14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the NSA has somewhat come to terms with the fact that files are going to continue to end up in the media for a long time to come. In a recent statement, NSA’s Keith Alexander revealed the agency believes Snowden may have taken about 200,000 documents, a lot more than they previously thought.
Once more, it looks like the NSA has no idea just how many files Edward Snowden downloaded from its servers, although they have stated previously that they knew ‘exactly’ what had been taken.
“I wish there was a way to prevent it. Snowden has shared somewhere between 50 and 200,000 documents with reporters. These will continue to come out,” Alexander said. Although he is aware of the fact that the reports will continue to get out, he still believes that the leaks so far have been done in a way that does the maximum damage to the NSA and the United States.
Again, he claims the media is getting it wrong. For instance, the agency didn’t collect 70 million calls in France, but rather the French intelligence service had collected that much data outside of France.
He also mentioned that he wasn’t going to comment on the accuracy of the stories, claiming the NSA is capable of cracking encryption or breaking into private networks. “But isn’t cracking encryption, or breaking into private networks, exactly what we want an intelligence agency to be able to do?” he asked.
“How else are we going to collect the communications of people who want to harm us and our allies, and who use those tools to try to hide their communications, or to provide policy makers the intelligence they need to protect the nation?” Alexander said.
The issue, of course, wasn’t that the NSA had cracked the networks of terrorist cells or any other type of enemy, but rather that they targeted Google’s infrastructure.