Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

White supremacy is terrorism.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

You are here: Home / Politics / The Other Snowden Effect

The Other Snowden Effect

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Here’s an example of an alleged “Snowden Effect” that seems tailor-made for the wingnut Wurlitzer since it blends the ever-popular themes of government incompetence and political correctness. If true, it actually is damning evidence of the Department of Homeland Security privileging “optics” over effectiveness. Via the Beeb:

Tashfeen Malik passed three background checks when she moved from Pakistan but none looked at her social media.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer said: “Had they checked out Tashfeen Malik, maybe those people in San Bernardino would be alive”.

Malik underwent three background checks as part of the process to obtain a K-1 (commonly known as a “fiancee visa”) to enter the United States and marry fellow attacker Syed Farook, the New York Times reported.

None of those screenings would have likely checked Malik’s social media activity due to a secret US policy prohibiting security officials from reviewing social media activity of would-be immigrants, according to ABC News.

The report says, in the wake of disclosures from Edward Snowden, officials were afraid of a backlash from civil liberties activists if agents were reviewing social media postings and knowledge of the reviews were made public…

Among the activity that was missed were inflammatory comments next to a photo of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center that were posted on the 10th anniversary of those attacks, the newspaper said.

Good Christ. Apparently Malik used a pseudonym; she didn’t post “I <3 OBL” and “9/11 4evah” on Facebook under her own name. But it didn’t take the feds long to connect the dots from her real name to her online handle once she’d mowed down a bunch of people with an AR-15. To make it abundantly clear, this isn’t Snowden’s fault, of course. But according to this article, DHS officials have admitted that they don’t look at public social media activities when screening applicants from countries that are hotbeds of radicalization, even though social media is a known vector.

Why the fuck not? I wish I had a nickel for every story I’ve read about millennials blighting their job prospects forever with an ill-advised spring break booby-shot tweet. But DHS doesn’t undertake the due diligence of a corporate HR department? If not, that’s entirely on DHS, and heads should roll, metaphorically, of course.

More bad optics, from the ABC News story linked above:

DHS’s Catron told ABC News the Department is “actively considering additional ways to incorporate the use of social media review in its various vetting programs,” while keeping an eye on privacy concerns.

“The Department will continue to ensure that any use of social media in its vetting program is consistent with current law and appropriately takes into account civil rights and civil liberties and privacy protections,” Catron said.

Look, I’m firmly convinced that the anti-immigrant — particularly the anti-Muslim immigrant — hysteria from the Trumpenproletariat is as absurd as a fainting epidemic triggered by lightning strikes or shark attacks. But shouldn’t a “screening” worthy of the name include a rudimentary social media search?

And good luck selling the panicky American people on taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees now that we have a DHS official publicly expressing concern over respecting non-citizens’ civil rights and privacy during the screening process. That’s some bad optics right there. Expect the occupants of the GOP clown car to wave this bloody shirt from now until next November.

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  1. 1.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    Given how many dudebros were screeching last time about the horrible invasion of privacy when the government looks at publicly posted information at places like Facebook, you should expect to see quite a bloodbath in the comments over this.

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    DHS probably has a room full of 64 year old white guys in polyester short-sleeved shirts running that division.

    Just hire a bunch of 20-somethings, keep the Funyuns flowing, and it will all get fixed.

  3. 3.

    Earl

    And — you can all assail me now — this is why it was a stupid idea to have a party-defining fight to force 10k refugees in. Just *one* instance of this sort of idiocy and someone slipping through the cracks and the party takes a giant hit. Sometimes you have to prioritize, and picking a months long fight with republicans over refugees isn’t in my top 3.

    What is? BLM, a democratic president to maintain a bulwark against overturning obamacare, and no more wars in the middle east. Action, or at least holding the ground, on climate change might happen if we can get a democratic senate. I know that’s more than 3; sue me.

  5. 5.

    Laertes

    I’m pretty fuckin’ pissed that the American public gets all screechy when I snoop all their private emails. So what I’m gonna do is pitch a little fit and say “Oh yeah? If you won’t let me read your encrypted emails, then I’m not going to read anyone’s public statements either.” Sooner or later, I’m sure, some terrorist is going to act out and it’ll turn out that they’ve got a twitter account. And I can make the “oh poor me” face that I’ve been practicing in front of the goddamn mirror every morning for as long as I can stand to look at my own smug, stupid face, and insist that until I get the keys to everyone’s phone, I just can’t possibly figure out how to use facebook.

    Because I’m an asshole, and everyone else are a bunch of idiots.

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    @BGinCHI:
    Sounds about right.

