I hardly want to open this can of worms but I’ve been asked by a few people for my opinion. We know what opinions are like, and that everybody has one. Here’s mine.
(Let me preface: One thing I won’t do is parrot any classified information already available online. If the military community learned anything from the Manning leaks, it’s that just because the information is on the open web doesn’t mean it’s not still classified. You can say that the classification is now a moot point but your future prison sentence isn’t on the line.)
Okay, on one hand we have GEN Keith Alexander who has now given two ‘transparency’ speeches to the hacker/info security community. One where he was dressed casually, and spoke to attendees at last year’s Def Con. More recently, he spoke to attendees of Black Hat USA 2013.
For some context, the NSA’s stated mission is grounded in foreign signals intelligence. They discover, and then, in conjunction with other agencies and organizations, deter or disrupt foreign plots against our national security. We know because of the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSA is able to use tools like PRISM that wind up connecting US citizens with foreign-based known or suspected terrorists; and domestic terrorists communicating with US citizens abroad. As long as there’s a foreign connection and a court order, I believe that they can do whatever they please when it comes to electronic and digital surveillance.
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