James Comey Criminal Quotations

The benefits of our increasingly digital lives have been accompanied by new dangers, and we have been forced to consider how criminals and terrorists might use advances in technology to their advantage.

Terrorists and criminals are increasingly adept at exploiting cutting-edge technologies to carry out or to mask their crimes. To counter current and emerging threats, the FBI actively deploys a wide range of technology-based tools, capabilities, and training that enable and enhance intelligence, national security, and law enforcement operations.

Public corruption is the FBI's top criminal priority. The threat - which involves the corruption of local, state, and federally elected, appointed, or contracted officials - strikes at the heart of government, eroding public confidence and undermining the strength of our democracy.

That's a power that regular criminal investigators have had for hundreds of years. It now applies to counterterrorism investigators. They have to go to a judge and get a court order to obtain the records.

FBI joint task forces - Violent Crime Safe Streets, Violent Gang Safe Streets, and Safe Trails Task Forces - focus on identifying and targeting major groups operating as criminal enterprises. Much of the Bureau's criminal intelligence is derived from our state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners, who know their communities inside and out.

As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is all of our lives will be covered by strong encryption, and therefore all of our lives - including the lives of criminals and terrorists and spies - will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to court-ordered process. And that, I think, to a democracy should be very, very concerning.

Was he dragged into criminal activity to which he was not predisposed, by a government overbearing his will?