House demands plan to counter terrorists on social media

The bill, which passed by a voice vote, will give the president 90 days to “transmit to the appropriate congressional committees a report on United States strategy to combat terrorists’ and terrorist organizations’ use of social media.”

“Unfortunately, today there is no strategy and consequently, we’ve seen individual agencies making unilateral decisions and not coordinating with one another,” said sponsor Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who pointed to the Department of Homeland Security as one example of why the legislation was necessary.

“DHS unilaterally decided not to look at visa applicants’ social media postings; the [Federal Bureau of Investigation] does not know how far it should push private social media companies to prohibit them from allowing terrorist content on their sites; the State Department does not know how to effectively counter terrorist messaging because it does not have the expertise of the intelligence community; and the intelligence community approaches social media as a capture everything because it has not been made clear what it should look for,” Poe said.

This week, the Obama administration admitted that it doesn’t require the screening of social media accounts when assessing visa applicants. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton called for that policy to change on Tuesday, in addition to more than 20 Senate Democrats who sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

“We believe these checks, focused on possible connections to terrorist activity, should be incorporated into DHS’s vetting process for visa determinations, and that this policy should be implemented as soon as possible,” the senators wrote.

Though Poe’s legislation does not spell out an explicit change, it does serve as an indicator of lawmakers’ disapproval of the DHS policy.

“We must first have a strategy before we can effectively defeat this enemy on every battlefield, including the cyber battlefield,” Poe added.