Steve Neavling

Companies that refuse to comply with wiretap orders would be penalized under FBI-backed legislation that is being drawn up by a government task force, RT reports.

That means companies like Google and Facebook would be fined tens of thousands of dollars a day for refusing to cooperate.

“We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, ‘We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.’ Other countries have that. Most people assume that’s what you’re getting when you go to a court,” FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann told the Washington Post.

This is the latest effort by law enforcement to better monitor online communications. 

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham sharply criticized law enforcement’s information-sharing system during the probe into the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, Business Insider reports.

Graham said the system should have picked up on the suspicious activity of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Graham also urged federal agencies to “up our game.”

“When one of these guys goes into the system and they leave the country, we need to make sure where they’re going and interview them,” Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“And when somebody in the database like this begins to openly interact with radical Islamist websites, an FBI agent should knock on his door and say, ‘You told us before that you wanted to be an Olympic boxer. You love this country. What the hell is going on here? We’re watching you.'”

Steve Neavling

U.S. Rep. Peter King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Russia should have informed Washington D.C. about the radicalization of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects and his mother, the Associated Press reports.

The New York Republican said better communication “definitely would have caused the investigation to go further.”

King added that it’s difficult to believe only two people carried out the Boston Bombing suspect.

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Steve Neavling

The FBI is investigating “persons of interest” in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings, the Washington Post reports.

“There are persons of interest in the United States,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, told ABC News. “We’re looking at phone calls before and after the bombing, this type of investigation.”

Agents also are trying to determine whether one either of the bombing suspects received training.

“I think, given the level of sophistication of this device, the fact that the pressure cooker is a signature device that goes back to Pakistan, Afghanistan, leads me to believe . . . that there was a trainer,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) said. “And the question is, where is that trainer or trainers?”