ted poe – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Bill Introduced To Prevent Government Agencies From Demanding Encryption Backdoors

from the pushing-back-from-the-top-down dept

The FBI continues its push for a solution to its “going dark” problem. Joined by the DOJ, agency head Christopher Wray has suggested the only way forward is a legislative or judicial fix, gesturing vaguely to the thousands of locked phones the FBI has gathered. It’s a disingenuous push, considering the tools available to the agency to crack locked devices and obtain the apparently juicy evidence hidden inside.

The FBI hasn’t been honest in its efforts or its portrayal of the problem. Questions put to the FBI about its internal efforts to crack locked devices are still unanswered. The only “new” development isn’t all that new: Ray Ozzie’s “key escrow” proposal may tweak a few details but it’s not that far removed in intent from the Clipper Chip that kicked off the first Crypto War. It’s nothing more than another way to make device security worse, with the only beneficiary being the government.

The FBI’s disingenuousness has not gone unnoticed. Efforts have been made over the last half-decade to push legislators towards mandating government access, but no one has been willing to give the FBI what it wants if it means making encryption less useful. A new bill [PDF], introduced by Zoe Lofgren, Thomas Massie, Ted Poe, Jerry Nadler, Ted Lieu, and Matt Gaetz would codify this resistance to government-mandated backdoors.

The two-page bill has sweeping safeguards that uphold security both for developers and users. As the bill says, “no agency may mandate or request that a manufacturer, developer, or seller of covered products design or alter the security functions in its product or service to allow the surveillance of any user of such product or service, or to allow the physical search of such product, by any agency.”

This bill would protect companies that make encrypted mobile phones, tablets, desktop and laptop computers, as well as developers of popular software for sending end-to-end encrypted messages, including Signal and WhatsApp, from being forced to alter their products in a way that would weaken the encryption. The bill also forbids the government from seeking a court order that would mandate such alterations. The lone exception is for wiretapping standards required under the 1994 Communications for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which itself specifically permits providers to offer end-to-end encryption of their services.

The Secure Data Act shouldn’t be needed but the FBI and DOJ have forced the hand of legislators. Rather than take multiple hints dropped by the previous administration, the agencies have only increased the volume of their anti-encryption rhetoric in recent months. Maybe the agencies felt they’d have the ear of the current administration and Congressional majority, but investigations involving the president and his staff have pretty much killed any “law and order” leanings the party normally retains. This bill may see widespread bipartisan support simply because it appears to be sticking it to the Deep State. Whatever. We’ll take it. Hopefully, this makes a short and direct trip to the Oval Office for a signature.

Filed Under: backdoors, congress, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, jerry nadler, matt gaetz, responsible encryption, secure data act, security, ted lieu, ted poe, thomas massie, zoe lofgren

House Overwehelmingly Passes Amendments Blocking Funding For Undermining Encryption

from the closing-the-backdoor dept

As we’ve been saying, the passage of the USA Freedom Act is just a small first step in the long road to real surveillance reform. On Wednesday, the House took another small step, voting overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to an appropriations bill put forth by Rep. Thomas Massie that blocks funding to the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) for working with the NSA or CIA to undermine or backdoor encryption. This appears to be quite similar to part of the similar amendment last year that banned both this kind of NIST coordination, but also the NSA’s use of backdoor searches under Section 702. As far as I can tell, this new amendment does not include that latter bit. Either way, this amendment passed 383 to 43.

It appears that another amendment, put forth by Rep. Ted Poe also passed by voice vote and it would block the use of funds from the DOJ/FBI from being used “to mandate or request that a person alter the product or service of the person to permit electronic surveillance of any user or service” except in cases required under existing wiretapping law.

Both of these are very big deals, and the fact that they passed so easily suggests that the House is nowhere near done on pushing for real surveillance reform. Of course, whether or not these actually go anywhere is another story. As you may recall, after passing overwhelmingly last year, under pressure to get a big omnibus bill done at the end of the year, the House leadership agreed to drop those provisions under pressure from the intelligence community.

