I hate to be pedantic about this notion of national security, but it's not reassuring that the head of the NSA seems to be so entirely clueless about how information slipped out of the department via Edward Snowden.

Host George Stephanopoulos asked [NSA Chief Keith] Alexander if the government knew how Snowden was able to leave Hawaii with the materials he’d taken.

“Clearly the system did not work as it should have,” Alexander said. “This is an individual with top secret clearance whose duty it was to administer these networks. He betrayed that confidence and stole some of our secrets. We are now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators, what they’re doing, what they’re taking, a two-man rule. We’ve changed the passwords. But at the end of the day, we have to trust that our people are going to do the right thing. This is an extremely important mission defending our country.”

“We have interest in those who collect on us as an intelligence agency. But to say that we’re willfully just collecting all sorts of data would give you the impression that we’re just trying to canvas the whole world. The fact is what we’re trying to do is get the information our nation needs, the foreign intelligence, that primary mission, in this case and the case that Snowden has brought up is in defending this nation from a terrorist attack.”