News / Military
By Howard Altman / Tampa Bay Times / May 26, 2016
TAMPA — FBI director James Comey told a gathering of international commandos and defense industry leaders Wednesday that they must continually adapt to evolving threats from the Middle East.
Where al-Qaida fighters focused on long-term planning for large-scale attacks, for instance, the Islamic State has a more opportunist and constant approach: “Come or kill.”
That is, come join us in establishing a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, or fight where you are now, Comey said. Military and law enforcement targets are highly prized in particular.
“If you can’t travel, kill someone where you are,” Comey said, summarizing his view of the Islamic State approach.
Comey offered his assessment as the keynote speaker at the annual gala dinner for the Special Operations Forces Industries Conference at the Tampa Waterside Marriott. The conference was co-sponsored by U.S. Special Operations Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base.
In the 20-minute address, he spoke of successes in stemming the reach of the Islamic State and the challenges moving forward.
He offered some optimism that the Islamic State may be losing its recruiting appeal. He said intelligence suggests fewer people are leaving the United States to join the Islamic State.
For a time, he said, anywhere from six to 10 people per month would attempt to travel from the United States to join the group.
“Something happened in the summer of 2015. It dropped to one a month,” he said. “It could be that the brand has lost the traction . . . or the great work of our Special Forces colleagues have hampered their operations so that they’re no longer so effective at attracting people.
At the same time, use of social message and electronic devices to attract recruits, continues to present challenges.
He estimated that in the first six months of the fiscal year the FBI has received about 4,000 requests from law enforcement agencies with court orders seeking to access devices locked through encryption. He said that, because of increasingly strong encryption, the agency couldn’t access information from 500 of those devices.
Comey said he expects the number of devices whose encryption cannot be cracked to grow, which will necessitate an ongoing “mature” debate over how to balance protecting privacy and public safety.
“We have a problem,” he said. “The problem I believe represents a collision of values.”
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