Also, one other interesting amendment also appears to have passed easily by voice vote, which is an amendment put forth by Jared Polis, and would make it clear that the DEA cannot do bulk collection under its subpoena authority. As was detailed a few weeks ago, for many years, the DEA had been using this authority to collect tons of phone records, and the program only ended once the administration realized that the claims it was using in support of the NSA’s bulk collection didn’t apply to the DEA’s collection, and thus they couldn’t really continue it. Polis’s amendment means that this particular loophole is closed for good (not that others might still be open…).

Again, all three of these may not survive all the way into law, but it does show that there’s still a very strong interest in the House to continue pushing back against surveillance abuse.

Filed Under: backdooring encryption, bulk collection, cia, dea, doj, encryption, fbi, jared polis, nist, nsa, subpoenas, ted poe, thomas massie

House Refuses To Consider USA Freedom Amendment Stopping NSA's Backdoor Searches… Even As Everyone Supports It

from the ridiculous dept

As we’ve noted, there’s a new USA Freedom Act in town, and it’s on the fast track through Congress. It has some good stuff in there, and is generally a step forward on surveillance reform and ending certain forms of bulk collection — though there are some concerns about how it can be abused. But one thing that plenty of people agree on, is that even if it’s a step, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Last Thursday, there was a markup in the House Judiciary Committee, to help move the bill to the floor, and some amendments were proposed to improve the bill — all of which got rejected.

What was especially frustrating, was that for at least one key amendment, everyone agreed that it was important and supported it, and yet they still refused to support it. The reasoning, basically, was that the existing bill was the work of many, many months of back and forth and compromises, and the administration and the House leadership had made it clear that it would not approve a single deviation, even if it was really important. The amendment in question was basically a replica of an appropriations amendment from Reps. Ted Poe, Zoe Lofgren and Thomas Massie that we wrote about last year, which surprised many by passing overwhelmingly in the House, only to be stripped out by the Senate. The key idea: ending the ability of the NSA and others to do “backdoor searches” on data collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (both the “upstream” collection and PRISM). And even though everyone supported it, they couldn’t go forward with it and upset the rest of the process:

It was clear from their comments that a majority of committee members supported the goal of the amendment. Indeed, no member spoke against it on substantive grounds. But Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) explained that the bill represents a fragile compromise ? primarily with members of the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) ? and that House leadership had made clear the bill would not get a floor vote if the Judiciary Committee amended it. (Whether leadership is carrying the water for HPSCI or vice versa ? and what role the administration is playing here ? are unanswered questions that deserve their own blog post.) The members were faced with a choice: acknowledge the terms set by House leadership and vote against an amendment designed to restore critical Fourth Amendment protections for Americans, or reject those terms and possibly derail surveillance reform altogether.

That?s where things got interesting, as the members spent an hour thoughtfully parsing what the right course of action was. (In the video, the amendment was proposed at 1:11:00.) More than one member characterized Poe?s amendment as an example of ?the perfect being the enemy of the good.? There was consensus that back door searches implicate the Fourth Amendment. But, Goodlatte said, so does the bulk collection of Americans? phone records ? an important statement, given the FISA Court?s controversial rulings to the contrary. By killing the bill?s chances of a floor vote, Goodlatte implied, Poe?s amendment would be a net negative for the Fourth Amendment. Goodlatte also pledged to hold hearings on Section 702 in the near future, and to work with Poe to find opportunities outside of the context of the USA Freedom Act to address the problem.

Other members, though, were not willing to accept House leadership?s efforts to constrain them. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) posed the key question of the morning: what can members do when House leadership is blocking reform favored by a majority of the House? Poe?s amendment mirrored an amendment offered last year by Lofgren and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to a defense appropriations bill; that amendment passed overwhelmingly, 293?123, with 94 Republicans voting in favor. Lofgren suggested it might be time to consider a discharge petition ? a procedural measure by which a majority of House members can bring legislation to the floor for a vote even if House leadership objects. She acknowledged that it?s difficult for the majority to buck the will of leadership, but that this was a case of ?right versus wrong,? pitting the Constitution against ?lawless behavior.?

