Intelligence officials use ‘lone wolf’ terrorists to justify calls for more spying power

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday that Americans should be more worried about “lone wolf” extremists in the homeland than organized terror as he called for changes that would make it easier for the government to keep tabs on individuals.

Clapper told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that intelligence officials are having a tough time detecting radicalization in individuals throughout the country because of “declining” effectiveness of the tools they use to ferret out possible lone wolf threats.

“This is a very serious problem for us, particularly in light of the growing use of encryption,” Clapper said. “When an overseas recruiter gets a promising prospect here in the United States on the line and then directs them to go to an encryption system, and then we kind of lose the continuity.”

Clapper’s remarks are the latest in a growing government campaign to encourage tech companies to provide backdoors in their data encryption for use by U.S. law enforcement.

On numerous occasions, FBI Director James Comey has also referenced increased danger of lone wolf attacks in the U.S. because of communication technology advances.

“From a homeland perspective, it is ISIL’s widespread reach through the Internet and social media which is most concerning as ISIL has aggressively employed this technology for its nefarious strategy,” he recently told the Senate. “ISIL blends traditional media platforms, glossy photos, in-depth articles and social media campaigns that can go viral in a matter of seconds. No matter the format, the message of radicalization spreads faster than we imagined just a few years ago.”

As terrorists are getting more tech savvy, Comey has claimed, the FBI is “going dark” because of encryption advances.

The only answer, according to the intelligence community, is providing the government with unfettered access to private communications data and trusting that it won’t be abused.

Meanwhile, a new U.N. Human Rights Committee review gave the U.S. government a “not satisfactory” mark for its track record of protecting privacy and civil liberties.

Via The Intercept:

In particular, the committee noted that the U.S. government failed to establish an adequate oversight system to make sure privacy rights are being upheld, and failed to make sure that any breaches of privacy were regulated and authorized by strict law, such as requiring a warrant. The lowest grade reflected the U.S.’s failure to “Ensure affected persons have access to effective remedies in cases of abuse.”

The committee also expressed dismay at the U.S.’s failure to “Establish the responsibility of those who provided legal pretexts for manifestly illegal behaviour.”

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