San Bernardino shooters were trying to recruit on social media

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.

Malik’s messages were recovered by FBI agents investigating whether she and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, had been in direct contact with foreign militant organizations and were directed to carry out the December 2 attack in which 14 people were killed, the Times reported. The new process may include looking at the social media posts of applicants.

Such a plan can also be seen as a response to the San Bernardino shooting earlier this month that killed 14 innocent people.

A former senior counter-terrorism official, who participated in the 2014 discussion, said, “Why the State Department and Homeland Security Department have not leveraged the power of social media is beyond me”.

Cohen reported that USCIS and ICE officials pushed for a policy change to gain insight into possible terrorist involvement, but said the debate centered around optics and concerns about privacy and civil liberties in the aftermath of Edward Snowden and NSA surveillance.

“As more details have been learned about the two terrorists responsible for the horrific attack in San Bernardino, it is becoming more apparent that more could have been done to vet Tashfeen Malik”, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote in a statement. Despite undergoing three separate background checks, immigration authorities reportedly failed to spot her postings when she applied for and obtained a K1, or fiance visa, when she moved to the USA from Pakistan.

In order not to spoil the “opportunity to let him lead investigators to any other persons or to an organization with whom he may be or may have been in contact with in the furtherance of the San Bernardino attack or other planned terrorist attack”, no charges were pressed against Marquez, said an official.

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

According to one of the federal officials, the Facebook messages are considered to be Malik’s private correspondence to a small group of her friends in Pakistan and that they were the only ones to receive them.

Introduced by Senator John McCain, the legislation proposes to require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to search social media websites and publicly available information of prospective foreign travellers or immigrants seeking to enter the US.

“And that will continue to be the case with ensuring that this K-1 visa program is effectively implemented”, he added.

State Department records show that in 2014 the USA government issued almost 10 million nonimmigrant visas, over 40,000 of which were K-1 fiancé visas like the one Malik used to enter the country.