Poe showed even more frustration. Addressing Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner?s (R-Wis.) observation that the Committee would have a chance to revisit Section 702 in 2017 when the FAA expires, Poe observed dryly that the Committee was not simply delaying the building of a bridge. It was delaying vital Fourth Amendment protections for Americans. He put the question simply: do politics trump the Constitution, or does the Constitution trump politics? He urged fellow committee members not to let leadership?s threats dictate their vote. He said they should support the amendment and let the political chips fall where they may.

And, yes, of course, in the end the amendment was rejected 24 to 9. I think the whole “perfect is the enemy of the good” argument made by some is clearly bogus in this scenario. The only “good” to come out of this is the fact that Poe, Lofgren and others aren’t willing to let this matter drop — though the idea of waiting until 2017 to address an issue that we already know the majority of the House supports, is pretty ridiculous. Especially when pretty much everyone agrees that we’re talking about violations of the 4th Amendment.

Hopefully this means that this issue will get addressed separately, even if not in this particular bill. The fear, as always in this sort of situation, is that after the Herculean effort just to get this far to get this particular bill approved, that no one will have the appetite to continue the process and get the other necessary reforms in place.

Filed Under: backdoor searches, congress, house judiciary committee, nsa, section 215, section 702, surveillance, ted poe, usa freedom act, zoe lofgren

Can Some Internet Memes Finally Get Congress To Pass New Legislation To Protect Your Privacy Online?

from the the-last-time-we-reformed-our-privacy-laws... dept

For many, many years, we’ve been talking about the need for ECPA reform. ECPA — the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — is an incredibly outdated piece of legislation from the 1980s that governs law enforcement’s ability to access email and other electronic communications. This was the era before the internet was anywhere close to the mainstream (though it did exist). Among the various weird parts of the law, it says that any communication that is over 180 days old and still on a server is considered “abandoned” so that the government can access it without a warrant. Think about that in this era when you keep all your communications online. It was written when lawmakers thought people would “download” the messages off a server. That’s just the most noteworthy problem — there are all sorts of different definitions based on messages that have been opened or not opened and other oddities as well, almost none of which make sense.

Last year we noted that more than half of the House was co-sponsoring a bill put forth by Reps. Kevin Yoder and Jared Polis to reform ECPA in a big way. But even with so many supporting the law, it failed to move. A big hurdle? Both the IRS and SEC (note: not your standard law enforcement agencies) like the fact that they can use ECPA to snoop through electronic communications (without a warrant — which those agencies can’t get on their own anyway).

Yoder and Polis are back again with another attempt, and it’s matched by a similar legislation in the Senate from Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee. To get attention for the bill, Yoder, Polis and some other supporters took to Twitter in a bit of a meme fest, highlighting some historical facts to demonstrate just how long it’s been since ECPA became law. It’s worth scrolling through them all (though, there are a lot), because some are pretty funny:

At this point, it’s a complete travesty that such a bill hasn’t become law. People have explained the need for it for well over a decade, and more than half of Congress was signed on to co-sponsor it in the last Congressional term. Already this new bill has 228 additional co-sponsors in the House and another 6 co-sponsors in the Senate. The IRS and SEC’s objections are simply ridiculous. Having more convenient access to someone’s emails is no excuse for not better protecting the privacy of our online communications.

Of course, this isn’t the only effort going on to protect privacy. Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Ted Poe and Suzan DelBene have also introduced a bill to update ECPA. It’s pretty clear that Congress knows that the law needs to be updated, and it’s time to get past whatever objections there are and actually start protecting our privacy.

Filed Under: communications, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, irs, jared polis, kevin yoder, memes, mike lee, patrick leahy, privacy, sec, suzan delbene, ted poe, zoe lofgren

Someone Please Tell Congress That 'Free' Is Not Illegal & Not To Lie About Bogus Search Results

from the they-don't-seem-to-know-that dept

We already wrote about how much of Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearings seemed to focus on the ridiculous and dangerous concept of “notice and staydown,” but that was hardly the only ridiculousness on display at the hearing about the DMCA’s notice and takedown policy / internet safe harbors. If you’ve never watched a bunch of technologically clueless self-important politicians think they know better than actual engineers how to create a search engine, well, go take a look. During the Q&A, Reps. Judy Chu and Tom Marino spent a bunch of time complaining that when they did searches for the names of movies, plus the word “free,” that Google sent them to links for (you guessed it) free (though unauthorized) options to watch those movies.

