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Federal Bureau of Investigation
Fifteen Years
After 9/11: Threats to the Homeland
James B. Comey, Director
September 27, 2016
Statement Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs: Good afternoon Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Carper, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you today to discuss the current threats to the homeland
and our efforts to address new challenges. As the threat to harm
Western interests evolves, we must adapt and confront the challenges,
relying heavily on the strength of our federal, state, local, and
international partnerships. Our successes depend on interagency
cooperation; among those partners with me today are the Department of
Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center, with whom
we work to address current and emerging threats.
Counterterrorism
Preventing terrorist attacks remains the FBI’s top priority. The
terrorist threat against the United States remains persistent and
acute. The threats posed by foreign fighters, including those recruited
from the U.S., traveling to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) and from homegrown violent extremists are extremely
dynamic. The tragic events in New York and New Jersey as well as in
Orlando last June are a somber reminder of this threat. The FBI is
leading a federal terrorism investigation with the assistance of our
state, local, and federal partners. The ongoing investigation has
developed strong indications of radicalization by this killer, but
further investigation is needed to determine if this attack was
inspired by a foreign terrorist organization. We are spending a
tremendous amount of time trying to understand every moment of the
killer’s path, to understand his motives, and to understand the details
of his life. We will continue to look forward in this investigation,
and backward. Our work is very challenging. We are looking for needles
in a nationwide haystack, but we are also called upon to figure out
which pieces of hay might someday become needles. That is hard work and
the particular challenge of identifying homegrown violent extremists.
These threats remain the highest priority and create the most serious
challenges for the FBI, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and our
foreign, state, and local partners. ISIL is relentless and ruthless in
its pursuits to terrorize individuals in Syria and Iraq, including
Westerners. We continue to identify individuals who seek to join the
ranks of foreign fighters traveling in support of ISIL, and also
homegrown violent extremists who may aspire to attack the United States
from within. In addition, we are confronting an explosion of terrorist
propaganda and training available via the Internet and social
networking media. Due to online recruitment and indoctrination, foreign
terrorist organizations are no longer dependent on finding ways to get
terrorist operatives into the U.S. to recruit and carry out acts.
Terrorists in ungoverned spaces—both physical and cyber—readily
disseminate poisoned propaganda and training materials to attract
easily influenced individuals around the world to their cause. They
encourage these individuals to travel, but if they cannot travel, they
motivate them to act at home. This is a significant change and
transformation from the terrorist threat our nation faced a decade ago.
ISIL’s widespread reach through the Internet and social media is most
concerning, as the group has proven dangerously competent at employing
such tools for its nefarious strategy. ISIL uses high-quality,
traditional media platforms, as well as widespread social media
campaigns to propagate its extremist ideology. Recently released
propaganda has included various English language publications
circulated via social media.
Social media also helps groups such as ISIL to spot and assess
potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of
social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable persons of all ages in
the United States—spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize—either to
travel or to conduct a homeland attack. The foreign terrorist now has
direct access into the United States like never before.
Unlike other groups, ISIL has constructed a narrative that touches on
all facets of life from career opportunities to family life to a sense
of community. The message isn't tailored solely to those who are
overtly expressing symptoms of radicalization. It is seen by many who
click through the Internet every day, receive social media push
notifications, and participate in social networks. Ultimately, many of
these individuals are seeking a sense of belonging. Echoing other
terrorist groups, ISIL has advocated for lone offender attacks in
Western countries. Recent ISIL videos and propaganda specifically
advocate for attacks against soldiers, law enforcement, and
intelligence community personnel. Several incidents have occurred in
the United States, Canada, and Europe that indicate this “call to arms”
has resonated among ISIL supporters and sympathizers.
Some of these conversations occur in publicly accessed social
networking sites, but others take place via private messaging
platforms. These encrypted direct messaging platforms are tremendously
problematic when used by terrorist plotters. We have always respected
the fundamental right of people to engage in private communications,
regardless of the medium or technology. Whether it is instant messages,
texts, or old-fashioned letters, citizens have the right to communicate
with one another in private without unauthorized government
surveillance not simply because the Constitution demands it, but
because the free flow of information is vital to a thriving democracy.
The benefits of our increasingly digital lives, however, have been
accompanied by new dangers, and we have been forced to consider how
criminals and terrorists might use advances in technology to their
advantage. Investigating and prosecuting these offenders is a core
responsibility and priority of the Department of Justice. As national
security and criminal threats continue to evolve, the Department has
worked hard to stay ahead of changing threats and changing technology.
We must ensure both the fundamental right of people to engage in
private communications as well as the protection of the public. The
more we as a society rely on electronic devices to communicate and
store information, the more likely it is that information that was once
found in filing cabinets, letters, and photo albums will now be stored
only in electronic form. When changes in technology hinder law
enforcement`s ability to exercise investigative tools and follow
critical leads, we may not be able to identify and stop terrorists who
are using social media to recruit, plan, and execute an attack in our
country.
