NSA Chief Denies Claims of Domestic Spying

AstroPhilosopher writes "Recently Wired, USA Today and other news outlets reported on a new spy center being built to store intercepted communications (even American citizens'). Tuesday, Gen. Keith Alexander testified in front of Congress refuting the articles. Alexander even went so far as to claim the NSA lacks the authority to monitor American citizens. It's an authority that was given to the NSA through the FISA Amendments Act signed into law by Bush and still supported today by Obama."

Comments

Re:Interview in DemocracyNow

[element-o.p.]

Meh. I worked at NSA for about a year back in the '80s, and I have read "Puzzle Palace." Quite frankly, "Puzzle Palace" was very sensationalist. For example, I remember reading about the electric fence around FanX (IIRC). I spent a couple of months working at FanX while waiting for my clearances to come through so I could actually start doing what I was hired to do. Guess what? FanX was surrounded by barbed-wire fence, but there was no electric fence there. The history of NSA in the book was interesting, but Bamford exaggerated a bit in his descriptions of what it was actually like there. "Puzzle Palace" was more Nancy Grace than Peter Jennings.

On the flip side, my year at NSA made me very skeptical of a lot of things I heard prior to 2004. Where I worked, we had signs posted everywhere reminding people that it was illegal (by Executive Order) for NSA to spy on Americans. We were chartered for the purpose of foreign surveillance, so Americans were off-limits. Then came the revelation of NSA wiretapping at AT&T and other telcos. Sigh. I'm just glad I don't work there anymore.