NSA surveillanceNSA chief: surveillance programs helped prevent terror plots more than 50 times since 9/11
The National Security Agency (NSA) and Justice Department on Tuesday offered a trenchant defense of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Gen. Keith Alexander, NSA director and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, told lawmakers that the programs have helped prevent “potential terrorist events” more than fifty times since 9/11. Officials also offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the criticism of the program by civil libertarians, emphasizing that authorities, when they gather phone records, cannot immediately find out the identity or location of the callers.
The New York Stock Exchange, one of 50 attacks thwarted by NSA // Source: bigstockphoto.com
The National Security Agency (NSA) and Justice Department on Tuesday offered a trenchant defense of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Gen. Keith Alexander, NSA director and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, told lawmakers that the programs have helped prevent “potential terrorist events” more than fifty times since 9/11.
A top FBI official said the surveillance efforts helped disrupt a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce said NSA officials discovered the scheme while monitoring a known extremist in Yemen, who was in contact with an individual in the United States. Joyce said that after initiating surveillance, they U.S. intelligence community was able to detect “nascent plotting” to bomb the stock exchange and ultimately disrupt the plot.
Fox News reports that Joyce also mentioned another case in which the FBI was tipped by the NSA about an individual’s “indirect contacts” with terrorists overseas. This “terrorist activity” was disrupted as well, he said, without going into detail.
Alexander was unyielding in his defense of the surveillance programs. Speaking before the House intelligence committee, he said the programs “have protected the U.S. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe,” pointing to the intelligence community’s ability to better connect the dots as a reason why there has not been another 9/11-style attack.
“In the 12 years since the attacks on Sept. 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation,” General Alexander said. “That security is a direct result of the intelligence community’s quiet efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur on 9/11.”
Specifically, he said the programs helped prevent terror “events” more than fifty times in more than twenty countries since 2001. Alexander said he plans to provide details on all the cases to lawmakers in a classified setting on Wednesday.
Fox News notes that Alexander has already gone to Capitol Hill several times since Snowden revealed details earlier this month about the NSA programs, but Tuesday’s meeting marked the first time Alexander has spoken publicly about the agency-led surveillance programs.
Alexander pushed back criticism, saying the program “does not compromise” privacy and civil liberties.
The Washington Post quotes him to say that more than 90 percent of the information on the foiled plots came from a program targeting the communications of foreigners, known as PRISM. The program was authorized under Section 702 of a 2008 law that amended
