Bill would force web sites to report terrorist posts

Jul 07, 2015 10:33 pm
Ellen Nakashima reported in The Washington Post that the Senate Intelligence Committee last week approved legislation that would require web sites to report on suspected terrorist postings. The measure is in the 2016 intelligence authorization, and would need to be voted on by the full Senate, and get through the House and President too. If a website is not currently monitoring their site for content, they won't be forced to start now. The story says the measure applies to “electronic communication service providers,” including e-mail services such as Google, Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook. Twitter has already been busy looking for terrorist tweets, removing 10,000 accounts over two days in April. Any online company that “obtains actual knowledge of any terrorist activity . . . shall provide to the appropriate authorities the facts or circumstances of the alleged terrorist activity,” under the proposal. Removing the content is not mandated, just reporting. “The intelligence bill would turn communications service providers into the speech police, while providing them little guidance about what speech they must report to the police,” said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “If it becomes law, their natural tendency will be to err on the side of reporting anything that might be characterized as ‘terrorist activity’ even if it is not. And their duty to report will chill speech on the Internet that relates to terrorism.”
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