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
    Well to be useful the public postings have to be in the right name or some level of snooping has to take place. That they claim to be able and willing to look at every cell phone conversation should tamp down the screams, but then logical thinking isn’t a forte of lots of people.

  8. 8.

    Keith G

    DHS’s Catron told ABC News the Department is “actively considering additional ways to incorporate the use of social media review in its various vetting programs,” while keeping an eye on privacy concerns.

    WTF?

    I would never have though that Tweets or Facebook posts that were publicly posted were behind a wall of privacy out of the view of a government, etc.

  9. 9.

    David Koch

    Tashfeen Malik passed three background checks when she moved from Pakistan but none looked at her social media.

    You know how many death threats against the President I see on a regular basis on wingnut twitter. There’s no way they can track everyone down, there’s just tooo many.

    You can’t expect an organization, even the gubmint, to be omnipotent.

  10. 10.

    MattF

    @BGinCHI: Well, we’re talking about bureaucrats who review visa applications. It’s a job, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s mostly contracted out. Contractors have to follow the rules laid down by the contracting agency, and the Prime Directive for your average 64-year old contractor-bureaucrats is CYA, so they’re not going to be inventive. Way of the world.

  11. 11.

    charluckles

    Posting inflammatory comments on Facebook? My God, half the people I know are due for a visit from the FBI or the Secret Service.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Why the fuck not? I wish I had a nickel for every story I’ve read about millennials blighting their job prospects forever with an ill-advised spring break booby-shot tweet. But DHS doesn’t undertake the due diligence of a corporate HR department? If not, that’s entirely on DHS, and heads should roll, metaphorically, of course.

    Well Betty, I rather suspect it is because DHS is restrained by little things we call “laws” that keep the Evil Government ™ in check, where as corporate HR depts are engaged in the Holy Sacraments of the Free Market which are protected by the 1st Amendments Freedom of Religion clause.

    Remove the snark and I think you get gist of what is probably happening here.

  13. 13.

    bystander

    @Keith G: You would think that by definition posting on a social media board would preclude claiming any expectation of privacy.

    How long before we hear who devised this incredibly dumb policy?

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    @Earl: I’ve made the assumption that refugee applications and regular old visa screenings are two separate processes, but the GOP candidates will damn sure conflate the two. Maybe someone here knows what’s involved. I did read in the coverage of the SB massacre that Malik had been interviewed about her familiarity with Farook to establish that it was a for-real relationship and not a green card marriage. That process is pretty intensive, from what I gather as a viewer of the Andie MacDowell-Gerard Depardieu rom-com “Green Card,” but that is the extent of my expertise on the topic.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    @bystander: According to the ABC News piece linked above, it came from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson — or at least he refused to end an existing policy. In either case, he knew about it.

  18. 18.

    Culture of Truth

    The original news story has some interesting wording. The lede, from ABC,

    Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.

    So a former official is mad that Obama, fearing a so-called backlash, ‘refused to end’ this alleged secret policy. So it’s made out to be an affirmative decision not to change.

    “During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis.

    What time period is that exactly? The time when they ‘decided’ to continue doing what they were doing?

    “One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.”

    This story may well be accurate, but this “refusal” language has a hint of post-event debrief, “I told you so! If only you’d listened to me!” quality to it.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Well, c’mon, *everyone* knows that the government doesn’t actually obey its own laws or regulations, so obviously they let this crazy woman slip through so they have an excuse to monitor all our phone calls.
    /left-wing nut

    If anyone ever wonders what the left-wing version of gun control is, where the nuts come out of the woodwork to scream about any level of government scrutiny whatsoever, wonder no more.

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    Bigots go bonkers after Muslim judge swears oath on Koran instead of Bible: ‘She should be arrested!’
    Tom Boggioni TOM BOGGIONI
    14 DEC 2015 AT 13:04 ET

    Reacting to news that a New York judge — who is a practicing Muslim — took her oath of office using the Koran, commenters flooded a Facebook announcement, calling it an “abomination” and saying she should be arrested.

    Following her election last month, Carolyn Walker-Diallo was sworn in as a civil judge for the 7th Municipal District in a Brooklyn Borough hall last Thursday. She chose to take her oath using a Koran instead of a Bible.

    http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/bigots-go-bonkers-after-muslim-judge-swears-oath-on-koran-instead-of-bible-she-should-be-arrested/

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    Background checks for long term visas are quite rigorous. Your picture and your finger prints are taken at one of the USCIS regional offices if applying within the United States or at a US consulate or an embassy for an overseas application.

    Malik probably applied K-1 in SA or Pakistan and then changed status when she got here.

  22. 22.

