FBI: Thousands of Online Followers of ISIL inside US

FBI Director James Comey warned that there are “thousands” of online followers of ISIL terrorist group inside the United States, media reports said.

“We see a connection made, and then it disappears,” Comey said, adding that encrypted communications were in many cases impossible for them to break even with a court order, antiwar reported.

Comey said this amounted to a shift in the process of online radicalization, as where at one point would-be recruits had to go to considerable lengths to find anything, they now make contact on Twitter or Facebook, and are then steered to more secure forms of communication.

“It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying ‘kill, kill, kill,”’ Comey said in a meeting with reporters.

The FBI director’s comments come in the midst of a federal investigation into a foiled attack in Garland, Texas, involving two ISIL sympathizers, one of whom, Elton Simpson, was long known to federal authorities.