California Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to be accountable in the fight against terrorism.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Feinstein plans to re-introduce legislation that would require social media sites to report any suspected terrorist activity to federal law enforcement.
Tashfeen Malik, the wife of the couple blamed in the San Bernardino shootings that killed 14 and injured 21, reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and the terror group's leader on Facebook using an alias, then deleted the messages just prior to the attacks. The company told the FBI about the post after the attack.
"If you create a product that allows evil monsters to communicate in this way... that's a big problem," Feinstein said on MSNBC.
The legislation is being reintroduced because it was already a provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016, but it was dropped in September after Oregon Senator Ron Wyden put a hold on the bill until the provision was removed. At the time, he called the provision “vague and dangerous,” according to Computer World.
The bill has passed the House, but remains in the Senate.
“Social media companies aren’t qualified to judge which posts amount to 'terrorist activity,' and they shouldn’t be forced against their will to create a Facebook Bureau of Investigations to police their users’ speech,” Wyden said in a statement at the time.
In response to Feinstein’s proposal, Facebook issued the following statement:
"There's no place for terrorists on Facebook. We work aggressively to ensure that we do not have terrorist or terror groups using the site. And we also remove any content that praises or supports terrorism."
Feinstein in the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
