The United States Senate is considering passing a bill requiring social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter to report potential terrorist activity.
In a statement, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D.- Calif.) noted that terrorist groups are increasingly using social media to recruit and plan.
“We’re in a new age where terrorist groups like ISIL are using social media to reinvent how they recruit and plot attacks,” Senator Feinstein said. “That information can be the key to identifying and stopping terrorist recruitment or a terrorist attack, but we need help from technology companies. This bill doesn’t require companies to take any additional actions to discover terrorist activity, it merely requires them to report such activity to law enforcement when they come across it.
The bill is also sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr (R.-N.C.)
This action was passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in June as part of the annual intelligence authorization bill, but the language mandating reporting from social networks was removed before it went to the full Senate. This is a standalone bill called the Requiring Reporting of Online Terrorist Activity Act.