    FlipYrWhig

    Betty, are you arguing for investigating every visa applicant for the possibility of pseudonymous postings on social media? That seems like an enormous job logistically. They can do it after there are grounds for suspicion, but before? Privacy advocates would have a cow, or a herd of cows, wouldn’t they?

  23. 23.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Betty Cracker: Not all visas are the same, typically short term visas (visitor, business etc) are easier to get than the long term visas (student, temporary worker etc), and non immigrant visas are easier to get than the immigrant visa (green card).

  24. 24.

    mwing

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): As a former college employee, I’d like to please inform all the dudebros of one thing: Do not have your facbook picture be of yourself shirtless and holding a beer. Really. We can see you.

  25. 25.

    Cacti

    @Earl:

    And — you can all assail me now — this is why it was a stupid idea to have a party-defining fight to force 10k refugees in.

    Cowardice doesn’t pay in the short or long term.

  26. 26.

    Elie

    I still do not understand why the Republicans think its cool to run around screaming hysterically about every little uncertainty. No matter how many guns people have, no matter how much hateful speech they use on any target minority, their followers are still scared to death and are showing, not steely resolve, and confidence in our country or our values, but just plain scaredy cat hiding under beds and whimpering about why any bad people are allowed to exist in the universe. Is this REALLY the image that the Republicans want — cause that is the one that I would make sure that they wear around their necks for the next 11 months. I don’t know why the Democrats aren’t saying some of this…

  27. 27.

    cat

    There is no way to tie ‘Cat Cattington’ to a social media account without private information contained in ISP records which I believe are considered private and require warrants to access.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t know. I’m saying that having a policy of NOT looking at public social media activity because it could be a public relations problem seems really stupid, if that is in fact what happened. I’m curious about what the background screening entails. I have no idea.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Elie: Like brave and decisive Chris Christie, illegally quarantining Kaci Hickox, who did not have ebola, while she was merely trying to transit through NJ?

    Unfortunately, they run around screaming like their hair is on fire and then *nobody* says “what a moron you were.” Good on Kaci for suing him, but the media that were so complicit in the panic have completely buried that story.

  31. 31.

    Earl

    @Cacti: you call it cowardice, I call it priorities and understanding you can’t have them all. Until there’s a democratic house, we have to carefully choose what we expend our political capital and limited ability to fight on.

  33. 33.

    bystander

    @Betty Cracker: I can’t imagine what the policy reason would be. If it’s because they couldn’t for whatever reason figure out reliably every applicant’s online disguise(s), I understand. But there’s no way Trump won’t be distorting the reason or who’s to blame within 24 hours.

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    @cat: I’m no expert, but I think that depends on how careful you were with your public information. If you have the same photo on Facebook under your real name and your pseudonym, it would be pretty easy to link the two. Or if you used the same email address, etc.

  35. 35.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Betty Cracker: But it’s easy to imagine a hue and cry about The Government monitoring all visa applicants’ social media activity. Maybe it could be justified for posts under your own name. But if it’s under a pseudonym, how can you investigate that… for everyone… suspicious beforehand or no? Seems like you’d need a warrant first, but on what basis? Preemptive warrantless social-media scrutiny for your own name and also pseudonyms and variants? There are a lot of damn worms in that can.

  36. 36.

    Peale

    @David Koch: Yes, but the difference is, of course, that those “death threats” aren’t from people who are being scrutinized for immigration to the US.

    this is a tough case anyway since by denying her, the government would have been telling Farook to either move or marry someone else and I don’t like the idea of governments interfering with who one can marry.

  38. 38.

    MD Rackham

    My real name is shared with a former champion mountain bike racer, right down to the middle initial. We were born about 80 miles apart in the same state. I’m five years older than he is, but we were born in the same month.

    He’s also turned into a right-wing asshole who advocates “camps” for muslims and “taking out” Obama.

    He posts on Facebook and I don’t.

    So some visa-reviewing contractor is going to be able to tell the difference between us? I know for a (painful) fact that corporate HR departments can’t.

  39. 39.

    Immanentize

    The whole huge ever gathering information government is not designed, nor could it ever be so, to stop terrorist (or criminal if you refer) attacks before they happen. It is, however, immensely useful at gathering evidence of criminal behavior post hoc. And that is not nothing. Except at the funerals….

  40. 40.

    RP

    This seems a bit silly to me. What’s the criteria for denying someone a visa based on some inflammatory FB posts? It’s easy to say that Malik should have been denied a visa because we know what she did, but the vast majority of people who post inflammatory stuff online aren’t going to become terrorists. Should joe blow be denied a visa because he posted a link to a Noam Chomsky interview?

    Schumer is a jackass (but I guess we knew that already).

