CybersecurityCyberattacks more serious domestic threat to U.S. than terrorism: FBI

The heads of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) have declared cyber attacks as the most likely form of terrorism against the United States in the coming years.

Testifying in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, FBI director James Comey asserted that cyber attacks would be a more common form of terrorism. “That’s where the bad guys will go,” Comey said. “There are no safe neighborhoods. All of us are neighbors [online].”

The Guardian reports that the heads of all three agencies urged Congress to maintain controversial surveillance programs with only minimal change.

A devastating, 9/11-style attack is “more likely now to be overseas than it is in the homeland,” Rand Beers, the acting secretary of DHS, told the Senate panel, “but that is not to say we should drop our guard in any way.”

In hearings dedicated to updating the Senate on domestic threats, cybersecurity was the main concern. Cyber attacks on America’s digital infrastructure, including private sector and government networks, will come from individual actors as well as nation states.

Comey and Beers urged Congress to fashion new legislation that expands government access to private sector data, in order to address vulnerabilities in private sector networks. The Guardian notes that Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) was skeptical of the proposed bill, and insisted that such legislation should provide legal protection for companies which disclose proprietary or customer information to the government.

Congress passed legislation in 2008 to protect telecommunications companies and Internet providers from privacy lawsuits when they help the government conduct warrantless surveillance.