NSA Boss Booed On-Stage At 2013 Black Hat Conference

The NSA “boss” General Keithe Alexander agreed to make a speech at the Black Hat 2013 conference, about computer security, a few months ago. He agreed to do this well before any leaks about the NSA’s surveillance programs were made public. A few months later and the NSA is in hot water and its name has been dragged through the mud and back countless times. As you can imagine as soon as he got on stage he started having a hard time.

General Keith Alexander was booed on and off stage by a section of the crowd of 5000 according to RT. He addressed the following issue in his speech – “How do we protect our civil liberties and privacy? This is one of the biggest issues we face today”. He begun talking about the FISA amendment and the Patriot Act and how they support NSA intelligence collection before proceeding to talk about how new methods of data collection had allow them to arrest men involved in bomb plots.

Half way through the presentation someone yelled out “freedom!” to whicjh the NSA boss replied saying that is exactly what the NSA stands for. In response the person from the crowd, security consultant Jon McCoy, responded saying he did not trust the NSA and that they had been proven to lie to congress. General Keither Alexander reiterated an early sentiment that he had not lied to congress. To top it all off towards the end of the speech, while discussing the constitution, a member of the crowd shouted out that the NSA leader would benefit from actually reading it.

Image courtesy of Keith Alexander