A pair of former directors of the United States security services said Friday that Congress should extend the spying powers in the Patriot Act to help keep the country safe.
Retired Gen. Keith B. Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, said the agency’s controversial data collection program is a powerful tool to stop developing terrorist plots.
Alexander and former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III were in Richmond on Friday to address cybersecurity threats at the Richmond Forum lecture series.
“My concern is if we throw programs like that off the table, our intelligence folks don’t have the ability to connect the dots,” Alexander said in a brief interview before taking the stage with Mueller at the Altria Theater. “I am all for taking things off the table if we can do a better job. … The real question I think you need to ask is: If not this program, what? And nobody’s put that on the table nor has anybody been able to come up with a better program.”
Sen. Rand Paul launched a 10-hour filibuster this week arguing that Congress should allow the current spy powers granted to the government in the wake of 9/11 to expire at the end of this month.
“There comes to a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,” Paul said. “That time is now. And I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged.”
And a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general this week said no major terrorism cases were cracked using the FBI’s bulk data collection program authorized by the Patriot Act.
Alexander said the NSA’s data collection program helped foil a 2009 plot to bomb New York’s subways by identifying potential terrorists through their telephone connections. And Mueller said part of January’s terrorist attacks in France might have been thwarted with a similar program.
“You take the shootings in Paris. You have two people in Paris shooting people. They’ve got telephone numbers,” Mueller said. “If you can take those two numbers and identify who is associated with those numbers within a matter of hours — if the French had these capabilities — they may have been able to prevent the associate from attacking the supermarket a couple of days later.”
Alexander said he thinks Americans need to better understand the vast measures the government takes to protect the data and make sure the information isn’t misused.
“I have 16 grandchildren. When I look at them I want them to be as safe as we’ve been the past 14 years for their whole lives,” he said. “That’s not by chance. I think we’ve done that. I just don’t think it’s been told well.”
The pair also addressed the growing threat of cyberattacks on the government and private business. In 2013, about 29 million global cyber threats were detected. Last year, that number spiked to almost 43 million.
Mueller said the threats range from identity theft to intellectual property theft by China and Russia to terrorist attacks. And Alexander said that as technology expands, the nation and businesses must find a way to protect the massive amounts of data that are being created.
A report last year said cyberattacks cost the global economy about $445 billion annually. And in a sign that no individual is immune, Alexander acknowledged Friday that a hacker once stole his identity and attempted to use it to obtain a tax refund.
Mueller said new chip technology in cards can help prevent attacks like those that gleaned credit card numbers from Target and other retailers. He said the government and the private sector need to share more information to come up with ways to fight security threats.
“Countries that take issue with our policy, our sanctions, are starting to fire back using the network,” Alexander said. “Like never before, we’re at risk just like every other country in the world. In World War II we had the Atlantic and Pacific to protect us. … We have to come up with a way to protect our country from all these threats combined.”
At the end of Friday’s Richmond Forum session, Alexander and Mueller took questions from the crowd, including about how they perceive the Islamic State’s cybercapabilities. Alexander said the Islamic State already uses the Internet to recruit and in one instance hacked into a French television station.
Alexander and Mueller said they fear that as the group grows, its attacks may become more complex.
Another audience member asked whether the U.S. goes on the offensive with cyberattacks of its own.
Without directly answering, Alexander said such attacks are among a menu of options for the nation.
“The bottom line is, cyber is a tool every administration is going to have to weigh,” he said.
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