Chu — who has become the MPAA’s favorite person to feed bogus questions to (though sometimes they forget that they’ve already given the same questions to someone else) — pointed out that she wanted to test out Google by typing “watch,” plus the name of popular movies, specifically 12 Years a Slave and Frozen, and that among the autocomplete options, “watch 12 years a slave free” and “watch frozen free” popped up. To her, this was proof positive that Google is aiding infringement. She later is clearly reading off of notes she doesn’t understand, and makes claims about how Google’s algorithm works concerning demoting sites that get lots of takedowns that are simply not accurate, as she presents her own theories on how Google’s algorithm should work. Because I’m sure she’s programmed lots of search engines.

A little while later, Rep. Marino picks up on this thread (including a laughable claim in which he notes he wants less federal government, but on this issue, he wants more federal government). He directly asks the Google representative on the panel, Katherine Oyama, why can’t Google not return any results if someone searches on a movie name, plus “free.” Oyama quickly points out that “we can’t strike the word ‘free’ from search, because there’s a lot of legitimate, great content that is free.” Marino immediately follows up by arguing that if someone searches for “free,” that’s obviously a problem and “there’s gotta be a process… where that can be flagged.” And then, bizarrely, he mentions that his two teenage kids are writing software programs and shakes his head as if he can’t believe what a world we live in which people write software. And yet he thinks he can better explain to Google how its algorithm should operate.

In a blog post about the hearing, Matt Schruers notes that it’s rather worrisome that elected officials are legitimately suggesting that “free” is somehow bad and should be censored:

One thing I didn’t anticipate was today’s fixation on the word “free” in search results. It is odd that in the United States the word “free” should be so stigmatized, but several members of Congress took issue with search results that contain the word “free,” apparently with the aim that such results should be suppressed.

Of course, every use of the word “free” is not unlawful, even in relation to content. Indeed, there is a considerable amount of free content online (including this site). Some artists give free content away for various legitimate reasons, such as promotional samples. “Free” is a time-honored marketing term, used liberally. Many rights-holders now wisely advertise when they are offering free content, e.g., “get a free trial to the song here”, to better compete with pirated alternatives, or to drive other revenue streams, such as live performances, subscriptions, merchandise. If services started blocking content online using the term “free,” this could easily penalize lawful services providing promotional content in order to crowd out infringing options.

That’s an important point. You can also point out that if people are doing a search on a movie name and “free,” they’re probably not that interested in paying. But, the much more important point — which Oyama tried to point out to both Chu and Marino (and which they both ignored) is that almost no one actually does the searches that has the two of them so upset. I figured I’d check. Here’s the Google Trends report for the terms “12 years a slave” “watch 12 years a slave” and “watch 12 years a slave free.” The yellow line is the name of the movie. The blue is “watch 12 years a slave” and the red line that barely gets off the bottom is “watch 12 years a slave free.” You’ll note, almost all of the searches are for the name of the movie. Very, very, very few searches are done with the “watch” opening. And significantly fewer are done with “free” after. In other words, no one is doing the searches that has Chu and Marino so worked up.

And here’s the same same thing for “Frozen” “Watch Frozen” and “Watch Frozen free” with the same basic results:

If this looks vaguely familiar, it’s because just a few weeks ago, we called out a silly news report that did the same thing with the search term “watch house of cards.” After we showed, via Google trends, that no one does that search, even the reporter on the original piece went back and edited his piece to note this fact. But, once a story is out there, it’s hard to kill it off — and I recently heard from a reporter who told me that MPAA-connected people were out pushing that original bogus “watch house of cards” story to try to drum up more press coverage on it. And, sure enough, later in the hearing that exact example came up — by someone who clearly didn’t understand the details.

