“It’s ridiculous – embarrassing and ridiculous – that we can’t talk about crime in the same way, especially in the high-stakes incidents when your officers have to use force”.
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Comey, who testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs along with Nick Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said US investigators are aware of dozens of U.S.-based Islamic militant suspects who now are using encrypted communications.
This is not the first time Comey and other public officials have criticized the lack of data.
Comey’s evidence that this has accomplished anything is that there are comparatively few U.S. recruits to ISIS compared to nations in Western Europe, saying there were only 250 Americans compared to 700 Britons.
“It is unacceptable that the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper from the United Kingdom are becoming the lead source of information about violent encounters between [US] police and civilians”. A total of 891 deaths this year have been recorded by The Counted, a crowdsourced investigative project.
Comey called it “embarrassing” and “ridiculous” that up until very recently, officials had made no concerted effort to track the sort of violence that has inspired national protests and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It would be “possible” to tie federal funds to the reporting requirements, so that law enforcement agencies that failed to report their data wouldn’t have access to federal grants, he said.
But Comey’s most recent complaints may be his last.
“That wouldn’t be a Bureau thing; that might be a Congress enacts something that gives the attorney general that authority”, he added.
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“The program is understood to be already active, with a view to full implementation at the start of 2016”, reports the Guardian. Still, Comey said, the United States had “developed an effective way to touch all our databases” and gather information about the individuals.