  41. 41.

    rikyrah

    MO. state rep wants to take scholarships from striking athletes
    2 hours ago

    A Missouri state representative has pre-filed a bill that would cause any striking collegiate athlete in his state to lose their scholarship.

    Yes, this is a real bill.

    The bill comes after Missouri football players in early November decided to forgo football activities in solidarity with campus protesters who called for a change in campus leadership after a series of racially charged on-campus incidents. The players strike last about three days and the team played against BYU the following weekend.

    Since this is a pre-file there are few details on this bill, however, as noted by the sports editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune, scholarships aren’t state funded.

    http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/mo–state-rep-wants-to-take-scholarships-from-striking-athletes-190731473.html

  42. 42.

    p.a.

    Our basic ‘problem’ is that the US is still a country people want to come to. Bad actors are going to slip through when lots of people want in. We’ve seemingly (how much is gvt. pr I don’t know) done well/got lucky stopping many threats (some were FBI entrapments of dumbasses, true). Of course systems should be refined continually, but unless you want to elect Republicans (the delusion of slamming the door shut, enact economic policies that will result in another economic collapse so people don’t immigrate) we unfortunately better get used to some danger. It’ll still be less than the danger of our home grown gun nuts.

  43. 43.

    Peale

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t know. It’s not like asking tourists for their gmail accounts and passwords

    I think the government is punting here. The issue has nothing to do with warrants in this case as this is for a non-citizen, non-resident and I don’t think there is a court that could issue a warrant in that case. The issue isn’t Edward Snowden and I really don’t think the government is that worried about the ACLU. The issue is whether or not Pakistan or Germany or Saudi Arabia or the governments of other countries want us to monitor the social media output of their citizens illegally by their laws. I thought the answer to that was “no.” At least in the middle case. I have no idea what Pakistan or SA thought about the NSA.

    I think Germany pulled a lot more weight than the ACLU regarding the snowden leaks.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @FlipYrWhig: According to former DHS bigwig John Cohen, it was fear of that backlash that prevented DHS from checking public social media, not policy considerations. Maybe he’s just an asshole with an ax to grind; I don’t know. But that’s what he alleges in the linked article.

    It doesn’t expressly say so in the article, but within fairly short order after the SB massacre, the cops linked Malik to a pseudonym on social media. Did they figure that out from a simple search? I don’t know, but given the news reports about the hard drives being missing and phones being smashed up to cover their tracks,that might be the case. If so, the Republicans will go into full Benghazi mode. Hell, even if not, they’ll go into Benghazi mode.

  45. 45.

    Fair Economist

    Important messaging point: Both Farook and the Paris terrorists were native born citizens. This domestic terrorism resulted from bombing Syria, not from refugees.

    Remember, emphasize it, say it every time:

    Domestic terrorism is the price we pay for going to war in the middle east. Stopping refugees and immigrants from the countries in question won’t help, because they’re not doing it.

  46. 46.

    retr2327

    @FlipYrWhig:
    1) “Betty, are you arguing for investigating every visa applicant for the possibility of pseudonymous postings on social media? That seems like an enormous job logistically.” It would definitely be a large job, but given a Gov’t perfectly happy to try screening all U.S. citizens’ postings for info, probably not unmanageable for the (comparatively) limited universe of visa applicants;

    2) “They can do it after there are grounds for suspicion, but before?” I’m not sure there’s an applicable limitation for non-U.S. citizens applying for a visa. Any immigration lawyers care to chip in?

    3) “Privacy advocates would have a cow, or a herd of cows, wouldn’t they?” Any privacy advocates attempting to have a cow over such screening would no doubt be trampled by a very real herd of terrified citizens clamoring for tighter screening. I find it hard to believe there’d be much opposition.

  47. 47.

    Ella in NM

    Uggghh. This story is just gonna be more fodder for the “False Flag” conspiracy theorists.

    And a distraction from the fact that any background check from these areas of the world that doesn’t include an interview with the person’s parents or extended family or friends–all of whom now say that this woman was going radical long before she left to come to the US–is worthless.

  48. 48.

    scav

    Well, Security Theater is fun so long as it only targets others, reflects your biases and furthers your personal ideological agenda. Cross-stitch this next to the Elections Have Consequences only if my team wins.

  50. 50.

    AnonPhenom

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    …so obviously they let this crazy…so they have an excuse to monitor all our phone calls…./leftwing nut.

    because we weren’t deluged with current and former members of the security State speaking in one voice on the need for a back door key for commercially available encryption software in the aftermath of the Paris attack. There’s no need to go all ‘false flag’, but it’s a given that security forces will use any excuse to make their job easier. Or prevent oversight (see Comey’s whine about cell phone video ‘causing’ poor policing)
    What a bunch of crybabies. Just do your fuckin’ jobs or find another line of work.

