In recent years there has been a new threat developing within the United States. Before, it was mainly assessing threats from external forces. The new threat to be seen is that of lone wolves, and homegrown terrorists. The technical definition of a homegrown terrorist is, “violence that is perpetrated against people or property by their own citizens or permanent residents of a state under jurisdiction of that state in order to promote political, religious, or ideological objectives” (Buetel). Where the definition of a “lone wolf” is, “a terrorist (also called a "stray dog") is someone who commits violent acts in support of some group, movement, or ideology, but who does so alone, outside of any command structure and without material assistance
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A large surveillance act enacted by congress in 1979 was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (also known as FISA). It is a federal law that describes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence. It was initially meant for the collection of foreign intelligence information between foreign powers. After 9/11 it was amended to include a larger range of terrorist groups. There was also a very important amendment made in 2004, labeled the “Lone Wolf Amendment”. The purpose was to define such persons and make sure that these communications are …show more content…
Now in some cases that can be true. But in a vast majority of the cases, if there is nothing illegal to hide then there is nothing to worry about. The American citizens need to realize that they are fighting a force that is hiding within and one of the only ways to pluck these individuals from the crowd is keeping surveillance on their communication. Many of these homegrown terrorists from the United States are being recruited and radicalized over social media. This is also a trend seen in larger terrorist groups in the past few years. Terrorist groups are modernizing and are taking advantage of social media platforms. This is adapting their recruitment process and giving them a larger population to get ahold of. “People don’t have to take the risk of joining a group that may have been infiltrated by law enforcement, of traveling to join a group. They can just get online, and through a Facebook group or Twitter, they can get radicalized”
A large surveillance act enacted by congress in 1979 was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (also known as FISA). It is a federal law that describes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence. It was initially meant for the collection of foreign intelligence information between foreign powers. After 9/11 it was amended to include a larger range of terrorist groups. There was also a very important amendment made in 2004, labeled the “Lone Wolf Amendment”. The purpose was to define such persons and make sure that these communications are …show more content…
Now in some cases that can be true. But in a vast majority of the cases, if there is nothing illegal to hide then there is nothing to worry about. The American citizens need to realize that they are fighting a force that is hiding within and one of the only ways to pluck these individuals from the crowd is keeping surveillance on their communication. Many of these homegrown terrorists from the United States are being recruited and radicalized over social media. This is also a trend seen in larger terrorist groups in the past few years. Terrorist groups are modernizing and are taking advantage of social media platforms. This is adapting their recruitment process and giving them a larger population to get ahold of. “People don’t have to take the risk of joining a group that may have been infiltrated by law enforcement, of traveling to join a group. They can just get online, and through a Facebook group or Twitter, they can get radicalized”