San Bernardino Shooters Posted Support For Jihad In Private Messages — FBI Director

Comey said the group has perfected the use of social media, and Twitter in particular, to contact potential followers in the United States and elsewhere.

Comey previously testified that in the messages the Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to recover in the days after the attack, the couple was talking to each other about extremism, but today marked the director’s first reference to the messages being private. Comey suggested reports to the contrary are “garble”.

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He also said authorities believe Mohammed Abdulazeez, the suspect in July’s fatal shooting of four U.S. Marines and a Navy sailor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was radicalized by militant propaganda.

Eric Snowden may scoff at this point, but Comey said Wednesday, “We don’t intercept the communications of Americans…without predication, without probable cause or belief that they are involved in terrorism or serious criminal activity”, he said. Comey also dismissed widespread reports in the immediate aftermath of the couple’s attack on the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino that Malik had posted statements of support for Islamic State terrorists on Facebook prior to the shootings.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas echoed those complaints during the Republican presidential debate Tuesday night in Las Vegas. Afterward, Islamic State leaders praised the couple as “martyrs” but did not claim any involvement in the plot.

They said the husband and wife were ultimately buried in a cemetery far from San Bernardino, after a closer facility refused to take the bodies because of fears the graves would be desecrated. “And our work is ongoing there”. He reportedly told investigators that Farook had been planning an attack a few years ago, but got spooked due to terror related arrests in Southern California.

Comey reiterated a push by many law enforcement agencies around the country to change how technology companies encrypt applications to make it easier for agents to access messages with a court order.

“We’re not combing through their emails”, Comey said. He said, “I think that’s the way we want it”.

“Twitter works as a way to sell books, as a way to promote movies, and it works as a way to crowdsource terrorism, to sell murder, ” he said.