Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Our folks at the FBI and at DOJ are working their tails off every day to protect our nation's companies, our universities, our computer networks, and our ideas and innovation.
All too often, vital electronic evidence has been made unavailable through encryption that doesn't allow for execution of legal process including court-approved search warrants.
Where protection of certain sensitive information is well-founded, I remain committed to upholding the laws and longstanding policies governing classification and public release.
The men and women of the FBI are deployed around the clock, all over our country and around the world, identifying and disrupting threats, and pursuing those who would do us harm.
It is the honor of a lifetime to serve as Director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general.
In everything we do, as long as I have anything to say about it, we're going to follow the facts independently, wherever they may lead, to whomever they may lead, no matter who likes it.
The Chinese government's not pulling any punches. They want what we have so they can get the upper hand on us. And they're highly strategic in their approach - they're playing the long game.
There's a clear distinction between activities that threaten the security and integrity of our election systems, and the broader threat from influence operations designed to influence voters.
I think it's important for the American people to be thoughtful consumers of information and to think about the sources of it and to think about the support and predication for what they hear.
Understanding the Chinese counterintelligence threat better will help us respond to it more effectively. China is taking a multi-faceted approach, so we've got to have a multi-faceted response.
Our mission is simple, but profound - to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. That mission hasn't changed, and it won't change, not as long as I have anything to say about it.
In pursuit of their commercial ambitions, Huawei relied on dishonest business practices that contradict the economic principles that have allowed American companies and the United States to thrive.
It takes an incredibly special person to be willing to put his or her life on the line for the community, and we owe it to our law enforcement heroes to do whatever we can to make their work safer.
I can tell you that there are lots of ways for people to express their views and their disagreements. For me, the idea of doing it through an anonymous op-ed is about the furthest thing from my mind.
When you can say, I get up in the morning to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution, it keeps people coming back. And I will stack our workforce up against anybody, anywhere, any day.
To be clear, we do not open investigations based on race, or ethnicity, or national origin. But when we open investigations into economic espionage, time and time again, they keep leading back to China.
It takes an incredibly special person to be willing to put his or her life on the line for a complete stranger. And to get up every morning, day after day after day, to do that, I think, is extraordinary.
The cyber threat has evolved dramatically since I left DOJ in 2005, partly just reflecting how much the digital world has itself evolved over that time. Back then, 'tweeting' was something only birds did.
As the threat to harm the United States and U.S. interests evolves, we must adapt and confront these challenges, relying heavily on the strength of our federal, state, local, and international partnerships.
Lack of lawful access certainly affects our ability to do our jobs, but we know where the harm really falls when evidence is kept unavailable - it falls on innocent people, the people we're sworn to protect.
We've created these Protected Voices videos to showcase the methods these adversaries might use, and to help campaigns practice good cyber hygiene, because the foundation of election security is cybersecurity.
As Americans, we should all be concerned by the potential for any company beholden to a foreign government - especially one that doesn't share our values - to burrow into the American telecommunications market.
I will say that one of the things that hackers, of all shapes and sizes, prize the most in this world is anonymity and stealth and deniability. And by indicting them publicly, among other things, we strip them of that.
Cybersecurity is a central part of the FBI's mission. It's one part of the broader safety net we try to provide the American people: not only safe data, safe personal information, but also safe communities, safe schools.
Cyber criminals often operate through online forums, selling illicit goods and services, including tools that lower the barrier to entry for aspiring criminals and that can be used to facilitate malicious cyber activity.
The prosperity that drives our economic security is inherently linked to our national security. And the immense influence that the Chinese government holds over Chinese corporations like Huawei represents a threat to both.
Every officer, every deputy, every agent we lose is one too many. It's a loss to our organizations, of course, it's a loss to our community, and most importantly, it's a devastating loss to the loved ones they leave behind.
Whether core al Qaeda or its offshoots like AQAP, ISIS, or the many others - we are working with our partners to find and disrupt them, wherever they are, whether they're plotting attacks on Americans here at home or abroad.
There's no shortage of opinions about our agency, just like every other agency up here - and just like the Congress. I'd encourage our folks not to get too hung up on what I consider to be the noise on TV and in social media.
