NSA chief insists only suspect phone numbers tracked, not content

The National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander and task force in charge Rick Ledgett have reportedly insisted that the US spy agency does not listen to private conversations and it is only the suspect number which is forwarded to the FBI for tracking.

Alexander said that the agency needs to help the American people understand that there is no intelligence in people's email data or phone conversations and the least intrusive way of doing that is by metadata.

According to CBS News, an analyst Stephen Benitez explained that a technique known as 'call chaining' is used to develop targets for electronic surveillance in a pirate network based in Somalia.

Alexander further said that before 9/11, this capability didn't exist and the incidence was the factor in facilitating in setting up the programme.

Meanwhile, the task force in charge Rick Ledgett, who is probing the damage caused by whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks, said that the former NSA contractor misused his authority of keeping track of the data flowing through the agency during his tenure.

Ledgett explained that what Snowden did is called scraping in which he used tools to scrape information from websites, and put it into a place where he could download it and there is an exhaustive list of the requirements that have been against NSA.

He further said that if the leaked information including topics NSA would be interested in, what its gaps were, falls into the wrong hands it would give them a roadmap about the agency's capabilities and downfalls, and function as the keys to the kingdom.

Snowden, who has been granted a temporary asylum in Russia had said earlier that if he got amnesty, he would come back.

However, the NSA chief has said that he must be held accountable for jeopardizing the US' national security, while Ledgitt said that in his personal view, its worth to have a conversation about it as he needs assurances that the compromised data would not be further leaked.