James Comey

“Each FBI employee understands that to defeat the key threats facing our nation, we must constantly strive to be more efficient and more effective. Just as our adversaries continue to evolve, so, too, must the FBI.”

“People view the police not as allies, but as antagonists, and think of them not with respect or gratitude, but with suspicion and distrust.”

“Folks who think organised crime is a thing of the past are only kidding themselves.”

“The notion that we would market devices that would allow someone to place themselves beyond the law troubles me a lot.”

“WhatsApp has over a billion customers, and they are overwhelmingly good people. But in that billion customers are terrorists and criminals... It's a huge feature of terrorist tradecraft.”

“America isn't easy. America takes work.”

“Just as our adversaries and threats continue to evolve, so, too, must the FBI. The key to this evolution lies with our greatest assets: our people and our partnerships. Every FBI professional understands that thwarting the threats facing our nation means constantly striving to be more effective and more efficient.”

“Social media has allowed groups, such as ISIL, to use the Internet to spot and assess potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States - spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize - either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack.”

“At some point, there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we've never seen before.”

“For me, law school was a time of joy and hope. Joy in learning my way around the law - learning how to orbit a problem and to ask myself hard questions and to be asked hard questions. Hope that I could be of some use, to be part of the greater good - to make the world a little bit better.”

“Serious debates are taking place about how law enforcement personnel relate to the communities they serve, about the appropriate use of force.”

“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.”

“Some believe that the FBI has these phenomenal capabilities to access any information at any time - that we can get what we want, when we want it, by flipping some sort of switch. It may be true in the movies or on TV. It is simply not the case in real life.”

“What makes the bravery of the men and women of the FBI so special is that they know exactly what they're in for. They spend weeks and weeks in an academy learning just how hard and dangerous this work is. Then they raise their right hands and take an oath and do that work anyway.”

“Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past.”

“Our obligation is to refuse to let bad win, to refuse to let evil hold the field.”

“A lot of terrorists fled out of Afghanistan.”

“The Internet offers the ability for people to consume poison and radicalize entirely in private, either through a device they're holding in their hands or inside their house.”

“There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America.”

“An element of virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists.”