DHS Agents Blocked By Secret U.S. Policy From Looking At Social Media For Visa Applicants… Posted on December 14, 2015 by sundance
( WASHINGTON DC ) A secret U.S. policy that prohibits immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas was reportedly kept in place over fears of a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations.”
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the policy, even though several other officials in the organization pressed for such a policy change, ABC News reported Monday.
John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and currently a national security consultant for ABC News, said he pushed for a change in 2014 that would allow a review of social media messages posted publically as terror group followers increasingly turned to Twitter and Facebook.
“Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement,” Cohen, who left DHS in June 2014, told ABC News.
Cohen’s account comes as members of Congress question why U.S. officials failed to review the social media posts of San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik.
Like Rush was saying on his show today, common sense tells you not everyone in Washington could possibly be this inept, time after time, instance after instance. Something else is going on here.
So far I have only heard Trump say this (in those very words) a couple of times.
Nobody - except for us and Ann Coulter - has even implied that something nefarious, corrupt, or traitorous is going on with the Muslim/Immigrant invasion of the country. At least not that I've heard, and I am a hard-core political junkie.
I am hoping that Trump starts beating the drum on it, starting today.