|
 |
FBI Tip Line
Web Portal,
Created in 2001, Receives ‘Actionable’ Tips Daily
03/01/16
In the pre-dawn hours of October 22, 2014, a New Hampshire man was
browsing a popular Internet message board when he came across what
appeared to be an anonymous threat: “I’m going to shoot up University
of Louisville’s Miller hall [sic] tomorrow at 10 a.m.”
The man went to the FBI website and submitted a tip at 4:23 a.m.
Eastern Time. “Some idiot is making threats,” he wrote on tips.fbi.gov,
and included a link to the suspicious post. Within a minute, an FBI
agent in the unit that administers the FBI’s global tip line picked up
the tip, setting in motion a process that happens on average 1,300
times a day. Several analysts assessed the tip and deemed it credible.
The unit’s supervisory special agent immediately called the
university’s campus police as well as local police. They were on the
scene by 8 o’clock that morning and quickly arrested an 18-year-old
student suspected of posting the threat.
The case illustrates how a tip—no matter how cryptic, innocuous, or
far-fetched the information may seem—can help prevent violent acts.
Tips to the FBI have led to captures of Top Ten fugitives and
short-circuited scores of criminal and terrorist plots. Established in
2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the tip line receives
about 100 “actionable” tips every day related to possible criminal,
cyber, terrorism, and espionage acts. Since its inception, the public
has submitted more than four million tips via the Internet at
tips.fbi.gov. In addition, phone calls to FBI field offices result in
thousands of pieces of reporting a day.
“We will check them all,” said William Dayhoff, head of the tips unit,
which is staffed around the clock by about two-dozen Bureau employees.
In most cases, after tips are assessed they are routed to FBI field
offices and local law enforcement agencies for follow-up.
Intensified efforts by foreign extremist groups to radicalize
individuals in the U.S.—and recent arrests of individuals apparently
heeding their call—raise the necessity for the public to send tips or
contact their local field office when something looks awry.
“We don’t want to wait for an incident,” said Jane Rhodes-Wolfe, of the
FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “The whole push is for us to identify
the next shooter or the next bomber who goes from troubled thoughts to
evil deeds.”
Dayhoff said the public shouldn’t worry about whether a tip contains
good or bad information. The most helpful tips, however, contain
context—the more information, the better. Sometimes it’s like a mosaic,
with different pieces coming from different places. In the case of the
Louisville school threat, the tip was submitted by an individual nearly
1,000 miles away. In the 48 hours after the Boston Marathon bombing in
2013, more than 50,000 tips were submitted to the FBI, half of those
through tips.fbi.gov. “It’s our job to put the pieces together,”
Dayhoff said.
Some of the most valuable tips come from people closest to
subjects—people who can see changes in mood and habits and can make a
common-sense assessment that things aren’t right.
Rhodes-Wolfe said she understands that it can be a very hard decision
for someone to contact the FBI. “We don’t take that lightly,” she said.
“But this is a way you can help family members or friends, and
potentially save lives.”
|
|
|
|
