9.39pm GMT

We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage of today's congressional outing by NSA director Keith Alexander and friends. Here's a summary of where things stand:

• Alexander argued against limits on surveillance programs, saying the programs secure the nation and operate within the law. "From my perspective, the threats are growing," Alexander said.

• Alexander gave the NSA top grades for self-policing. "This agency in every case reports on itself, tells you what we did wrong..." Alexander said. He was echoed by Robert Litt, general counsel for the office of the director of national intelligence: "Everybody is singularly focused on ensuring that we comply with the Constitution and the law."

• The sparsely attended hearing saw minimal discussion of relatively recently disclosed NSA programs such as the collection of billions of cell phone records worldwide or of Internet metadata abroad. Instead the hearing focused once again on the collection of phone metadata under section 215 of the Patriot Act, a program the witnesses continued to defend.

• Committee chairman Patrick Leahy said the latest NSA disclosures "raise significant questions about the scope"of surveillance and show more oversight is "clearly needed" – "a lot more." But the questions about the new programs didn't much come. Many committee members had conflicts and failed to attend.

• Draft legislation to reform the NSA to be debated in Congress next month, known as the USA FREEDOM Act, may be read here. Litt said new rules could be hard to live with, warning of "practical or operational" compliance concerns.

• Reforms in the law include the addition of a public advocate to Fisa court proceedings; added transparency including the release of numbers of Americans swept up in spying dragnets; new requirements for court orders to use Americans' information; and some limits on bulk collection of Americans' records. The ACLU supports the bill.