Editorial:
The government should not require cooperation from social media.
There’s a growing consensus in Washington that technology firms, especially social media companies, need to do more when it comes to fighting terrorism.
In his Oval Office address to the nation following the Dec. 2 San Bernardino shootings, President Obama told high-tech leaders to make it harder for terrorists to evade detection using technology.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton also said last week that fighting terrorism online has to become a higher priority, even though, as she said, “You are going to hear all the usual complaints. Freedom of speech, etc.”
And Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., introduced legislation last week that would require social media companies to report terrorist activity to law enforcement.
The chorus sounds right and sensible in theory. But in practice, it may not work well at all.
Let’s start with the language of the political requests, which are vague on the particulars of how Internet communication actually works.
“There’s no clear definition in law of what unlawful terrorist propaganda is,” said Emma Llanso, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
With no clear definition, Llanso explained, the mandate becomes unworkable. “Companies would be required to review and do subjective assessment of huge amounts of content in real time. The result would be either overbroad reporting, with millions of users’ information being repeatedly reported to the government, or companies would stop the reviewing they’re doing altogether, for fear of missing something.”
Asked to specify the terrorist activity in Feinstein’s bill, spokesman Tom Mentzer replied that social media companies already have rules prohibiting terrorist activity on their platforms, including the “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction.”
But, Mentzer said, that’s “clearly not the only information” that would be required reporting — an example of the vagueness that social media companies are correct to complain about.
Another reason why they’re correct to complain is that these companies already have been reporting terrorist activity to law enforcement. Facebook, Twitter and all of the other major networks remove plenty of content from their services every day and are in regular touch with law enforcement.
“I do find in practice that they are pretty good about telling us what they see,” said FBI Director James Comey at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in July.
Meanwhile, there are real questions about whether law enforcement is equipped to handle a deluge of information from an overbroad mandate — particularly when a lot of that information could be false flags.
Former National Security Agency head Michael Hayden has spoken publicly about the agency’s challenges in understanding the massive amounts of information that it has to sift through; experts have noted that U.S. law enforcement agencies are already having trouble keeping up with what they have. It’s another reason why lawmakers need to be more, not less, specific about what they’re asking tech companies to do.
Finally, there’s the constitutional rights issue.
All Americans should be genuinely concerned every time the federal government mandates cooperation from private companies about access to their personal information.
That concern deserves the respect, not the dismissal, of those in a position to make policy.
“Is it really appropriate for private companies to be regularly reporting millions of Americans to the government? I think that’s still an open question,” Llanso said. We would agree. Washington understands that it needs the help of technology to fight terrorism, but both technology and terrorism are complex systems. Real safety will come from focus and specificity — not overbroad demands that violate our rights.