At a congressional committee meeting this week, Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed that he lied when, in June, he stated that NSA phone surveillance records – gathered using some of the programs exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden – had led to the deterrence of 54 terror plots.
During the proceedings, Alexander revealed that only 13 of those terror plots had any connection to the United States and that less than a handful were uncovered as a result of phone surveillance, according to reports.
Previously, Alexander had managed to win over the majority of the crowd at Black Hat 2013 who listened to him defend the NSA surveillance programs. “Our job is defending the country,” he said in Las Vegas.
