    [House Hearing, 114 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

      THE EVOLUTION OF TERRORIST PROPAGANDA: THE PARIS ATTACK AND SOCIAL
                                     MEDIA

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

             SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                JANUARY 27, 2015

                                   __________

                                Serial No. 114-1

                                   __________

            Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

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    Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
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                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                     EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
    ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida         BRAD SHERMAN, California
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
    STEVE CHABOT, Ohio                   ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina           GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
    MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas             THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
    TED POE, Texas                       BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
    MATT SALMON, Arizona                 KAREN BASS, California
    DARRELL E. ISSA, California          WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
    TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania             DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
    JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina          ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   AMI BERA, California
    PAUL COOK, California                ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
    RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas            GRACE MENG, New York
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
    RON DeSANTIS, Florida                TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
    MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina         JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
    TED S. YOHO, Florida                 ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
    CURT CLAWSON, Florida                BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
    SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
    REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
    DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
    LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
    TOM EMMER, Minnesota

         Amy Porter, Chief of Staff      Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director

                   Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
                                     ------

             Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade

                            TED POE, Texas, Chairman
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina           WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
    DARRELL E. ISSA, California          BRAD SHERMAN, California
    PAUL COOK, California                BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
    REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin            ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
    LEE M. ZELDIN, New York

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                                   WITNESSES

    The Honorable Mark Wallace, chief executive officer, Counter
      Extremism Project..............................................     6
    Mr. J.M. Berger, author..........................................    40
    Mr. Evan Kohlmann, chief information officer, Flashpoint Partners    46
    Ms. Rebecca MacKinnon, director, Ranking Digital Rights, New
      America........................................................    56

              LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

    The Honorable Mark Wallace: Prepared statement...................     9
    Mr. J.M. Berger: Prepared statement..............................    42
    Mr. Evan Kohlmann: Prepared statement............................    49
    Ms. Rebecca MacKinnon: Prepared statement........................    58

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing notice...................................................    76
    Hearing minutes..................................................    77

                           THE EVOLUTION OF TERRORIST
                          PROPAGANDA: THE PARIS ATTACK
                                AND SOCIAL MEDIA

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015

                         House of Representatives,

            Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade,

                         Committee on Foreign Affairs,

                                Washington, DC.

