“I don’t know a better way to do it,” said General Keith Alexander, director of the National Intelligence Agency, to a Senate oversight panel on Wednesday.
Referring to the bulk-collection of personal data that the NSA sweeps up in a series of domestic and global surveillance programs that have been disclosed to the public through a trove a leaked internal documents this year, Alexander defended the practices of his agency as necessary to save lives.
“There is no other way we know of to connect the dots,” he said in testimony and suggested, according to reporting by the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, that even if lawmakers passed measures barring the collection of so-called “meta-data” and other forms of private information, “that would not be final word on the matter.”
As Ackerman reports:
Speaking to the panel, Alexander said the American public shouldn’t be concerned about the size or scope of the NSA’s claimed dragnet authority.
“The number isn’t that big,” Alexander responded when asked how many individuals’ information was being swept up. “When the American people understand that, they’ll know we’re doing this right.”
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