The horrific images on television are jarring -- foreign suicide bombers detonating themselves in crowded marketplaces; masked gunmen killing tourists at overseas resorts.But the tentacles of terrorism can -- and do -- reach us in Minnesota and the rest of the United States.
According to the FBI, terrorists are recruiting, plotting and scheming anonymously online. They hack into computer systems. They post videos on how to build everything from backpack bombs to bio-weapons.
FBI Director Robert Mueller recently said the threat of cyber terror is "real and rapidly expanding," including the rise of extremist websites that recruit, radicalize and incite violence.
Terrorists have yet to launch a full-scale cyber strike. But they have caused problems, including defacing the website of the U.S. Congress after President Obama's State of the Union address.
Ralph Boelter, special agent in charge of the FBI's Minneapolis office, knows the threat. Some of the 20 or so Minnesota men who joined with terrorists in their Somali homeland were enticed through cyberspace.
So the FBI is fighting high-tech fire with high-tech fire, officials said, including:
•Cyber squads in each FBI field office nationwide, with more than 1,000 specially trained agents and analysts who run undercover operations, share intelligence with law enforcement and provide training to counterparts around the world.
•Mobile Cyber Action Teams, highly trained groups of agents, analysts and experts in computer forensics and malicious code that travel the world to respond to fast-moving cyber threats.
Boelter said the FBI must evolve to combat threats that now are all around us. A person could be recruited to attack the United States from their personal computer in Minneapolis.
"We've got to be on our game all the time," he said. "If we're not, and something we should have known gets through, we'll have to answer for that."
James Walsh • 612-673-7428
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