Monterey >> The former heads of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency warned America was in danger Monday, after Congress let key parts of the Patriot Act expire.

Speaking at the Monterey Conference Center, ex-NSA head Keith Alexander and former CIA head Leon Panetta said the vast anti-terrorism legislation, which successive presidential administrations have argued allows for the collection of telephone data of ordinary Americans, should not end, despite opposition over privacy concerns.

“I can tell you that the result is, as the president and others have pointed out in Washington, we are going to suffer a security gap. A dangerous security gap,” Panetta said. “There are those out there that will take advantage of every opportunity.”

Several of the act’s controversial provisions expired after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., blocked an extension Sunday. The Senate was considering a replacement bill on Monday, as the lecture on cyber security put on by the Panetta Institute for Public Policy began in Monterey.

Alexander was the head of the NSA when secret details of its operations were leaked to The Guardian by former national security contractor Edward Snowden. Those revelations included the large-scale collection of domestic telephone records under the Patriot Act.

“I do believe that not passing (the Patriot Act extension) puts us at risk, and we shouldn’t have that risk,” Alexander said.

He said it was unclear if Congress would have acted differently with the Patriot Act if Snowden did not leak the information.

“That’s hard to predict. I think it would have been highly debated with or without the leak,” he said.

Alexander said, in his opinion, Snowden is a traitor “or at least a criminal.”

He said the NSA was not acting outside its authority when it collected a wide range of data on Americans, and pointed out that President Barack Obama had already set up a review group in 2013, that included a board member from the American Civil Liberties Union, to address privacy concerns.

“Our approach was, we’ll be completely transparent, we’ll tell them everything,” he said.

After five weeks of meeting with the group, Alexander said ACLU board member Geoffrey Stone praised the NSA, and the comments were later published by the Huffington Post.

“Not only did I find that the NSA had helped to thwart numerous terrorist plots against the United States and its allies in the years since 9/11, but I also found that it is an organization that operates with a high degree of integrity and a deep commitment to the rule of law,” said Stone, a statement Alexander read to journalists in Monterey.

What Alexander left out was that Stone did not necessarily agree with everything the agency was doing. Stone also questioned the powers the NSA was given, which he said was sometimes done without concern for civil liberties.

Also participating in the lecture series were Renée James, president of Intel Corporation, and Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen said he hopes Congress can come up with a compromise on reauthorizing the Patriot Act.

“The bad guys pay a lot of attention to what we do so they knew the moment it was open and, I suspect, as long as that gap is there, they will try to do all they can given the vulnerability,” he said.

Looking at technology growth as a whole, Panetta warned a weak cyber infrastructure could put people in peril from hackers.

“It’s been used, essentially, to gather personal information and sell that personal information,” he said. “Hackers and criminal elements have been involved in going after the most personal of information.”

Phillip Molnar can be reached at 726-4361.

Correction: Keith Alexander and Mike Mullen were misidentified in a photo caption on an earlier version of this story.