Reports that one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., openly discussed her extreme views on social media have turned out to be inaccurate, but the subsequent revelation that public posts by visa applicants are not routinely screened is still setting off alarm bells and sparking legislation from U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan. John McCain of Arizona introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require the department to search social media websites and publicly available information of prospective foreign travelers or immigrants seeking to enter the United States.
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“There are some legal limits to what we can do”, Johnson said Wednesday.
On Capitol Hill, 21 Senate Democrats plus Sen.
“We are dealing with private communications and things for which there is an expectation of privacy, and you’re dealing with USA persons”, Johnson told the news outlet.
Rodriguez raised the idea of adding social media reviews to all security procedures. At issue is how closely the US government examines the backgrounds of people asking to come to the country, including reviewing their social media postings.
Schanzer, who directs a terror and homeland security program at Duke University, also argued that visa applicants “don’t have constitutional rights” protecting their information, so he was especially “surprised” the DHS would reject the proposal.
According to an internal DHS memo, published by MSNBC, officials asked the Obama administration to authorize “access social networking sites” as far back as 2011.
“If half the employers in America are doing that in the private sector, if colleges are doing it for [admitting] students, why the hell wouldn’t the Department of Homeland Security do it for someone coming from a terrorist country – or a country that sponsors terrorism – into the United States?”
DHS has kept details of the pilot programs it is now using quiet so as not to give away how they identify potential threats, but it’s believed that the current process does not sweep up all social media posts. Social media is rarely included in those checks. This July 27, 2014 photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook, as they passed through O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
The DHS spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to Gizmodo’s questions about whether it will primarily pay more attention to public-facing postings, or whether it will also increase requests to companies like Facebook and Twitter additional information.
Routine visa background inquiries usually include checking a visa applicant’s name against various spy agency and law enforcement databases, but would not normally involve extensive investigations in the applicant’s country of origin.
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Other officials familiar with post-shooting investigations into Malik’s background said that Malik posted her pro-jihadist messages under a pseudonym and also activated privacy settings, which meant that any alarming messages would have been hard to find even if visa reviewers had been able to look for them.
