WASHINGTON — Recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance programs have helped disrupt more than 50 “potential terrorist events” around the world over the last 12 years, according to U.S. intelligence officials who described the spying operations as tightly regulated and extremely useful.
WASHINGTON — Recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance programs have helped disrupt more than 50 “potential terrorist events” around the world over the last 12 years, according to U.S. intelligence officials who described the spying operations as tightly regulated and extremely useful.
The officials, testifying Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, identified two new cases — an alleged plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, and a U.S. resident who helped finance a terrorist group in Somalia — that they said proved the value of collecting domestic telephone calling records and monitoring foreign Internet traffic.
Most of the plots were foiled by surveillance of foreigners overseas, the kind of spying the NSA has done since it was created in 1952 to monitor communications and other intelligence.
The surveillance programs “are critical to … our nation and our allies’ security,” said Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the NSA and the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command. “They assist the intelligence community efforts to connect the dots.”
He said 10 of the 50 cases had the potential to involve domestic telephone records, but he could not say how many actually did. Civil liberties activists and some members of Congress have called the collection of telephone metadata the most worrisome part of the NSA operation, and questioned whether it violates Americans’ privacy.
Details of NSA data collection programs were leaked to news organizations this month by Edward Snowden, a former computer systems administrator at an NSA facility outside Honolulu.
Separately, Google asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to lift a long-standing gag order that prevents companies from disclosing information about the requests the government makes for information in national security cases. The company argued the ban violates its First Amendment rights.
The company has said that Snowden’s leaks to news organizations greatly overstated the amount of information on its users that the government has access to. The company wants to be able to release information to “respond to false or misleading statements about the scope of its compelled disclosure under national security authorities,” its petition says.