Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Thursday that he wants to bring together a lot of his department’s social media capabilities within the organization and is looking to continue expanding these capabilities.
Johnson told the House Homeland Security Committee that he has sent a reprogramming request to Congress to “help fund” the creation of a “social media center for excellence which would be housed in our National Targeting Center (NTC)” within Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The reprogramming request is for $5 million, a congressional staffer told Defense Daily.
The NTC is used by CBP to identify people and products that are potential threats to the United States and prevent them from entering the country. The center employs targeting specialists that use technology such as the Automated Targeting System decision support tool to identify high-risk individuals and cargo entering and leaving the U.S.
Currently a lot of DHS’ social media capabilities are housed within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Johnson said. USCIS is the component of DHS that oversees lawful immigration into the country, providing various services and benefits.
DHS uses social media for more than three “different operational and investigative services,” Johnson said in his written testimony for the committee. He said that in 2014 the department began four pilot programs that used social media to vet applicants for certain immigration benefits, adding that “USCIS now also reviews the social media of Syrian refugee applicants referred for enhanced vetting, and is extending this review to additional categories of refugee applicants.”
Johnson also stated in his prepared remarks that based on the recommendation of a Social Media Task Force in DHS, “I have determined, consistent with relevant privacy and other laws, that we must expand the use of social media even further.” He told the committee that “there are enough purposes for social media across that department that I want to see this capability expanded and funded.”
With the increase of radical Islamist terror attacks around the globe, including by homegrown terrorists that are either recruited or inspired by the Islamic State via social media platforms, there is increasing focus by the federal government on using social media to vet certain foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. and for countering the messaging of these extremists.
Nicholas Rasmussen, director o the National Counterterrorism Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, noted in his written statement to the committee that the FBI is investigating about 1,000 potential homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) throughout the U.S.
“While HVEs have multiple factors driving their mobilization to violence, this increase in caseload tracks with ISIL’s rise in prominence and its large-scale media and propaganda efforts to reach and influence populations worldwide,” Rasmussen stated. ISIL refers to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and is another name used for the Islamic State.
Echoing recent remarks by CIA Director John Brennan at Thursday’s hearing by FBI Director James Comey, Rasmussen told the committee despite ISIL’s battlefield losses in Iraq and Syria, “we do not think battlefield losses along will be sufficient to degrade completely the group’s terrorism capabilities…In addition to their efforts to conduct external attacks from their safe havens in Iraq and Syria, ISIL’s capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs.”
Comey told the committee that “ISIL’s widespread reach through the Internet and social media is most concerning as the group has proven dangerously competent at employing such tools in furtherance of its nefarious strategy.”
Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a former CIA official, suggested to the witnesses that the use of social media represents an opportunity for the U.S. because it “increases the surface area of attack where we can ultimately penetrate the plans and intentions of groups like this.”
Rasmussen agreed that the “greater surface area” means a larger number of opportunities to analyze and operate against ISIL. However, he added that for now ISIL is “a harder target than what we faced with al-Qaida” for various reasons, including encrypted communications, and the experience and “savvy” of ISIL.