Attorney general: Scope of ISIS threat still undetermined

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in an interview broadcast Sunday that administration officials are still trying to determine the scope of the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

{mosads}“It’s as serious, if not more serious a threat, than al Qaeda,” Lynch said on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing “a dangerous, high-tempo threat environment.”

“I think the fact that it is still new to us and we are still trying to determine, really, the scope of it, does make it very, very dangerous,” Lynch said of ISIS.

“They’ve got over 20,000 English language Twitter followers. ISIS focuses on getting individuals to commit acts of violence in their name which they will then take credit for,” she added. “This is a different model from other terrorist groups.”

Lynch said the terror group’s social media effort make the national security threat “harder to predict.

“I think it makes it harder to determine who is going to succumb to the propaganda,” Lynch said.

“As people get drawn more and more into the rhetoric, they move off of platforms into which we have visibility into encrypted platforms into which we don’t have visibility,” she added. “That’s the going dark problem”

Lynch also said officials are concerned that ISIS or other foreign enemies might develop the capacity to commit cyber attacks.

“That is the thing that keeps me and many of my colleagues in law enforcement up at night,” she said.