  51. 51.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Earl: There won’t be a Democratic House if Democrats run and hide from being Democrats.

    Barack Obama played the fraidy Dem playbook for the Senate race in 2014 and how did that turn out? We fucking lost Colorado! And why? Because he pissed off Latino activists who were then demotivated to work on GOTV. It also doesn’t help with the voters. “Meh, why vote? Both parties are the same and nothing ever changes.”

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @FlipYrWhig

    A distinction must be pointed out between searching and investigating.

    Anyone can search the public forums for keywords or phrases. Heck, any search engine does that on a broad basis.

    Correlating and culling the data through more focused searches and frequency of appearance of indicated search terms counts is also not all that difficult an automated process. That does not mean that any results should be accepted de facto as evidence, merely that it narrows the universe of accounts among which to begin to pay heed (again, an operation which any member of the public is also legally capable of performing).

    Interest (as in person of interest) and even suspicion are parameters which require more than a layman’s expertise, however, and are not to be applied willy-nilly (nor without trained human intervention to further explore (or dismiss) the information computers have narrowed down). Investigation of any individual account ought to always require a warrant.

    And non-relevant or otherwise dismissed data also has no business being retained or stored.

  55. 55.

    Davebo

    Though I agree the right will make big hay over this I just don’t see it as a big deal. And the right will always find something to fuss over.

    I’m not sure if I want consulate employees or DHS people scouring over Twitter and Facebook looking for clues regarding visa applicants. Seems like a poor use of resources to me.

  56. 56.

    Elie

    @Ella in NM:

    Even if we caught her THIS time, there is an error term for the numbers of people we would have to investigate and the comprehensive nature of those investigations – which as your suggest, would now have to include family and friends. How many? Would each potential immigrant require 10 interviews? 20? Plus any social media sites as well?

    We are going to miss some and like Fair Economist says upstring, the impetus for these attacks are from what we are doing (and have done) in Syria and the ME. The more we do it the more they do it to us. The fundamentals of this situation provides incentives for us to do things that make it worse and prolong the problem — that includes the infernal politics of the Republican Party who cannot be counted as fellow citizens, but part of the complex network of enemies that include Putin and Assad– scratch that — they may actually have more congruent incentives than our so called Congressmen. They (our so called fellow patriots) actually seem to WANT to make things worse — to commit more troops on the ground indefinitely. To mistreat our Islamic citizens or bar them from the country… ALL of which will make the situation worse. We just cannot seem to be rational at a time when our wellbeing deeply requires it!

  57. 57.

    raven

    Sorry girls and boys, all this “fear and panic” is just so much fucking bullshit just like ebola.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Noticed that finding parking spaces has become easier?

    Proof positive of Obama covering up the deaths of millions from ebola.

    /RWNJ with two tinfoil hats on

  59. 59.

    Anoniminous

    The reality is the odds are vastly, hugely, larger that a mass shooting will be committed by a white Christian male ammosexual with anti-abortion psychosis than a Muslim import. But the reality doesn’t fit the propaganda our Infotainment Mediums and Right Wing hysterics are pushing.

    shrug

    Wake me up when the average IQ has returned to being somewhat equal to the average body temperature.

  61. 61.

    a different chris

    You can’t use normal-universe logic to determine whether something will spark a Meshback outrage freakout.

    If there’s a tactic that is truly effective in separating the ‘bad’ refugees from the ‘not bad’ ones, you can pretty much count on Dumpf & The Meshbacks being against it. It would remove their main excuse of smearing them all as ‘bad, because we can’t really know what they are thinking, so kick their foreign asses to the curb!’

  62. 62.

    Cacti

    @Earl:

    you call it cowardice, I call it priorities and understanding you can’t have them all. Until there’s a democratic house, we have to carefully choose what we expend our political capital and limited ability to fight on.

    Did post 9/11 comity with the GOP ever lead to a positive electoral result for the Dems.

    Even a single time?

  64. 64.

    A Ghost To Most

    If the policy is changed , can they also change the gun background check to include social media checks?

  65. 65.

    Baud

    DHS was right on the optics. Post-Snowden, no one distinguished between reasonable online investigations and the Orwellian superstate. Everything was a slippery slope to Big Brother.

  67. 67.

    Baud

    @retr2327:

    “Betty, are you arguing for investigating every visa applicant for the possibility of pseudonymous postings on social media? That seems like an enormous job logistically.” It would definitely be a large job, but given a Gov’t perfectly happy to try screening all U.S. citizens’ postings for info, probably not unmanageable for the (comparatively) limited universe of visa applicants;

    That would be a good point if the U.S. government in fact did that.

