"In the post-9/11 environment, the public has expected law enforcement to adopt a proactive
posture in order to disrupt terrorist plots before an attack occurs. Investigative leads about
terrorist plots in the homeland may originate from foreign intelligence sources. But, for the most
part, information about homegrown plots is available only through domestic intelligence
activities. In order to proactively gather intelligence, law enforcement has adopted a preventive
policing approach that focuses not just on crime that has occurred, but on the possibility that a
crime may be committed in the future.
In this context, a major challenge for law enforcement is gauging how quickly and at what point
individuals move from radicalized beliefs to violence so that a terrorist plot can be detected and
disrupted. At the federal level, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) have implemented a forward-leaning approach with a revision to the Attorney
General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations.2 The revision, meant to streamline the FBI’s
investigations and make them more proactive, has at its heart a new investigative tool,
assessments. These allow for the investigation of individuals or groups without factual
predication. The new guidelines have, however, generated some controversy among civil
libertarians.
Also critical among the proactive approaches employed by law enforcement is the monitoring of
Internet and social networking sites. The USA PATRIOT Act (P.L. 107-56) authorizes the FBI to
use National Security Letters to obtain a range of information including data pertaining to e-mail
and Internet use. It appears that U.S. law enforcement has effectively exploited the Internet—
which radicalizing individuals can mine for information and violent jihadists use while plotting—
in its pursuit of terrorists. A review of criminal complaints and indictments in terrorism cases
reveals that the FBI has exploited the Internet and/or e-mail communications to build cases
against defendants in at least 22 of the post-9/11 cases studied in this report. Although much is
said about terrorist use of the Internet for recruitment, training, and communications, these cases
suggest that terrorists and aspiring terrorists will not find the Internet to be a uniformly
permissive environment."
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