14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Gen. Keith Alexander, NSA’s director, was trying to convince the members of the agency’s extended family that everything will be ok, while urging them not to believe everything they see in the media reports.
Now, it’s the turn of the general public, as Alexander calls on the public to help defend the agency’s surveillance powers which are being threatened by at least a dozen new bills.
“We need your help. We need to get these facts out. We need our nation to understand why we need these tools,” he pressed during a cybersecurity summit, as The Hill reports.
He goes as far as warning that if Congress hampers the NSA’s ability to gather information, it could allow terrorist attacks in the United States, such as the one that happened in Kenya.
“If you take those surveillance powers away, think about the last week and what will happen in the future. If you think it’s bad now, wait until you get some of those things that happened in Nairobi,” he said.
Of course, it isn’t surprising that Alexander pulled out the terrorist boogeyman from under the bed in an effort to convince people their privacy needs to be sacrificed for the greater good. Not to mention that attacks such as the ones in Kenya or worse did happen in the United States, and it wasn’t terrorists that did it.
Talking about privacy, Alexander said that while some violations inside the NSA led to privacy violations, all cases were reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Congress and the Justice Department, as well as other agencies. Furthermore, as if it makes anything better, the illegally collected data is deleted.
“Some of these, as you've read and you've seen from the court's opinions, would make you say, ‘Wow, I'd really like not to have this one get out.’ But we will do the right thing in every case,” Alexander said.