Slideshow: Who's Who In U.S. Intelligence
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Two top intelligence officials last week warned that tech-savvy terrorists are using the Web to recruit for, plan, facilitate, and even accelerate their criminal acts. Their comments set the stage for what's likely to become a heated national debate over wiretapping the Internet.

James Clapper, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, and Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, gave a sobering account of the growing use of the Web by violence-prone adversaries. Their statements take on added significance in light of the Obama administration's push for legislation, being drafted now, that would force communications service providers to establish the capability to intercept and unscramble communications traveling over their networks. Clapper and Mueller spoke at the Bipartisan Policy Center's State of Domestic Intelligence Reform conference.

In his first public presentation since taking over as director of national intelligence in August, Clapper pointed to the "ever-growing popular use of online social media and blogs by violent extremist groups" and said that virtual communities have become as important as physical communities in fostering the radicalization of young people.

Clapper cited two challenges: "Always ensuring appropriate protection of privacy while still allowing for the proper dissemination of U.S. persons' information necessary to uncover and disrupt threats to the homeland. And second, ensuring that the U.S. government has the necessary legal and policy framework to allow discovery of critical information across departmental and agency data sets." You can read a transcript of his remarks here.

Consistent with the mission of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Clapper's speech emphasized the need to integrate intelligence data and, as appropriate, share that information across intelligence and law enforcement agencies. He described the FBI as the country's primary agency for conducting counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations within the U.S.

FBI director Mueller was even more blunt in his portrayal of the Internet as a medium for those who would wreak havoc on America. "The Internet has become a primary platform for communication," he said. "It has also become a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, and for terrorist recruiting, training, and planning. It is a means of social networking for like-minded extremists...including those who are not yet radicalized, but who may become so through the anonymity of cyberspace. In other words, the Internet has become a facilitator, even an accelerant, for terrorist and criminal activity."