Michael McCaul Quotes

The threat is real, and it comes from the Internet. This is a new generation of terrorist. This is not Bin Laden in caves with couriers anymore. This is what the new threat of terrorism looks like.

The Internet, one of the great inventions of the modern Western world, has shown itself to be a weapon that can be used to incite and train those who wish to cause harm to that world.

Further, the next generation of terrorists will grow up in a digital world, with ever more powerful and easy-to-use hacking tools at their disposal.

Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed.

Twitter is providing a communication device, a loudspeaker for ISIS. If you are promoting violence and a call to violence. If you are promoting violence and a call to violence, you are providing material support. Twitter should be part of the solution. If not, they are part of the problem.

The Internet has made it easier for those who want to attack the American way of life to identify like-minded individuals to carry out their terroristic plans

Law enforcement has seen an unprecedented use of social media by ISIL. They're just kind of flooding the airwaves.

Social media has allowed groups, such as ISIL, to use the Internet to spot and assess potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States - spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize - either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack.

I think the forms of terrorism are becoming very diverse, amongst them cyber-terrorism, for example.

This is the new wave, the new generation of terrorism. It's gone viral. It's very dangerous, and it's very hard to stop.

Social media serve as the propaganda machine of 21st century terror, and this is apparent in the Middle East.

Social media is not only the most important tool for inciting terrorists, it can also be an effective weapon against them.

Part of this new world of completely improvisational terrorism is that there were codes of war that disintegrated in the face of terrorism.

ISIL's widespread reach through the Internet and social media is most concerning, as the group has proven dangerously competent at employing such tools for its nefarious strategy. ISIL uses high-quality, traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its extremist ideology.

An element of virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists.

I think a cyber-terrorism attack is overblown, though the threat exists. I think al Qaeda and other groups are more interested in symbolic terrorism, like what they did to the World Trade Center - suicide bombers or something that really has an effect and is meaningful to people.

The benefits of our increasingly digital lives have been accompanied by new dangers, and we have been forced to consider how criminals and terrorists might use advances in technology to their advantage.

As a communication medium, social media is a critical tool for terror groups to exploit.

While the vast majority of hackers may be disinclined towards violence, it would only take a few to turn cyber terrorism into reality.

You can’t blame the message on the medium, not exactly. But maybe, all things considered, arming everyone with pocket supercomputers, and then filtering most of human experience through social-media feedback loops, wasn’t the greatest idea…however glorious modern communications may be, they’ve also empowered a cast of goons, crooks and jihadists to build audiences and influence world-wide.

Social media campaigns and the savviness of ISIS and propaganda is what greatly concerns us Homeland Security officials.

The Internet offers the ability for people to consume poison and radicalize entirely in private, either through a device they're holding in their hands or inside their house.

We obviously know that terrorist groups have become very reliant on social media.

It is a cause of grave concern that the cyber world is being exploited by terror groups such as DAESH or ISIS to radicalise the gullible youth of our country.

Foreign terrorists are using technology to radicalize Americans at a troubling pace that continues to increase.