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NSA Inspector General George Ellard speaks about privacy and national security at Princeton University on Dec. 9, 2014.

(Jean Wang)

By Jean Wang

For The Times

PRINCETON – George Ellard, inspector general of the National Security Agency, defended the agency's work in a talk at Princeton University Tuesday, including the NSA's controversial eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's private cellphone.

“If you’re the chancellor of Germany, you don’t have a private cellphone,” Ellard said. “If you’re the president of the United States, you don’t have a private cellphone.”

The NSA is one of the most highly regulated entities in the world, Ellard said. It plays “a major role in keeping our nation safe and, to achieve this end, it has been given extraordinary powers,” Ellard said to a small crowd of students, faculty and community members gathered in Robertson Hall at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “Extraordinary powers demand extraordinary oversight in a country based on the rule of law.”

This is a fact widely recognized by the U.S. government, Ellard said. In addition to Ellard’s office, which is responsible for reviewing the NSA’s work to ensure it does not violate U.S. laws and constitutional rights, the NSA is also subject to oversight by all three branches of government, Ellard noted.

Ellard criticized Edward Snowden for severely damaging U.S. national security with his release of classified documents in 2013.

“Mr. Snowden was an IT systems analyst,” Ellard said. “He had no background in intelligence and he grossly misunderstood the documents he stole.”

In the hands of foreign adversaries, Ellard argued that these documents, which contained sensitive information about the NSA’s strategic position and its intelligence tools, could be very dangerous.

“He was not a whistleblower; he was a leaker,” Ellard said.

A whistleblower goes through official channels so as not to compromise sensitive information, a sharp contrast with Snowden, who was “maniacal in his thievery,” Ellard said. Under NSA policy, the first step in the process would have been to approach Ellard’s office, which receives complaints from several whistleblowers each year.

“Mr. Snowden and some of those who worked with him have breached classified information with a callous and intentional disregard for our national security,” Ellard said.

Also present at the talk was Barton Gellman, a journalist and lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School. Gellman was one of the first people Snowden approached about publishing the NSA documents. Ellard mentioned that Gellman was not included in his criticisms.

“I have examined the programs that (Snowden) talks about, and I am convinced that they are legal,” Ellard said.

However, he noted that the true problem at hand was not one of legality, but prudence.

“OK, so you can do that. But do you really want to?” Ellard said. “I think that’s the question that really needs to be answered.”

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