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing with his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev , had visited the Al Qaeda-affiliated '' Inspire '' magazine website , and even though Russian intelligence officials had raised concerns with U.S. intelligence officials about Tamerlan Tsarnaev , PRISM did not prevent him from carrying out the Boston attacks . Daly observed that , " The problem is not just what the National Security Agency is gathering at the risk of our privacy but what it is apparently unable to monitor at the risk of our safety . " Ron Paul , a former Republican member of Congress and prominent libertarian , thanked Snowden and Greenwald and denounced the mass surveillance as unhelpful and damaging , urging instead more transparency in U.S. government actions . He called Congress " derelict in giving that much power to the government , " and said that had he been elected president , he would have ordered searches only when there was probable cause of a crime having been committed , which he said was not how the PRISM program was being operated
Boston Marathon bombing
Boston Marathon bombing
PRISM (surveillance program)