  68. 68.

    debbie

    Well, well, well. Isn’t this special?

    Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) didn’t file millions of dollars worth of investments and profits he received since coming to the Senate in 2007, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal Sunday.

    According to the Journal, Corker filed amendments to his financial disclosure forms late Friday after the paper had previously inquired about several inconsistencies in Corker’s finances.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bob-corker-failed-to-disclose-millions-in-profits

    Gotta love those last-minute filing amendments.

  69. 69.

    beltane

    @A Ghost To Most: Why? Americans are completely indifferent to mass shootings unless the perpetrator is wearing a headscarf, at which point we become a blubbering, pants-pissing ball of fear.

  70. 70.

    Tommy

    @raven: “Raven” most nights I don’t lock my front door. The far right and at times my party is knocking on the wrong door, my level of fear of this or that is like next to zero.

  72. 72.

    mkro

    Ha ha … classic … This is EXACTLY the reaction that I expected from the Snowden / Greenwald cheerleaders of the Professional Left.

    Can’t have it both ways, sorry.

    You want your online activity to be private and don’t want Big Gubmint looking at it, then you’ll have to accept that a few bad guys will sneak past and kill some of us.

  73. 73.

    beltane

    @Tommy: People who are chronically afraid of everything aren’t really living. Way too many people in this country are gripped by constant fear of whatever scary thing the media is hyperventilating over in any particular week.

  77. 77.

    Tommy

    @Germy: Earlier this year I heard/read this post about Mary and Joseph. Short and too the point. They were looking for refuge. In a foreign land. Asking for a place to stay. They were rejected. So they stayed as the methodology goes, in a stable (yes I am an Atheist). So the birth story of Christ is what we are talking about here in letting in other immigrants.

  78. 78.

    max

    The report says, in the wake of disclosures from Edward Snowden, officials were afraid of a backlash from civil liberties activists if agents were reviewing social media postings and knowledge of the reviews were made public…

    Horseshit. No one at any of the alphabet agencies has stopped doing anything but contact tracing of Americans out to three levels (as in six degrees of Kevin Bacon), and they’ve partly dialed down some of the more extensive capture activities, and in theory, they’re not supposed to investigate Americans for exercising free speech. (Not that means much.)

    This is the same drill practiced by the Baltimore PD when those cops got indicted – run around claiming they can’t do anything and demand new rules protecting them from that sort of thing.

    viz:

    The report clearly did several things. First, it provided a way for the government to try to undermine the standing claim of other plaintiffs challenging the phone dragnet, by leaving the possibility their records were among the claimed 70% that was not collected. It gave a public excuse the Intelligence Community could use to explain why PRG and PCLOB showed the dragnet to be mostly useless. And it laid the ground work to use “reform” to fix the problems that had, at least since 2009, made the phone dragnet largely useless.

    It did not, however, admit the truth about what the 215 phone dragnet really was: just a small part of the far vaster dragnet. The dragnet as a whole aspires to capture a complete record of communications and other metadata indicating relationships (with a focus on locales of concern) that would, in turn, offer the ability to visualize the networks of the world, and not just for terrorism. At first, when the Bush Administration moved the Internet (in 2004) and phone (in 2006) dragnets under FISC authority, NSA ignored FISC’s more stringent rules and instead treated all the data with much more lax EO 12333 rules(see this post for some historical background). When FISC forced the NSA to start following the rules in 2009, however, it meant NSA could no longer do as much with the data collected in the US. So from that point forward, it became even more of a gap-filler than it had been, offering a thinner network map of the US, one the NSA could not subject to as many kinds of analysis. As part of the reforms imposed in 2009, NSA had to start tracking where it got any piece of data and what authority’s rules it had to follow; in response, NSA trained analysts to try to use EO 12333 collected data for their queries, so as to apply the more permissive rules.

    That, by itself, makes it clear that EO 12333 and Section 215 (and PRTT) data was significantly redundant. For every international phone call (or at least those to countries of terrorism interest, as the PATRIOT authorities were supposed to be restricted to terrorism and Iran), there might be two or more copies of any given phone call, one collected from a provider domestically, and one collected via a range of means overseas (in fact, the phone dragnet orders make it clear the same providers were also providing international collection not subject to 215). If you don’t believe me on this point, Mike Lee spelled it out last week. Not only might NSA get additional data with the international call — such as location data — but it could subject that data to more interesting analysis, such as co-location. Thus, once the distinction between EO 12333 and PATRIOT data became formalized in 2009 (years after it should have been) the PATRIOT data served primarily to get a thinner network map of the data they could only collect domestically.

