NSA Director Keith Alexander handled his hacker conference heckler calmly and with courtesy … but what if he’d gotten wind of the nefarious egg conspiracy afoot?
NSA Director Keith Alexander may not win any popularity contests, but he certainly has poise and courage. Despite widespread public anger in response to whistleblower Edward Snowden‘s revelations of widespread National Security Administration snooping, General Alexander still showed up in for his scheduled keynote address at last week’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Nev. According to Black Hat’s website, the conference brings together professionals and hackers “underground researchers” to discuss cybersecurity trends.
Chenda Ngak from CBS News wrote that although many folks wouldn’t have blamed Alexander for backing out, he wanted to keep the lines of communication open.? Overall, the audience’s mood “was one of respectful skepticism,” as Alexander’s speech defended the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program, explained how the U.S. government arrived at its current cybersecurity policies, and how the current level of data collection could have prevented major terrorist attacks like 9/11.
But of course, some heckling from hackers was inevitable. Midway through the address, an audience member challenged Alexander:
Alexander: Our nation takes stopping terrorism as one of the most important things. And with that, when you think about it, how do we do that, because we stand for freedom.
Audience member: Bulls**!
Alexander: [Smiles wryly and nods] Not that … [audience applauds] But I think what you’re saying is that in these cases, what’s the decision, where’s the discussion, and what tools should we have to stop those?
Audience member: I’ll say! I don’t trust you! You liked to Congress. Why should we believe you’re not lying to us?
Alexander: [Gently nods, with a tinge of exasperation as though addressing a temperamental five-year-old child] I haven’t lied to Congress.
Audience member: What about? [unintelligible/cross-talk]?
Alexander: Thank you for that … but I do think this is important for us to have this discussion, because, in my opinion, you quickly believe that — that which is written in the press, without looking at the facts, this is the greatest, technical center of gravity in the world. I ask that you all look at those facts, check that out, read the congressional testimony, look at what we’re talking about here, because this is our nation’s future.
Whether or not you enjoy having the U.S. government picking through your e-packets, you’ve got to give the guy some credit for taking the heckler’s comments seriously and responding courteously, without sounding like a robot reciting prescribed talking points.
But would Alexander have been so calm and collected if he had known of the dastardly egg plot that was afoot? According to Andy Greenberg from Forbes , the NSA director only narrowly avoided “a far messier volley of criticism.” An anonymous conference-goer confided that he had … heh … “hatched” a plot to pelt the keynote speaker with raw eggs. He smuggled in six dozen eggs in his backpack, and passed them out to people in the audience:
I thought there might be a moment when someone in the audience wishes they had an egg in their hand. I wanted to anticipate that possibility.
But he of course didn’t want to just throw all the eggs himself:
I didn’t want this to be the act of just one single, disgruntled individual, but a group response. I think there’s something different about one individual heckling or throwing eggs versus a chorus of people who all respond together.
Unfortunately, the nefarious plan failed because “no one took an egg,” perhaps because they were intimidated by the “two suited agents with earpieces flanking Alexander on either side of the stage.” Eventually, security guards took away the remaining eggs. When Greenberg asked Jeff Moss — the Black Hat conference’s organizer — what he thought, Moss replied:
It’s not cool to throw eggs at people. Besides being amazingly disrespectful, there are probably better ways to protest.
Here’s the video of Alexander’s heckling from CBS News:
Meanwhile, some folks have entirely different complaints about the NSA’s hoards of metadata. The New York Times reports that other government agencies are furious because they can’t get enough of it:
Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say.
So, perhaps the NSA really does care about the average American citizen’s right to privacy.Timothy H. Edgar, described as “a former senior intelligence official,” told the Times:
It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A. They collect all this information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to what they want.
As Abraham Lincoln famously once said:
You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time.
Photo from RT.Com.
edited/published: eap
