Homeland Security Considers Plan to Check Social Media During Visa Reviews

As part of continued repercussions from the tragedy in San Bernardino, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reversing previous protocols that prevented officials from examining visa applicants’ social media presences as part of the vetting process.

Members of Congress yesterday pushed for a new law requiring reviews of social media accounts before applicants are granted visas. Sen.

One of the shooters in the San Bernardino massacre, Tashfeen Malik, sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.

He said: “If a consular officer feels like it would be valuable or necessary to look at the social media presence of an individual, they can and do conduct those reviews, but it’s not absolute in every case”.

Presently, investigators are scanning Facebook posts, computer records and other locations of the accused husband and wife team – Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik – for any hint about their intentions.

“They’ve acknowledged that part of that review is to consider ways to incorporate the use of social media vetting in their screening programs”, Earnest said. They also include enforcement and removal operations executive summaries, immigration benefit applications received by the Department of Homeland Security or other component agencies, and notices to appear that have been drafted, issued, or served.

Officials familiar with the investigation into the San Bernardino shootings say that it was discovered after the shootings that Malik began posting social media messages demonstrating a sympathy for Islamic militancy before her USA visa was granted.

Before being given her visa, Malik went through national security checks and criminal background checks. And it is often hard to distinguish Islamist sentiments and those driven by political hostility toward the United States.

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill said Homeland Security’s fears of invading privacy may have kept it from spotting social media red flags on Tashfeen Malik, whom authorities granted a fiancee visa.

Cohen said that officials from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement both pressed for a change in policy, which eventually became the subject of a meeting in 2014 chaired by Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, other top deputies and representatives of the DHS Office of Civil Liberties and the Office of Privacy.

USA officials have said that Malik and Farook were completely unknown to US spy agencies before the San Bernardino shootings. The official said they were written in Urdu, an official language in Pakistan, according to the LA Times.

The proposal would require that federal officials review “open source information” – including social media accounts – of any visa applicants.

However, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has sent mixed signals, asserting there are “certain legal limits” constraining the review of social media because “we are dealing with private communications”.