    This is no different than whining about encryption when the Paris attackers didn’t use it. Same drill, by the same people who brought you the Bush administration’s many exciting security policies (which includes Schumer and Feinstein). The hilarious part is that they’re lying about the problem so they get enough more power than they had already, under ‘never miss using a crisis to expand your power’.

    max
    [‘Oy. I suppose they also claim they stopped checking for warrants on people.’]

  81. 81.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Tommy: True, the meaning of the story is to take in strangers. On the other hand, they didn’t take in Joseph and his obviously irresponsible teenage wife because they were northerners, but because Joseph didn’t make a reservation and all the rooms were all booked up.

  87. 87.

    kc

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    Given how many dudebros were screeching last time about the horrible invasion of privacy when the government looks at publicly posted information at places like Facebook,

    Not saying it didn’t happen, but I never saw anyone complaining, let alone screeching, about the govt looking at publicly posted information.

  88. 88.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Earl: If it wasn’t the refugees it’d be something else. Cave on the refugees and they’ll want to start harassing Muslim citizens. Cave on that, they’ll want to start expelling them. You can never appease these people.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @kc: Via quick googling, here is a CNN story from 2013.

    In addition to phone records and email logs, the National Security Agency uses Facebook and other social media profiles to create maps of social connections — including those of American citizens.

    The revelation was disclosed by the New York Times on Sunday, using documents provided to the newspaper by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

    “We assume as Americans that if somebody in the government is looking at your information, it’s because they have a reason, because you’re suspected of a crime,” Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, told CNN.

  90. 90.

    kc

    As a practical matter, I don’t how possible it would be to ascertain every single pseudonym a visa applicant has ever used on social media. I mean, sure you could ask them, but what’s to stop them from lying (or forgetting)?

  91. 91.

    Tommy

    Just for shits and giggles. Here is my family tree:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/23079900502/

    I guess at some point in it there should be bold text and a shout out to coming to the US from the Isle of Sky, Scotland. I feel as an immigrant, just from the 1870s, I am kind of new here on this continent. This nation has been so wonderful to my family. Hard for me to not to want that on other immigrants.

    I see all the Syrian immigrants looking for a home and I cry. I want to wrap my arms around them and say come here. We got a home for you!

  92. 92.

    kc

    @Baud:

    Thanks. I don’t see any “screeching” in that story. Also it looked like they were doing considerably more than just reading people’s public FB posts.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    @kc: Well, it’s a CNN story, and using Facebook is the lead. I didn’t spend more than a few seconds googling.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Just wanted to draw attention back to this point. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that she applied for a shorter-term visa knowing it had less scrutiny (though I’m not very familiar with the ins and outs).

    I still think there was more to this shooting than “just” being jihadist fans, though. The fact that it was a workplace shooting definitely muddies the waters when it comes to motive. It’s a ridiculously American way to settle a grudge whether you want to clothe it in a “righteous cause” or not.

    ETA: I doubt she moved several thousand miles overseas with a plan to help kill her new husband’s coworkers. Something else influenced the choice of target.

  96. 96.

    kc

    @Fair Economist:

    Important messaging point: Both Farook and the Paris terrorists were native born citizens. This domestic terrorism resulted from bombing Syria, not from refugees.

    They were Muslims, though, and the offspring of immigrants, correct?

    It kind of baffles me that people on the left think this argument is some kind of mic drop moment. People who are already against letting Muslims immigrate just say, “See, this probes they don’t assimilate.”

  102. 102.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Haven’t followed the news a lot, but wasn’t one of the coworkers a Rushbot? Who was inflicting his views on the husband? A messianic Jewish person, who (I think) survived?

    This one has intending jihadist with workplace issue trigger written all over it. I think they chose their target very quickly, at the last moment, although they were likely planning a different attack site earlier.

    Strange, strange story. Maybe not the last of its kind that we see.

  108. 108.

    Procopius

    @Ruckus: I’d like to see a little more explanation of just how they connected her real name to the online handle. I remember a dustup three or four years ago, some hotshot “security” contractor who claimed his software would infallibly track down terrorists by following connections in communications “networks.” He claimed to have identified members of Anonymous this way and posted their personal information. Anonymous then announced that he was an idiot, that the people he had outed had no connection to Anonymous, hacked his server, and posted online some of his emails with DHS that made it look like he was obviously defrauding them. Background checks are dubious, anyway. They’re how people got put on the blacklists in the McCarthy Years. We can be confident that many of the names on the no-fly lists are people who never did anything suspicious but the agents who put their names on would be embarrassed if their mistake was recognized so they’ll never be taken off the list. How many background checks did Snowden pass to get his Above Top Secret clearance?

