The Washington Post has published a truly disturbing, if not accurate, profile of the man behind the NSA's massive surveillance infrastructure: Gen. Keith B. Alexander.

The central narrative thread in Alexander's profile is to demonstrate how, out of a "passion" to combat terror threats, he has come to view collecting every bit of Americans' digital data as the the best tactical move.

This desire to "collect it all" began in Iraq, when in 2005 Alexander instituted a radical plan to collect every bit of Iraqis' data as a way to combat terror attacks:

At the time, more than 100 teams of U.S. analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency’s powerful computers. “Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

“He is absolutely obsessed and completely driven to take it all, whenever possible,” said Thomas Drake, a former NSA official and whistleblower. The continuation of Alexander’s policies, Drake said, would result in the “complete evisceration of our civil liberties.” Just as in Iraq, [Alexander] remains fiercely committed to the belief that “we need to get it all,” said Timothy Edgar, a former privacy officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and at the White House. “He certainly believes you need to collect everything you can under the law,” Edgar said, “and that includes pushing for pretty aggressive interpretations of the law.”

And it is this method he has brought to surveillance today, both within and outside our borders: collect every private bit of data possible by stretching, and breaking, Americans' constitutional rights and civil liberties.Alexander is a man driven to capture and store all of our private data in the name of national security, and his dual military and intelligence backgrounds in his role as NSA chief have made him relatively immune from oversight.

If Alexander is allowed to continue down this road, our entire digital lives will exist at the NSA's sprawling campus at Fort Meade, held somewhere within its 1,300 guarded buildings.

Our digital lives held captive. Waiting to be interrogated. At a moment's notice.

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