Islamic State has “revolutionized” terrorism by seeking to inspire small-scale individual attacks around the world through social media, encrypted communications and slickly produced propaganda, FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday. “Those communications are direct private messages”.
Advertisement
New York Senator Chuck Schumer said: “Had they checked out Tashfeen Malik, maybe those people in San Bernardino would be alive”. “I’ve seen some reporting on that, and that’s a garble”.
Comey said Islamic State has perfected the use of social media, and Twitter in particular, to contact potential followers in the United States and elsewhere.
James Comey spoke Wednesday at a New York City security initiative with private businesses.
Marquez, 24, legally purchased the rifles from an authorized gun dealer in 2011 and 2012, but there was no record of any transfer of the weapons from him to Syed Rizwan Farook or Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, according to federal sources familiar with the ongoing investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Comey had said earlier this month that the married couple, who killed 14 people at an office holiday gathering, were communicating online in late 2013 “about jihad and martyrdom”, exchanging messages that predated the rise of the Islamic State.
Earlier this week, State Department spokesman John Kirby acknowledged “it’s hard to say” what went wrong – and how – among USA security agencies that screen visa applications for signs of threats.
Advertisement
The group is based in Iraq and Syria, where it controls a large area of territory as it seeks to carve out a caliphate. Other reports, citing a Facebook source, had suggested that Malik posted support for ISIS from an alias account as the shooting was unfolding.
