Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Gen. Keith Alexander,
director of the National Security Agency, asserted that his agency's
massive acquisition of U.S. phone data and the contents of overseas
Internet traffic that is provided by American tech companies has helped
prevent "dozens of terrorist events."
On Thursday, Sens. Ron
Wyden and Mark Udall, Democrats who both serve on the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence and have access to the nation's most sensitive
secrets, released a statement
contradicting this assertion. "Gen. Alexander's testimony yesterday
suggested that the NSA's bulk phone records collection program helped
thwart 'dozens' of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he
mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection
methods," the two senators said.
Indeed, a survey of court
documents and media accounts of all the jihadist terrorist plots in the
United States since 9/11 by the New America Foundation shows that
traditional law enforcement methods have overwhelmingly played the most significant role in foiling terrorist attacks.
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