{"id":912,"date":"2016-05-12T03:49:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T03:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/?p=912"},"modified":"2024-12-23T07:43:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T07:43:38","slug":"american-isis-recruits-down-but-encryption-is-helping-terroristsonline-efforts-says-fbi-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/american-isis-recruits-down-but-encryption-is-helping-terroristsonline-efforts-says-fbi-director-912\/","title":{"rendered":"American ISIS Recruits Down, but Encryption Is Helping Terrorists’Online Efforts, Says FBI Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"American<\/a><\/p>\n

The number of Americans traveling to the Middle East to fight alongside Islamic State has dropped, but the terrorist group\u2019s efforts to radicalize people online is getting a major boost from encryption technology, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Since August, just one American a month has traveled or attempted to travel to the Middle East to join the group, compared with around six to 10 a month in the preceding year and a half, Mr. Comey told reporters in a round table meeting at FBI headquarters.<\/p>\n

However, federal authorities have their hands full trying to counter Islamic State\u2019s social media appeal. Of around 1,000 open FBI investigations into people who may have been radicalized across the U.S., about 80% are related to Islamic State, Mr. Comey said.<\/p>\n

The increasing use of encrypted communications is complicating law enforcement\u2019s efforts to protect national security, said Mr. Comey, calling the technology a \u201chuge feature of terrorist tradecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI director cited Facebook Inc.\u2019s WhatsApp texting service, which last month launched end-to-end encryption in which only the sender and receiver are able to read the contents of messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatsApp has over a billion customers\u2014overwhelmingly good people but in that billion customers are terrorists and criminals,\u201d Mr. Comey said. He predicted an inevitable \u201ccollision\u201d between law enforcement and technology companies offering such services.<\/p>\n

Silicon Valley leaders argue that stronger encryption is necessary to protect consumers from a variety of threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we recognize the important work of law enforcement in keeping people safe, efforts to weaken encryption risk exposing people\u2019s information to abuse from cybercriminals, hackers and rogue states,\u201d WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum wrote last month in a blog post accompanying the rollout of the stronger encryption technology. The company Wednesday declined to comment on Mr. Comey\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

The FBI also continues to face major challenges in unlocking phones used by criminals including terrorists, Mr. Comey said. Investigators have been unable to unlock around 500 of the 4,000 or so devices the FBI has examined in the first six month of this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect that number just to grow as the prevalence of the technology grows with newer models,\u201d Mr. Comey added.<\/p>\n

A terrorist\u2019s locked iPhone recently sparked a high-stakes legal battle between the Justice Department and Apple Inc.
\nAfter Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife killed 14 people and wounded 22 in a December shooting rampage in San Bernardino, Calif., FBI agents couldn\u2019t unlock the phone of Mr. Farook\u2014who, along with his wife, was killed later that day in a shootout with police.<\/p>\n

The government tried to force Apple to write software to open the device, but the technology company resisted, saying that such an action could compromise the security of millions of other phones.<\/p>\n

That court case came to an abrupt end in March, when the FBI said it no longer needed Apple\u2019s help because an unidentified third party had shown it a way to bypass the phone\u2019s security features.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of Americans traveling to the Middle East to fight alongside Islamic State has dropped, but the terrorist group\u2019s efforts to radicalize people online is getting a major boost from encryption technology, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday. Since August, just one American a month has traveled or attempted to travel to the Middle … Continue reading American ISIS Recruits Down, but Encryption Is Helping Terrorists’Online Efforts, Says FBI Director<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,88,29],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software-updates","tag-encryption","tag-fbi","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":914,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions\/914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}