NSA Chief Tells Hackers His Agency Doesn’t Create Dossiers on All Americans
By Kim Zetter
July 27, 2012

LAS VEGAS — NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander, appearing for the first time at the DefCon hacker conference, told the crowd of hackers and security professionals that his agency “absolutely” does not maintain files on Americans.

Responding to a question from DefCon founder Jeff Moss asking “does the NSA really keep a file on everyone?

Alexander replied, “No, we don’t. Absolutely no. And anybody who would tell you that we’re keeping files or dossiers on the American people knows that’s not true.”

Alexander went on to say that the NSA’s job was foreign intelligence, not domestic and that the agency is constantly monitored in everything it does.

“We get oversight by Congress, both intel committees and their congressional members and their staffs,” he continued, “so everything we do is auditable by them, by the FISA court … and by the administration. And everything we do is accountable to them…. We are overseen by everybody. And I will tell you that those who would want to weave the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is absolutely false.”

Unstated in both Moss’s question and Alexander’s answer, however, is whether the NSA monitors and collects the communications of millions of Americans en masse, something that is very different from keeping a “file” on individual Americans.

CONTINUE: [link to www.wired.com]