i guess my first question is to director michael steinbach. this is just a microcosim of the conspiracy and threat on the internet we are looking at. how many potential recruiters do you think we have sitting in syria, and somalia and northern africa actively recruiting acts of terrorism globally? >> that is a good question, sir. i think you could refer to the brookings institute study on terrorist use of social media in particular twitter and it gives you an idea. when you look at the volume of social media and its availability to spread horizontally you are looking at a couple thousand core uses and probably in the area of 50,000 individuals retweeting that message and upwards of 200,000 say for instance republicceiving the message. that is the pool to start and that is ballpark numbers. social media is a great tool for the public but allow for the horizontal distribution that is difficult to follow. that is the baseline numbers we start with. >> so you said it has been reported as many as 200,000 pro-isis tweets per day occur on the interne

i guess my first question is to director michael steinbach. this is just a microcosim of the conspiracy and threat on the internet we are looking at. how many potential recruiters do you think we have sitting in syria, and somalia and northern africa actively recruiting acts of terrorism globally? >> that is a good question, sir. i think you could refer to the brookings institute study on terrorist use of social media in particular twitter and it gives you an idea. when you look at the volume of social media and its availability to spread horizontally you are looking at a couple thousand core uses, and probably in the area of 50,000 individuals retweeting that message and upwards of 200,000 say for instance republicceiving the message. that is the pool to start and that is ballpark numbers. social media is a great tool for the public but allow for the horizontal distribution that is difficult to follow. that is the baseline numbers we start with. >> so you said it has been reported as many as 200,000 pro-isis tweets per day occur on the intern

representative thompson: michael steinbach, you went into great detail about the challenge of social media and other things. do you see the challenges or the do you see the challenges or the resources do you job? director steinbach: i don't feel we have a resource issue. we did an effective job working the state and locals to focus the target set. we have to prioritize resources but the challenge for me is the technological challenge to get over that hurdle. representative thompson: when you say “technological,” well will you explain that a little bit for me please? director steinbach: when a social media company elects to build in their software encryption and leaves no ability for even the company to access the content, we don't have the means by which to see the content. when we intercept it, it is encrypted communication. so that is the challenge working with the companies to build solutions and prevent encryption above all us. representative thompson: there is nothing from a congressional standpoint authority you need from us to make that happen? director steinbach: well, i think

you saw what happened in boston and the assistant director for fbi counterterrorism michael steinbachtified before your committee. he says upwards of 200,000 individuals are receiving, as you described, extremist messages online sent out by these isis terror prop gandists. so what's the current strategy to destroy this type of propaganda that's targeting the united states? >> that's a great question. you're right. there are about on average 200,000 isis-related tweets per day going out into the united states. and there are thousands of followers receiving these messages directives calls to arm to take up arms against our military, our law enforcement and government personnel. i think the fbi and homeland has done so far a phenomenal job stopping this from happening by monitoring some of these communications. and that's either through public domain space or through other means of surveillance through a court order which they did in this case, the particular case the boston case. the question again i think arises when the communications go beyond that public domain beyond what we can se

. >>> now that is michael steinbach and, he's the assistant director. so, he has spent his life in this, and he said that the f.b.i. is very aware of it, as they called it the dark space and, that they are looking deeper into this problem. >>> dark space dark web. so john there was any discussion of anything that can be done to help authority access information on this dark space? >>> well, it came from steinbeck himself he said they need to go to the -- >>> not real amass policing exercise. and go to the court with evidence with probable cause and, get the court to sign off on their case and then approach the service providers and get them to give them the information that they need and give it to them quickly, the problem is, that informs is encrypted and when they get it, its encrypted so, they have to work out the encryption. >>> the white house weighed on this and josh put them on notice be that has to change. >>> those individual he do not want to be in a situation where their technology is responsible for allowing somebody who is seeking to carry

bill: that's michael steinbach. he says though the f.b.i.e suspects in all 50 states it's becoming harder to monitor because of social media. senator, this is a moving target is it not? >> it is. we have the metastasissization of jihad around the globe. bill: the nsa surveillance program, 65% of americans believe that program prevented a terrorist attack. what did you think when you saw that number? >> i think the american people understand we face a decade-long fight and need an intelligence community armed with a tool. it makes it more difficult for americans to protect funding amountal freedoms. i think the world is clearly a more dangerous place than it was and some of the lead-in you had about social media takes it possible for i wouldn't call it command and control for if the foreign fight officers flocking to syria and iraq, they are urging people to stay at home and plan attacks here. bill: you think the house screwed this up? >> we need sufficient tools for the intelligence community to protect us in the age of jihad. this agency do

michael steinbach who is appointed fbi director by james comby as the assistant director of the counterterrorismision in july of 2014. prior to assuming his current position, he serves as deputy, assistant director of the counterterrorism division, and the acting section chief of the fbi's international terrorism operations center. i want to thank all of you for being here today. the chair now recognizes deputy director mulligan to testify. >> thank you chairman mccaul, members of the committee i greatly appreciate the opportunity to discuss some of the recent events of interest to the committee and the growing threat of extremist use of social media to national security. i'm pleased to join my colleagues from homeland security and the federal bureau of investigation as you already know, we work closely every day as part of the counterterrorism community, and that inner agency partnership is one of the keystones of our homeland defense. this morning,ly speak briefly to you about the recent attempted attack in garland, texas, and the role of violent extremists social media in that event. thenally

the problem i have is that michael steinbach is the assistant director of the fbi testified before my committee that we have no way -- we don't have databases on these individuals so we can't properly vet them past databases to know who they are, to know where they came from, to know what threat they pose. because we don't have the data to cross-reference them. and the fbi -- as has homeland security privately, and i think what you're seeing in the administration is a split between the state department which is you know john kerry and homeland security and fbi on the other hand saying this is a really bad idea from a security standpoint. we even had two iraqis we brought with all the intelligence we had in iraq we had two guys that came in that were making bonds in iraq to kill our guys that were a threat to the united states when they came in. in syria if we don't have any intelligence footprint or capability, we have no way to know who these people are. so i think bringing them in is a serious mistake. we brought in 700 of them already. we're slated to bring in 1,000 more by the end