NSA chief: surveillance programs helped prevent terror plots more than 50 times since 9/11

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The law authorizes the NSA to collect e-mails and other Internet communications to and from foreign targets overseas who are thought to be involved in terrorism or nuclear proliferation or who might provide critical foreign intelligence. No American in the country or abroad can be targeted without a warrant, and no person inside the United States can be targeted without a warrant.

“As Americans, we value our privacy and our civil liberties,” Alexander said. “As Americans, we also value our security and our safety. In the 12 years since the attacks on September 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation. 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.”

Deputy Attorney General James Cole offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the criticism of the program by civil libertarians. He emphasized that authorities, when they gather phone records, cannot immediately find out the identity or location of the callers. Moreover, he said “we don’t listen in on anybody’s calls.”

He said only certain people have access to the information, while saying the so-called toll records, also called business records, are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. He said the courts have found people cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy as to whom and when they call.

Further, Cole said authorities can only target people who are non-U.S. citizens and non-permanent residents, and those who are overseas.

Cole and other officials went to great length to describe the privacy protections in handling the surveillance programs. Under Section 702, the NSA must destroy any data collected about U.S. persons — citizens or lawful permanent residents — that have nothing to do with foreign intelligence, a crime or terrorism, these officials said. The agency may keep the data for five years and then must purge it.

The deputy director of the NSA, John Inglis, and other officials said that phone data are stored in a separate repository at the NSA that can be accessed by only twenty-two specially trained people. A query can be made only if the analyst has “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the phone number to be searched is associated with a specific terrorist organization, they said.

The Post notes that both surveillance programs are subject to reporting requirements, though the reports are not public. For instance, if there is a compliance problem — a wrong number is punched in — the error must be reported to the court immediately. In addition, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence conduct regular reviews and report to Congress and the courts on compliance.

The witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee all said that Snowden’s leaks would damage U.S. national security.

“We are now faced with a situation that, because this information has been made public, we run the risk of losing these collection capabilities,” Robert Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said. “We’re not going to know for many months whether these leaks in fact have caused us to lose these capabilities, but if they do have that effect, there is no doubt that they will cause our national security to be affected.”