Rep. Ted Poe goes on this bizarre and ridiculous rant about how he just hates thieves. And, of course, he equates infringement to thievery, despite the rather important differences you’d hope an elected official and lawmaker would know (though it’s clear Poe does not). He tops this off by flat out lying at the hearing, suggesting that while sitting there he did a search on Google via his iPhone for “house of cards” and the top results were links to infringing sites. That’s simply not true. At all. As plenty of others quickly checked the search and saw, the links are all perfectly legit.

And yet, he then demands of Google, how can it stop this thing that isn’t actually happening from happening. Oyama immediately points out that if he actually did a search on House of Cards he’d see only legitimate links. Poe cuts her off:

Oyama: House of Cards is a great example. It feeds into the example of “what type of results are showing up.” So if you Google “house of cards” take a look at what’s there. It’s going to be legitimate stuff. It’s going to be the show’s website… and things about the actors… in terms of feeding back into the search trends conversation…

Poe: Just a second, let me interrupt, because you’ve already lost me. Pull up House of Cards, I think I see the valid House of Cards but I think I see some thievery going on like the second and third and maybe the fourth one. How does that happen?

These are our elected officials. Oyama is telling him that the search doesn’t have unauthorized links, and he immediately cuts her off saying she “lost him” and demanding she explain how something that isn’t happening is happening. Not only that, but he incorrectly believes that there is only one “valid House of Cards” link. Oyama tries again to respond to this, and Poe still isn’t having any of it, bizarrely then asking her how an unauthorized provider might get better rankings.

Poe: Okay, I’m a thief. I’m stealin’ House of Cards. How do I get it to be number two when you pull up “house of cards”? That’s my question!

Oyama points out “it’s not number two” and Poe still doesn’t get it.

Poe: Okay, three, four. Right up near the top.

Oyama again points out that he’s just wrong. It’s not near the top. And Poe gets sarcastic with a giant smirk:

Poe: Oh? Those are all legitimate sites?

Clearly, someone had taken the original silly argument that we had debunked, and given Poe some sort of summary that he didn’t understand, leading him to make the bogus claim that (a) he had done the search, when he clearly hadn’t, and (b) which then resulted in him going on and on about how search results that don’t actually appear could possibly appear, and how Google could stop those results that don’t appear from appearing.

And these are the people who are planning to rewrite our copyright laws?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, free, judy chu, katherine oyama, search engines, search results, ted poe, tom marino
Companies: google

Editorial Claims Houston Prosecutors Are Pushing Through Nearly 1,000 Sex Trafficking Indictments Every Day

from the do-you-even-math dept

Editorials written in support of legislation are prone to conjuring up hysterical situations/numbers in order to drive the point home. You can’t motivate the average reader if there’s no hook. But the editorial writer should at least make sure the numbers being used don’t immediately prompt incredulous laughter from any reader with a couple of functioning brain cells.

The editorial board for the Dallas Morning News recently issued a regrettable opinion piece supporting the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which was introduced last week. In the writer’s hurry to portray human trafficking as a terrible blight on humanity, credibility went right out the window.

Two Texas Republicans, Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Ted Poe of the Houston area, are co-sponsoring a bill that would impose stiff penalties on these adult victimizers of up to life in prison. The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which has bipartisan support in both houses, would supplement an existing law that focuses primarily on punishing sex-trafficking organizations abroad.

Poe and Cornyn estimate that one-quarter of U.S. sex-trafficking victims have Texas roots. Poe says our state’s proximity to Mexico and high immigrant population give the state a particularly high profile. In Houston alone, about 300,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year. Tighter border controls and reduced profit margins from the drug trade are pushing organized crime groups to turn increasingly to sex trafficking, law enforcers say.

That ridiculous figure, which posits that Houston prosecutes nearly 900 sex traffickers a day (if working 365 days a year), has since been removed by the editorial squad at Dallas Morning News. The update line notes that “inaccurate numbers” had been used and have since been deleted. (The original version can be found here towards the middle of the page.)

This amazing claim was completely debunked by Houston criminal defense attorney Mark Bennett, who broke down actual prosecution stats and the possible rationale behind the Dallas News’ decision to run with the 300,000/year claim.

