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The NSA headquarters are located in Fort Meade, Md.

Credit: Creative Commons

“If anyone hasn’t turned off their cell phone yet, hold up your hand and I’ll do it for you.” The audience laughed nervously.

Naturally, National Security Administration Deputy Director John Inglis couldn’t really control the cell phones and laptops of audience members sitting in Fitts Auditorium at the Penn Law School Friday afternoon. But in the wake of revelations brought to light in the last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, there has been no shortage of myths surrounding the agency’s power in popular culture.

Inglis dedicated a significant portion of his 45-minute lecture — and the hour-long question-and-answer session that followed — to dispelling myths and misconceptions about the agency that have pervaded in the media since Snowden began leaking classified documents pertaining to the NSA’s domestic and international information-gathering programs earlier this year.

Inglis was brought to Penn Law as the keynote speaker for a conference called “On the Very Idea of Secret Laws: Transparency and Publicity in Deliberative Democracy,” organized by professor Claire Finkelstein of the Law School’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. The crowd he addressed was made up mostly of academics and professionals attending the conference, as well as a handful of Penn Law students.

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One of the key misconceptions that Inglis addressed was the complicated, interconnected nature of the personal, geographical and digital domains in which the NSA conducts its work.

According to Inglis, the NSA follows a set of very specific rules to determine whether or not they have the authority to collect data on a certain individual and where they are allowed to collect that data. However, he said, “cyberspace doesn’t play by the same rules [of geography]” as traditional legal jurisdictions, which can invite some complications.

Inglis went on to describe how news media sources have mischaracterized certain NSA-led investigations as “invasions of privacy.” For example, one leaked internal compliance report, drafted by the NSA, describes these invasions as occasions in which a subject the NSA was authorized to monitor moved from a territory in which they had jurisdiction into one in which they did not, without the agency’s knowledge.

Moreover, he attributed most public hostility against the agency to a general misunderstanding of its goals, methods and oversight procedures. He also affirmed both his and his agency’s commitment to the protections enshrined in the Constitution that he swore to uphold.

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Inglis used an analogy of a railroad car to describe how civil liberties and public safety must both be held in great esteem for the agency to effectively fulfill its mission.

If both aren’t strong, firmly grounded and running parallel to one another, “it isn’t going to work,” he said.

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