The FBI that I see is people, decent people, committed to the highest principles of dignity and professionalism and respect... Now do we make mistakes? You bet we make mistakes, just like everybody who's human makes mistakes.
We need to coordinate closely with international partners, right down to tightly-coordinated execution of seizures, searches, and arrests, so that instead of capturing a single criminal, we're taking down an entire enterprise.
The inability to access evidence or intelligence despite the lawful authority to do so significantly impacts the FBI's ability to identify, investigate, prosecute, or otherwise deter criminals, terrorists, and other offenders.
I would argue that in the cyber arena, the need for private sector partnership is higher than really anywhere else of any program we have. So, the reality is we couldn't do what we do without the private sector, and vice versa.
We are vested with significant authorities, and it is our obligation as public servants to ensure that these authorities are exercised with objectivity and integrity. Anything less falls short of the FBI's duty to the American people.
As a profession, we face unlimited threats with limited resources. We face a lack of trust in some of the communities we serve. We face a whole lot of second guessing and criticism about the work we're doing and the way we're doing it.
My view is that, if any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation-state or anybody acting on behalf of a nation-state about influencing or interfering with our election, then that is something that the FBI would want to know about.
When law enforcement fails to fulfill its most basic duty to protect and serve its citizens, particularly members of a minority community, it not only tarnishes the badge we all wear, but erodes the trust that we in law enforcement have worked so hard to build.
Terrorists in ungoverned spaces - both physical and cyber - readily disseminate propaganda and training materials to attract easily influenced individuals around the world to their cause. They motivate these individuals to act at home or encourage them to travel.
The FBI is engaged in a myriad of efforts to combat cyber threats, from improving threat identification and information sharing inside and outside of the government to developing and retaining new talent, to examining the way we operate to disrupt and defeat these threats.
Criminal and terrorist threats are morphing beyond traditional actors and tactics. We still have to worry about things like an al-Qaida cell plotting a large-scale attack, but we also now have to worry increasingly about homegrown violent extremists radicalizing in the shadows.
Every time I attend an FBI graduation for new agents or new analysts at Quantico, a significant number of those graduates are former state and local officers, and I have the privilege of shaking their hands, presenting them with their credentials, and welcoming them to the FBI family.
Given our law enforcement authorities, our central role in the Intelligence Community, and the span of our responsibilities - from counterterrorism to counterintelligence to criminal investigations - we're particularly well-positioned to address cyber threats to our national security.
If you think about the average person and their interaction with law enforcement, their whole perspective on who we are and what we stand for - our brand, if you will - might be defined by just one interaction or encounter, a traffic stop, a visit to a school, or a response to a call for help.
The FBI's mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. To carry out that mission, we're entrusted with a lot of authority, so our actions are subject to close oversight - from the courts, from our elected leaders, and from independent entities like the inspector general.
Some people are skeptical about the value of indictments where a foreign nation-state actor is involved. But in the case of APT10, the indictments marked an important step in publicly exposing China's continued practice of stealing intellectual property to give Chinese firms an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
9/11 was a gamechanger in so many terrible ways, not just for the United States and for our own national security apparatus but for the whole world. And those attacks blew apart any notion of separation between foreign and domestic threats, any notion that such attacks only happen to other people in other countries.
ISIS uses traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its ideology. With the broad distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable persons of all ages in the U.S. either to travel to foreign lands or to conduct an attack on the homeland.
China has national security laws that compel Chinese companies to provide the government with information and access at their government's request. And virtually all Chinese companies of any size are required to have Communist Party 'cells' inside them, to make sure the companies stay in line with the party's principles and policies.
My view is that the cyber threat is bigger than any one government agency - or even the government itself. But the FBI brings a rare combination of scope and scale, experience, and tools to the mix. We investigate criminal activity like intrusions and cyber attacks, but we also investigate national security threats like foreign influence.
Our adversaries - terrorists, foreign intelligence services, and criminals - take advantage of modern technology to hide their communications; recruit followers; and plan, conduct, and encourage espionage, cyber attacks, or terrorism to disperse information on different methods to attack the U.S. homeland and to facilitate other illegal activities.