  109. 109.

    Procopius

    @Elizabelle: They’re absolutely desperate to make it a Radical Islamist ISIS-connected International Organized Terrorist story and I was delighted they accidentally allowed that story about the Fundamentalist Christian/Messianic Jew slip out. There was even an interview with his wife where, at one point she smiled ruefully and said yes, if there was an argument at the Christmas party that made Farook blow up, her husband was probably responsible because “he was very outspoken about his views.” Of course we haven’t seen any more about that because it would be terrible if it turned out he was just a disgruntled employee who went postal. It looks like, for whatever reason, they had abandoned their plan to commit jihad.

  113. 113.

    scav

    Remember though, it doesn’t matter if one is branded a terrorist based on Facebook postings, you’ll still be able to buy guns. You’ll just have to walk or drive to where you intend to use them (no flying, you dangerous person!).

  114. 114.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Tommy: not really. They were going to Joseph’s hometown for the census. So was everybody else, so there wasn’t any second story room available and they had to stay on the ground floor, which also housed some animals.

    The nativity story is not a refugee story. People are conflating it with the flight to Egypt, which happened when Hebrew male toddlers supposedly were being murdered by Herod.

  115. 115.

    Elizabelle

    @Tommy: Hello, Tommy. Good to see you.

    Ordering a copy of the Junior League of Baton Rouge 1951 (?) cookbook for two nephews. They’ve taken up an interest in cooking.

  116. 116.

    boatboy_srq

    @Betty Cracker: Fiances/fiancees get less strenuous screening than refugees – using the conventional methods. Refugees need to prove that they’re fleeing life-and-death hazard; that they really are at risk of death/dismemberment/whatever if they stay put; and generally have to prove that they’re not likely to be a risk to the nation while proving equally strenuously that their home nation is a deadly risk for themselves.

    Fiance/fiancee immigration is hardly easy; the DoS throws up enough roadblocks to make it a significant effort. But it’s hardly what refugees are put through. I recall (sorry, memory, no links) several people who tried the refugee path for LGBT persecution (from various ME and SubSaharan African places) and were sent back for insufficient evidence – despite laws like Uganda’s where “homosexuality” was (is?) a serious felony punishable by decades in prison (assuming anyone convicted of it would survive imprisonment).

    None of these screenings, apparently, take into account publically-available social media, as you already mentioned. One more reason DHS is a MIC boodoggle tailor-made to perpetuate the unholy union of big industry and the DoD. If Shrub is held to account for no other thing, this monster that serves no real purpose besides permanently embedding unreasoning panic into US policy should be hung around his neck.

    And yes, the SO and I are looking at a fiance visa, and it’s hardly a piece of cake, but nothing like what Syrians fleeing Assad and/or Da’esh are facing.

  117. 117.

    jpe

    @Keith G: You don’t remember blacklivesmatter about being “surveiled” because some police forces read their entirely public twitter accounts?

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’m currently hearing elsewhere that the Facebook activity by Tashfeen Malik they’re talking about was private (and also under a pseudonym), not public. If so, they’d presumably not be allowed to see it as part of a blanket screening of all immigrants.

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Yeah, the “Facebook posts” they’re talking about were private messages.

    Now you could argue that they should be snooping into everyone’s private messages as well, just in case someone is a terrorist, but to me, the fact that most of the news stories are not making this distinction at all is appalling. They’re implying by omission that these were public posts that the government was ignoring for silly PC reasons.

  120. 120.

    wenchacha

    @OzarkHillbilly: I know we were all sweating bullets while my son and his new Japanese-national wife were preparing for their “FBI Interview” so she could get her Green card. They met as students, like so many other young people who attend a large university. They wanted to be together after she graduated, and they got married!

    The newlyweds asked us to write a letter about our knowledge of their relationship, and its validity. I penned a freakin’ epic. Immigration lawyer sent it back, asking that I remove the part where our first meeting of his wife when we knew her as a “friend.” Lawyer wanted me to stay away from the friendzone, entirely.

    Meanwhile, they had known each other on Facebook, had lots of posts from friends and family regarding their nuptials, all that. I remember thinking, the FBI could save some time (and the costs of Green Cards) by looking at Facebook. No question, these two kids are sincerely in love. Anyway, they passed with flying colors, the green card was issued, and there are no plans to destroy the country from the inside.

    But yeah, I figured if employers were getting away with demanding FB passwords from potential employees, I sure expected Immigration to do at the very least some cursory inspection of social media.

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