Federal authorities are ratcheting up terror warnings across the country in advance of this Fourth of July holiday weekend.
The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are asking local law enforcement officials to be prepared for any potential terrorist activity. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) says this alert reflects a new kind of radicalization.
“What’s happened now is a new phenomenon which is lone wolves -- disturbed people, lonely people, angry people, who are contacted on the Internet and importuned by these Islamic fundamentalists to do serious, terrible things. And that’s new,” said Schumer. “They don’t tell them what to do, they don’t instruct them what to do, they don’t coordinate what they do. They just try to get them to do it. And praise God, nothing bad has happened yet, but you’ve got to be really vigilant.”
Schumer says the good news is that the government’s surveillance tactics often have been able to break up terrorist plans before they happen. Federal investigators stopped Islamic State-inspired plots in Boston and the metro New York area in recent weeks.