Nobody seems to know where that 300,000 num­ber comes from. (Mag­gie McNeill sug­gests a plau­si­ble gen­e­sis here and here.) It’s a cou­ple of orders of mag­ni­tude less obvi­ously wrong than the same num­ber attrib­uted to Hous­ton, but still glar­ingly obvi­ously wrong—if the wrong­ness of “300,000 sex-trafficking cases in Hous­ton” were equiv­a­lent to get­ting smacked upside the head with a 2X4, “300,000 sex-trafficking cases in the United States” would be get­ting poked in the arm with a fork.

That’s the hype. Here are the numbers.

In Har­ris County, accord­ing to Texas Office of Court Admin­is­tra­tion sta­tis­tics, 36,862 new felony cases were filed and 68,142 new mis­de­meanor cases were filed in 2012. So the total of all new cases filed in Har­ris County is nowhere near the 300,000 sex traf­fick­ing cases asserted by the Dallas Morn­ing News.

Bennett speculates the DMN may have just misquoted Rep. Ted Poe, one of the sponsors of the bill.

Poe, a Repub­li­can from Hum­ble, said sex traf­fick­ing rings prey on the large num­ber of immi­grant women and girls liv­ing in the Hous­ton area and across Texas, account­ing for a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of the esti­mated 300,000 sex traf­fick­ing cases pros­e­cuted each year.

As Bennett points out, there aren’t even 300,000 federal prosecutions nationwide per year. 2010’s report shows only 91,047 people being prosecuted in federal courts, so even Poe’s nationwide claim is demonstrably false. Even more damning are these numbers.

Federally funded human trafficking task forces opened 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking for investigation between January 2008 and June 2010.

Now, it’s bad enough that one of the bill’s sponsors would throw out an unresearched “statistic” like this while pushing legislation. But that’s somewhat expected from our politicians, especially when they’ve got a horse in the race. But it’s even worse when a journalistic entity not only takes this stat at face value, but makes it comically worse by severely reducing its scope from national to local.

Mistakes will be made occasionally. I understand that. But this one should never have made it past the first round of editing. Certainly Rep. Poe is partially to blame for this, but the paper’s editorial team should know that presenting patently untrue claims as fact severely weakens its stance on the issue. Of course, coming out in favor of punishing sex traffickers is hardly a controversial stance, so it’s likely the editorial didn’t receive a thorough vetting before publication.

But letting this slip through compromises the paper’s credibility and accepting Rep. Poe’s “statistics” as fact indicates DMN is in possession of a faulty BS-detector, something no serious journalistic entity should ever let fall into disrepair.

Filed Under: congress, dallas morning news, exaggeration, laws, sex trafficking, ted poe

Opportunistic Politicians Lean On The FBI And Twitter To Shut Down Terrorist Accounts

from the and-then-what?-linkedin? dept

I have no idea what it is with certain politicians that makes them believe they can somehow “curb” violence by cordoning off a section of the internet. They don't seem to realize that determined individuals will simply route around their half-assed roadblock without breaking a sweat. Even worse, they don't seem to realize that useful information on violent groups and individuals can often be gleaned from the very same lines of communication they're trying to cut.

In this case, it’s very much like grandstanding politicians trying to shut down “human traffickers” like Backpages and Craigslist, failing to understand that law enforcement can use the same services to track down offenders. Rather than look for the upside of having a live feed from the enemy front (or realize the ultimate futility of their efforts), these lawmakers have chosen to throw a bunch of effort (or at least, words) behind a bad idea.

Seven House Republicans asked the FBI in September to demand that Twitter take down the accounts of U.S.-designated terrorist groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Somalia's al Shabaab. The letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller was spearheaded by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), who said Wednesday that the recent events vindicated the request.

“Allowing foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas to operate on Twitter is enabling the enemy,” Poe said in an e-mailed statement to The Hill. “Failure to block access arms them with the ability to freely spread their violent propaganda and mobilize in their War on Israel.

