NSA's phone snoop-ops helped bust 'maybe one' criminal, says industry representative

US NSA's alleged phone snoop-ops apparently did not help in busting criminals, except an exception, an industry representative has reportedly claimed.

President and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), Dean Garfield told lawmakers that the US Congress needs to help restore global trust in the nation's technology vendors by reining in surveillance programs at the NSA.

According to PC World, the alleged surveillance programmes have been defended by lawmakers as those helping in thwarting a lot of terrorist activities plotted against the nation.

However, the representative said that the furor over the NSA surveillance programs could lead to loss of income in the tens of billions of dollars for US cloud providers.

He said that the US needs a "public policy course correction" on NSA surveillance, adding that 'Made in the U.S.A' is no longer a badger of honour but a basis for questioning the integrity and the independence of US-made technology.

Garfield further said that Congress needed to ensure greater transparency over NSA surveillance to stop a 'protectionist downward spiral' and restore tryst in the encryption standards process at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The report said that when a Texas Republican, Ted Poe had questioned how many criminal cases federal investigators have filed using information from the phone records program, deputy attorney general in the US Department of Justice, James Cole had responded saying that there 'may be one'.

Cole's statement prompted outrage and Poe questioned if the programme was justified on the idea that all the collection of personal data has resulted in one bad guy having criminal charges filed on him.

Garfield's comments come amidst the growing public debate over the legality of the alleged mass surveillance programmes revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.