NSA Chief: Spying 'Foiled 50 Terror Plots'

The director of the National Security Agency has insisted the US government's sweeping surveillance programmes have foiled some 50 terrorist plots worldwide.

Among those prevented attacks was one planned for the New York Stock Exchange and another aimed at a Danish newspaper that had published a cartoon image of the Prophet Mohammed, according to US officials.

In a forceful defence echoed by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, Army General Keith Alexander said the two recently disclosed programmes are critical in the terrorism fight.

The programmes "assist the intelligence community to connect the dots", Gen Alexander told the committee in a rare, open Capitol Hill hearing.

The National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland

Gen Alexander got no disagreement from the leaders of the panel, who have been outspoken in backing the programmes since Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, disclosed information to The Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers.

Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the committee, and Rep CA Dutch Ruppersberger, the panel's top Democrat, said the programmes were vital to the intelligence community and assailed Mr Snowden's actions as criminal.

Mr Rogers said: "It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside."

Mr Ruppersberger said the "brazen disclosures" put the United States and its allies at risk.

The general counsel for the intelligence community said the NSA cannot target phone conversations between callers inside the US - even if one of those callers was someone they were targeted for surveillance when outside the country.

Snowden is believed to be in Hong Kong

The director of national intelligence's legal chief, Robert S Litt, said that if the NSA finds it has accidentally gathered a phone call by a target who had travelled into the US without their knowledge, they have to "purge" that from their system.

The same goes for an accidental collection of any conversation because of an error.

Mr Litt said those incidents are then reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which "pushes back" and asks how it happened, and what the NSA is doing to fix the problem so it does not happen again.

Mr Rogers previewed the latest public airing of the NSA controversy the morning after President Barack Obama vigorously defended the surveillance programmes in a lengthy interview Monday.

Mr Snowden, meanwhile, accused members of Congress and administration officials in an online interview Monday of exaggerating their claims about the success of the data gathering programmes.

The American citizen, believed to be in Hong Kong, said he planned to release more details on how he says the NSA can gain direct access to internet data on private servers.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Mr Snowden's father, Lon Snowden, defended his son's integrity and said he hoped he would not do anything that might be considered treasonous.

He said: "I would like to see Ed come home and face this. I shared that with the government when I spoke with them. I love my son."

He added: "I would rather my son be a prisoner in the US than a free man in a country that did not have ... the freedoms that are protected" in America.

The US has launched a criminal investigation to prosecute the whistleblower for lifting and exposing the classified material.

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