NSA Director Defends Surveillance To Unsympathetic Black Hat Crowd

Trailrunner7 writes "NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander's keynote today at Black Hat USA 2013 was a tense confessional, an hour-long emotional and sometimes angry ride that shed some new insight into the spy agency's two notorious data collection programs, inspired moments of loud applause in support of the NSA, and likewise, profane heckling that called into question the legality and morality of the agency's practices. Loud voices from the overflowing crowd called out Alexander on his claims that the NSA stands for freedom while at the same time collecting, storing and analyzing telephone business records, metadata and Internet records on Americans. He also denied lying to Congress about the NSA's capabilities and activities in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism in response to such a claim from a member of the audience."

Private Companies

[ubeatha]

What I'm amazed about is the fact that private corporations have access to this data and no one seems to care. Snowden wasn't even a member of the NSA he was just a contractor. I highly doubt that private security companies are above reproach in using tools only for the intended purposes. I can't even imagine what Blackwater would have gotten up to with access to such tools.

Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA?

[dgharmon]

Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? That's a tough one. But I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at the NSA, and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin' no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, cus' I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding... Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, Send in the marines to secure the area" cus' they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot.

Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, cus' they were off pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie over there takin' shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, cus' he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices.

A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work. He can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' cus' every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected President. Good Will Hunting [imdb.com] (1997)

Re:Privacy concerns now outweigh terrorism in poll

[YukariHirai]

It seems clear that they're doing it to us non-Americans even more. While that might be no immediate problem to US representatives who only have their own electorates to worry about, the damage to the US reputation abroad has already started.

Already started? The US's reputation in the rest of the world has been taking considerable damage for years now. This recent stuff has certainly been doing a lot more damage, but their reputation being damaged isn't exactly a new development.

Re:Privacy concerns now outweigh terrorism in poll

[TheGratefulNet]

at least in the bay area, the majority who live here are not born here.

I had a few lunchtime conversations with people in my group (I'm the only guy who was born/raised in the US in my extended group) and it was difficult to convince my co-workers about the motivations and principles that our founding fathers had in mind when they created this country.

this is a real issue. people who grew up in the US have at least some feeling for 'right to privacy', even if some criminal goes free; its better to preserve the assumption of innocence and have to prove guilt, than to work things the other way around.

my co-workers are fine with having cameras on every street corner. they are fine with TSA goons invading our privacy. they are happy that 'we are being kept safe'. the countries they came from have much less freedom than the US and so they don't quite 'get' my frustration at the way things are going, here.

parts of the US are losing their soul and it disturbs me to see such mass acceptance of our surveillance 'culture'. I can understand why our liberty is fading, but I don't have to like it. and I speak up about it when the topic comes up at lunchtime. I'm not sure if I'm getting thru to them, but at least I'm trying to educate them about what america used to be and what it stood for. once upon a time.