Fox News reports exclusively obtaining a bulletin from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and National Counterterrorism Center warning of an extremely high volume of terrorist “chatter” on pro-ISIS social media. There is so much activity that our intelligence agencies are having a hard time keeping up with it all… and a great deal of the social media noise is coming from within our borders.
“The large number of social media postings by US-based ISIL supporters is challenging for investigators in differentiating those supporters focused only on promoting pro-ISIL rhetoric, which may be protected speech, [versus] detecting those prepared to engage in violence on the group’s behalf,” the bulletin advised according to Fox News.
The agencies also warned that ISIS was making very effective use of social media in its recruiting efforts, connecting with “hundreds, possibly thousands” of potential recruits and “lone wolf” jihadis within the United States.
ISIS is said to be using the Internet in “unprecedented ways” to call for attacks on American soil – a disturbing idea the Fox report does not detail any further, and unfortunately the network has only posted the first page of the bulletin. The same language was used by FBI Director James Comey in early May, after the Islamist attack in Garland, Texas; on that occasion, the “unprecedented” evil innovation he had in mind involved ISIS sending messages directly to the “smartphones of ‘disturbed people’ who could be pushed to launch assaults on the U.S.,” as USA Today reported.
It would appear that some portions of the bulletin Fox News obtained repeat statements made by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the wake of the Garland attack, which appears to have been taken as a very serious wake-up call by the counter-terrorism community. The essential new content of this bulletin is the overwhelming volume of pro-ISIS online activity they are monitoring.
Perhaps some of the traffic is a smokescreen deliberately created by the terror state and its sympathizers, who have doubtless become well aware of law enforcement’s reliance on using social media to detect persons of interest – virtually every terror-bust story, from every part of the Western world, mentions that police were alerted to a dangerous individual by radical Facebook and Twitter postings, or discovered such activity while building a case against a suspect.
Fox News says the bulletin mentions no specific, “credible” threat… but emphasizes that the concept of “credible” threats has become “less and less relevant,” in the words of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, because individual “lone wolf” jihadis have lately been acting with very little advance warning.
At any rate, the FBI, DHS, and National Counterterrorism Center say they are “aware of recent information suggesting U.S. military bases, locations, and events could be targeted in the near-term.”