We are seeing more and more cases where we believe significant evidence
resides on a phone, a tablet, or a laptop evidence that may be the
difference between an offender being convicted or acquitted. If we
cannot access this evidence, it will have ongoing, significant impacts
on our ability to identify, stop, and prosecute these offenders.
The FBI is using all lawful investigative techniques and methods to
combat these terrorist threats to the United States, including both
physical and electronic surveillance. Physical surveillance is a
critical and essential tool in detecting, disrupting, and preventing
acts of terrorism, as well as gathering intelligence on those who are
capable of doing harm to the nation. Along with our domestic and
foreign partners, we are collecting and analyzing intelligence about
the ongoing threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations and
homegrown violent extremists. We continue to encourage information
sharing; in partnership with our many federal, state, local, and tribal
agencies assigned to Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country, we
remain vigilant to ensure the safety of the American public. Be
assured, the FBI continues to pursue increased efficiencies and
information-sharing processes as well as pursue technological and other
methods to help stay ahead of threats to the homeland.
Intelligence
Integrating intelligence and operations is part of the broader
intelligence transformation the FBI has undertaken in the last decade.
We are making progress, but have more work to do. We have taken two
steps to improve this integration. First, we have established an
Intelligence Branch within the FBI headed by an executive assistant
director (EAD). The EAD looks across the entire enterprise and drives
integration. Second, we now have special agents and new intelligence
analysts at the FBI Academy engaged in practical training exercises and
taking core courses together. As a result, they are better prepared to
work well together in the field. Our goal every day is to get better at
using, collecting and sharing intelligence to better understand and
defeat our adversaries.
The FBI cannot be content to just work what is directly in front of us.
We must also be able to understand the threats we face at home and
abroad and how those threats may be connected. Toward that end,
intelligence is gathered, consistent with our authorities, to help us
understand and prioritize identified threats and to determine where
there are gaps in what we know about these threats. We then seek to
fill those gaps and learn as much as we can about the threats we are
addressing and others on the threat landscape. We do this for national
security and criminal threats, on both a national and local field
office level. We then compare the national and local perspectives to
organize threats into priority for each of the FBI’s 56 field offices.
By categorizing threats in this way, we strive to place the greatest
focus on the gravest threats we face. This gives us a better assessment
of what the dangers are, what’s being done about them, and where we
should prioritize our resources.
Cyber
Virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI
faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber
threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber
syndicates, and terrorists. On a daily basis, cyber-based actors seek
our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our
ideas—things of incredible value to all of us and of great importance
to the conduct of our government business and our national security.
They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.
The pervasiveness of the cyber threat is such that the FBI and other
intelligence, military, homeland security, and law enforcement agencies
across the government view cyber security and cyber-attacks as a top
priority. Within the FBI, we are targeting the most dangerous malicious
cyber activity: high-level intrusions by state-sponsored hackers and
global cyber syndicates, and the most prolific botnets. We need to be
able to move from reacting to such attacks after the fact to
operationally preventing such attacks. That is a significant challenge,
but one we embrace. As the committee is well aware, the frequency and
impact of cyber-attacks on our nation’s private sector and government
networks have increased dramatically in the past decade and are
expected to continue to grow.
We continue to see an increase in the scale and scope of reporting on
malicious cyber activity that can be measured by the amount of
corporate data stolen or deleted, personally identifiable information
compromised, or remediation costs incurred by U.S. victims. For
example, as the committee is aware, the Office of Personnel Management
(OPM) discovered last year that a number of its systems were
compromised. These systems included those that contain information
related to the background investigations of current, former, and
prospective federal government employees, as well as other individuals
for whom a federal background investigation was conducted. The FBI is
working with our interagency partners to investigate this matter.
Another growing threat to businesses and individuals alike is
ransomware. Last year alone, there was a reported loss of more than $24
million. The FBI works closely with the private sector so that
companies may make informed decisions in response to malware attacks.
Companies can prevent and mitigate malware infection by utilizing
appropriate back-up and malware detection and prevention systems, and
training employees to be skeptical of e-mails, attachments, and
websites they don’t recognize. The FBI does not condone payment of
ransom, as payment of extortion monies may encourage continued criminal
activity, lead to other victimizations, or be used to facilitate
serious crimes.
The FBI is engaged in a myriad of efforts to combat cyber threats, from
efforts focused on threat identification and sharing inside and outside
of government, to our internal emphasis on developing and retaining new
talent and changing the way we operate to evolve with the cyber threat.
We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems
seriously and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those
who pose a threat in cyber space.
Finally, the strength of any organization is its people. The threats we
face as a nation have never been greater or more diverse and the
expectations placed on the Bureau have never been higher. Our fellow
citizens look to us to protect the United States from all of those
threats and the men and women of the Bureau continue to meet and exceed
those expectations, every day. I want to thank them for their
dedication and their service.
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Carper, and committee members, I thank
you for the opportunity to testify concerning the threats to the
Homeland. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
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