Terror threats in the U.S. has increased from what it was around two years ago, according to U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein.
Born in San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein is a member of the Democratic party and the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
On Sunday, December 1, CNN reporter Candy Crowley interviewed Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, and asked them if the U.S. was safer now than it was a year or two year ago.
"I don't think so. I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that, the fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs, trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnatometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups that ever and there's huge malevolence out there," said Feinstein in response to Crowley's question.
Feinstein and Rogers said that not only the U.S., but other countries are also not safer when compared to the period before Osama Bin Laden's death in May 2011.
Rogers added that threat level has, in fact, increased in the last few years and has not been so diverse as it is now. Moreover, the rise in threat levels has also increased pressure on the country's intelligence services. He also added that there are now three affiliate groups of al Qaeda. These terrorism groups have also changed the way they communicate, making the job of the intelligence services even more challenging.
The al Qaeda affiliates, Russian intelligence services, Chinese intelligence services, and the Quds force that operates terrorism events all around the world are the most focused groups, which are under high scrutiny by the country's intelligence service.
Crowley also asked Rogers about the recent exposures of the National Security Agency's (NSA) spying programs, to which Rogers replied, saying he worries that such disclosures were distracting the intelligence service agency from its usual work.
