Lawmakers push for social media checks for visa applicants

John Kerby, a US State Department spokesman, said immigration’s vetting process doesn’t necessarily involve looking into an applicant’s social media footprint.

Farook, the US-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, a Pakistani native he married past year in Saudi Arabia, were killed in a shootout with police hours after the assault in San Bernardino, 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles.

She came to the US on a visa a year ago. They also said that law enforcement officials may be flooded by tips in a way that would make it harder to home in on useful information….

Senate Democrats want the administration to hand over details of its background check process for visas to enter the US, suggesting that applicants’ use of social media should be scrutinized as a routine part of vetting.

It is not clear how that policy has been in place, but John Cohen, a former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official and now a consultant for ABC News, says that the matter was last brought up for review in 2014.

The move by the DHS comes in direct response to the San Bernardino shootings, in which 14 people died and 21 were injured.

Certain officials there are allowed to look at visa applicants’ social media posts.

“The duty of DHS is to protect our homeland from those who wish to do us harm, and the agency is failing to address potential national security threats”, DeSantis said in a statement Tuesday, vowing to continue the investigation into the weakness of the country’s visa waiver program. This is a pointer that the debate might just turn out in favor of social media checks on immigration before visas are granted.

In 2014, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, fearing a civil liberties backlash, refused to end a secret government policy prohibiting immigration officials from reviewing social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for USA visas, according to a former senior department official.

The decision to allow Tashfeen Malik, one of the San Bernardino shooters, into the US seemed to represent a breakdown in security regulations, officials noted, especially considering the purported digital evidence of her allegiance to radical groups.

Tashfeen Malik is pictured in this undated handout photo provided by the FBI, December 4, 2015. “DHS (Department of Homeland Security) should use every tool at their disposal to do so, including checking Facebook and other social media posts in their overall review, if necessary”.

Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein and Mr Burr introduced legislation last week that would require social media companies to report to law enforcement any “terrorist activity” they became aware of, for example, attack planning, recruiting or the distribution of terrorist material.

The Times stated Malik’s Facebook messages point out for the primary time that D.R. regulation enforcement and intelligence officers missed warnings on social media that she was a possible menace earlier than she utilized for her D.J. visa.