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At the Aspen Security Forum two weeks ago, James Comey (and others) explicitly talked about the "going dark" problem, describing the specific scenario they are concerned about. Maybe others have heard the scenario before, but it was a first for me. It centers around ISIL operatives abroad and ISIL-inspired terrorists here in the US. The FBI knows who the Americans are, can get a court order to carry out surveillance on their communications, but cannot eavesdrop on the conversations, because they are encrypted. They can get the metadata, so they know who is talking to who, but they can't find...

An ISIS Nest Grows in BostonPosted By Robert Spencer On September 24, 2014 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 12 Comments Boston’s WCVB.com reported Monday that “the federal government is targeting Boston and two other American cities to shut down what they are calling the U.S.-Jihad pipeline to ISIS in an attempt to stop Americans from joining the terrorist organization.” Boston apparently made this elite list because Ahmad Abousamra, “an American college graduate from Boston, who has been on the run from the FBI for years, is suspected of joining ISIS and leveraging his computer skills to spread...

Monday at the White House daily briefing press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed the reports that a senior administration official said this morning that some Americans fighting with ISIS have returned to the United States and are being closely monitored by the the FBI. Intelligence estimates puts the number of American citizens with valid passports fighting with ISIS at over a 100. This is the first time however the administration has confirmed reports that some are already back inside America

Every week brings new reports of Muslims in America flocking to join ISIS. Those who aren’t killed in battle will eventually return to New York, to Los Angeles and to Minneapolis–Saint Paul. And they will stop being Iraq’s problem and become our problem.ISIS is more than just another terrorist group. It is now an Islamic State. Its followers and allied militias pledge to obey the Caliph of ISIS and reject all allegiances to other states and entities. Western ISIS recruits burn their passports to show that they are no longer citizens of those countries.Like most Salafists, ISIS members see our...

But some American officials and terrorism experts said that the ominous words overstated the group’s ability to attack the United States and its interests abroad, and that ISIS could be undone by its own brutality and nihilism. “They have a lot of attributes that should scare us: money, people, weapons and a huge swath of territory,” said Andrew Liepman, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and former deputy head of the National Counterterrorism Center. “But when we’re surprised by a group, as we have been in this case, we tend to overreact."

Terrorism expert Brigitte Gabrielle seemed to confirm what many suspected and feared on Judge Jeanine’s show on Saturday night. She said that Homeland Security are monitoring suspected members of ISIS already in America, and they’re afraid that others might be coming in through our porous border.