14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA chief took to the stage at Black Hat 2013, a computer security conference, and things didn’t go too well.
General Keith Alexander took to the stage after agreeing to give the event’s keynote months ago, prior to the leaked documents making their way into the media.
The general asked the audience of nearly 5,000 people, “How do we protect our civil liberties and privacy? This is one of the biggest issues we face today.”
Alexander went and talked about the FISA amendment and the Patriot Act and how they work in aiding the NSA to collect intelligence.
He also made a comparison between the pre and post-9/11 world and how their new methods of data collection have aided in the arrest of Najibullah Zazi, one of the men involved in the plot to bomb the New York subway in 2010.
However, halfway through the presentation, some attendees were already rolling their eyes and a voice called out: “Freedom!”
To this, Alexander replied that that’s exactly what they stand for. The retort can’t exactly be reproduced, but the man in the audience was not happy with what the General was saying.
Moments later, the man identified as security consultant Jon McCoy said he didn’t trust the NSA leader. If he lied to the Congress, why would people believe he’s not lying to them then?
Alexander stated once more that he hadn’t lied to the US Congress, as he’d done numerous times before.
Later on, when the Constitution was brought into discussion, an audience member advised the NSA leader to actually read it.
The room was obviously divided between supporters of the NSA and those who questioned every word that came out of Alexander’s mouth, particularly in light of all revelations made by the media regarding PRISM, XKeyscore and all other spying programs silently run by the NSA for years.