When Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency and chief of U.S. Cyber Command, agreed to deliver the opening keynote at Black Hat USA 2013, he had no idea that by the time he took the stage many of the NSA’s most secret information-collection programs would be public knowledge, thanks to Edward Snowden. The revelations of the NSA’s PRISM and metadata collection programs by the former agency contractor have sparked a heated conversation in the security community and when Alexander spoke on Wednesday, the crowd was initially cordial and attentive, but soon turned somewhat restive and hostile. While Alexander defended the NSA’s intelligence-gathering efforts and provided examples of how they had led to the disruption of terror attacks in recent years, some people in the audience were uninterested and shouted criticisms and accusations at him. To get the full sense of the scene, watch Alexander’s speech below.