Now, I'm not going to claim to be smarter than these politicians (although you're certainly welcome to make that claim for me in the comment threads), but I'm curious as to how they arrived at the conclusion that blocking Twitter accounts would somehow result in less violence committed by terrorists. One could argue that breaking down a line of communication might result in some temporary disruption, but I've got to believe that Twitter isn't the only line of communication Hamas has.

Shutting down these accounts would do little more than a) make these politicians feel better about having done something, b) annoy (and possibly provoke) already irritable and violent groups, and c) move communication anti-terrorist entities rely on to a new channel possibly unavailable to them. The downside easily outweighs the upside, because the “upside” only benefits these seven lawmakers, giving them a feeling of power and self-righteousness, which will be cold comfort to those who might actually be using these feeds to glean intelligence and help defend themselves.

Then there's this amazing sentence, which must have been composed by Poe at a cost of one IQ point per letter:

The FBI and Twitter must recognize sooner rather than later that social media is a tool for the terrorists.

Any form of information dissemination can be considered a “tool” for terrorists. Imbuing Twitter with some sort of terrorist-defeating powers is ridiculous. Berating the FBI and Twitter for aiding and abetting terrorism through inaction is even more so. This is merely a continuation of Poe's anti-Twitter obsession, which began back in September when he first penned a letter to the FBI requesting the takedown of these “terrorist” accounts, citing (of all things), Twitter's decision to block a neo-Nazi account in Germany. (The account could still be read anywhere else in the world, or even in Germany with minimal effort.)

Poe is once again attempting to use Twitter's own statement against it, but the FBI just isn't giving this group of lawmakers the one thing they need to get their way:

“Twitter maintains that it will take down any account requested by the FBI,” seven Republican members of Congress wrote to the FBI last month. “As of this writing, the FBI has not made a single request to Twitter to take an account down.”

And (once again), Poe and his co-signers are using recent events to further their own agenda.

“Not one account has been shut down, unlike on YouTube and Facebook,” Poe told the Free Beacon.

“Twitter is not going to take it upon themselves to shut them down,” which is why the FBI needs to take action, Poe said.

The FBI isn't buying it, however.

FBI Special Agent Jason Pack told the Free Beacon, “The FBI received the Congressman’s letter and will respond to it appropriately.”

One assumes Pack “responded” by tossing the angry letter into the nearest trash can, possibly running it through the shredder first. The latest missive means someone at the FBI will need to empty the trash can, but given the results of Poe's previous demands, I highly doubt Twitter will be shuttering any accounts.

Poe has also expressed his disappointment in the Obama administration for not pushing for more Twitter shutdowns.

Poe speculated that one reason the Obama administration has not pursued the issue is because terrorists’ Twitter pages are a rich vein for the intelligence community to mine.

Poe, however, said that this is not a good enough reason to give these radical actors free rein on the Internet.

“If that’s [the administration’s] only way of knowing” what terrorists are up to, “we’ve got some serious problems with our intelligence service,” Poe said.

There's Poe's problem. He views Twitter as the only thing. In his mind, it's the only source of communication for terrorists and it's the only source of intel for the intelligence community. Poe has seized on Twitter as the only problem and won't be dissuaded easily, no matter how often the FBI refuses to indulge his “social media = terror” hobby horse.

The Free Beacon's Republican slant inadvertently suggests that Poe may just be kicking around Twitter because its “best friends” with Obama.

Twitter’s Washington D.C. lobbying team is comprised of several Obama administration confidants and former Democratic Hill staffers. Adam Sharp, the site’s top government liaison, formerly served as deputy chief of staff for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.). Its global public policy official, Colin Crowell, was a senior aide to Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), while Twitter’s head of international strategy, Katie Jacobs Stanton, once worked with the Obama administration on new media strategies.

Since 2011, several individuals who list their employer as Twitter have donated primarily to Democrats, including the Obama campaign and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

So… maybe it's not really about terrorism. Maybe it's just good, old fashioned partisanship sporting War on Terror clothing. No matter how you slice it, though, there's only one thing it truly is: stupid.

Filed Under: al shabaab, congress, fbi, free speech, hamas, hezbollah, ted poe, terrorism
Companies: twitter