        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in
    room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ted Poe (chairman
    of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Mr. Poe. The subcommittee will come to order.
        Without objection, all members may have 5 days to submit
    statements, questions and extraneous materials for the record
    subject to the length and limitation in the rules.
        Terrorists' use of social media has exploded over the past
    several years. Terrorist groups from ISIS to the Taliban use
    social media platforms to recruit, radicalize, spread
    propaganda and even raise money.
        Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states
    that it is unlawful to provide a designated foreign terrorist
    organization with material support or resources, including any
    property--tangible or intangible--or services, among them,
    communication, equipment, and facilities.
        If foreign terrorist organizations are using American
    companies to spread propaganda and raise money, the question
    that remains is: Is this a violation of American law? That is
    the question for us today.
        I asked the Department of Justice this question directly in
    August 2012. Their answer? They refused to say, as they put it,
    in the abstract whether a particular company is violating the
    law or not under this section. So they didn't give a definitive
    answer.
        American newspapers would have never allowed our enemies in
    World War II to place ads in, say, the New York Times for
    recruitment of people to go and fight against America. So why
    do social media companies allow terrorist content on their
    platforms?
        Terrorists know the benefit of social media. Social media
    is easy to use, it is free, and it reaches everyone in the
    world. We have seen this most recently with the attacks in
    Paris; and after the attack, terrorists and their supporters
    took to social media to praise the attack, recruit new
    jihadists and fund-raise.
        Twitter has become one of the terrorists most popular
    platforms. As you can see here on the monitor--I believe we
    have the monitors ready--a British jihadi in Syria is bragging
    about ISIS and is threatening America.
        We have another example of that. Here is an example of
    terrorists' use of social media. It is a Facebook fan page for
    Khorasan Group in Syria complete with a message board and
    photos.
        The Khorasan Group is a group set up by al-Qaeda and Syria
    to specifically attack the United States and Europe. In April
    2013, the al-Qaeda branch in Yemen known as AQIM held an online
    press conference on Twitter, allowing users to submit questions
    that were answered by the terror group and posted back on
    Twitter the following week.
        In February 2014, a Saudi cleric launched a fund-raising
    drive on Twitter for jihadists in Syria. The rise of the lone
    wolf terrorism in recent years has been in part fueled by
    terrorists' use of social media.
        The Boston bombers made two pressure cooker bombs. The
    recipes for those bombs were published before the attack in al-
    Qaeda's Inspire magazine. That magazine was released and
    promoted on social media.
        Some people make the excuse that there is no point in
    shutting down a social media account because it will pop again.
    But that is not always true. For years, Twitter was asked to
    shut down an account of the designated foreign terrorist
    organization, al-Shabaab, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.
        In 2013, al-Shabaab live tweeted its attack on the Westgate
    Mall in Kenya that killed 72 people. Twitter then shut down the
    account. Al-Shabaab tried to reopen accounts on Twitter but
    after getting shut down by Twitter each time, it finally quit.
        Twitter is far worse than its peers about proactively
    finding and removing terrorist content. One of our witnesses
    wrote in late 2013 that the gap between Twitter's practices and
    industry standards is large enough to raise the specter of
    negligence.
        YouTube is a popular platform for jihadists as well. Videos
    are especially effective in attracting and funding and
    donations. Every major video released by al-Qaeda is uploaded
    to YouTube and, as soon as they are released, to jihadist
    forums.
        ISIS posts videos on YouTube in a service called Vimeo that
    depict graphic violence. However, YouTube does try to remove
    them but can't get them all.
        In September 2010, I did send a letter to YouTube urging
    them to change their policy when it came to terrorist accounts.
    They did, allowing any user to flag a video for terrorist
    content, but have since changed that policy and instead take
    videos down if they post graphic content or train terrorists.
        Facebook is also a favorite social media site for
    terrorists and jihadists. Fortunately, Facebook has redoubled
    its efforts to proactively identify and remove that content.
        In 2011, the White House published a counter radicalization
    strategy that acknowledged terrorists' use of the Internet and
    social media to spread hate and violence. The report also
    committed the administration to devising a strategy to deal
    with this phenomena. However, no such strategy has been
    published by the administration.
        Then I sent a letter with a number of other colleagues in
    September 2012 urging the FBI to do more to reduce terrorists'
    use of Twitter. The FBI refused, saying they gained
    intelligence about groups and individuals from their social
    media activity, even though it is apparent that this social
    media activity recruits terrorists who want to kill.
        That may be true, but it must be weighed against the
    benefits of terrorist groups that enjoy this use because of the
    activity.
        The debate should take place and it should inform our
    policies about how to deal with this threat. At the very least
    we need a strategy, and that is the purpose--one of the
    purposes of this hearing.
        I will now yield 5 minutes to the new ranking member, Mr.
    Keating from Massachusetts, for his opening comments.
        Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Let me start off by thanking you for holding this important
    hearing and a timely hearing at that. Further, I would like to
    note this is indeed my first subcommittee hearing as ranking
    member and I look forward to working with you in the future.
        We begin this Congress with news of the terrible shootings
    in Paris. Our condolences continue to be with the friends and
    families of those victims and with all those who have been
    impacted similarly by senseless tragedies in Boston, New York,
    Brussels, Sydney, Peshawar, Nairobi and, unfortunately, the
    list can go on and on.
        This month's heartbreaking and gruesome attacks against
    Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher market in Paris have
    resoundingly brought people together from across the Atlantic
    and from all walks of life to express their strong commitment
    to pluralistic, democratic and tolerant societies.
        Yet, the same space in which terrorists and criminals
    operate to recruit and radicalize like-minded or just plain
    hateful individuals in the same medium is indeed the same
    democratic type of medium where open societies exercise their
    very freedoms, the kind of freedoms that these extremists
    abhor.
        There is no doubt that social networking, the Internet and
    propaganda have become the premier recruitment and
    radicalization tools for terrorist gangs and those expanding
    their reach far into Europe and the United States.
        This leads to a problem where the simplest quickest
    strategies to eliminate this type of harmful influence can also
    compromise the very basis of a free society, in effect
    complementing the terrorists' cause.
        In a recent report issued by the bipartisan Policy Center,
    two former co-chairs of the 9-11 Commission argue that while

            ``the use of Internet to radicalize and recruit
            homegrown terrorists is the single most important and
            dangerous innovation since the terrorist attacks of
            September 11, 2001. Approaches that are aimed at
            reducing the supply of violent extremist content on the
            Internet are neither feasible or desirable.''

        While advocating for the government to retain its
    capability for aggressive take downs of foreign-based Web sites
    to stop a terrorist attack, the report recommends a strategy of
    building partnerships with Internet companies, the private
    sector foundations, philanthropists and community groups to
    build capacity and to help potentially credible messengers such
    as mainstream groups, victims of terrorism and other
    stakeholders to become a more effective in advocating and
    conveying their messages.
        As a former district attorney, I too have seen the profound
    effect of working to raise the voices of those within
    communities across the U.S. that work toward peace and
    multicultural acceptance.
        While we debate ways in which to balance security needs in
    a free society, it is important to revisit our counter
    terrorism strategies to ensure that they are adequately
    incorporating the role of modern technology and communications.
        As I mentioned earlier, there is a larger piece of this
    puzzle, and that is the mind set of militants who come from
    Western nations to join brutal gangs that go on to rape, kill
    and divide thousands if not millions.
        As a transatlantic community, we can only fight the lure of
    terrorism by determining its causes and devising appropriate
    counter measures. In particular, I feel the messages promoting
    the heritage and very cultural history of the Mideast and North
    Africa will be important to help young people define their true
    identities instead of listening to backwoods propaganda seeking
    to destroy this history.
        Today, radicalization, online or otherwise, is occurring
    across the world in rural and urban settings, wealthy and poor
    communities and among all educational levels.
        In the long run, we must ensure that the course of action
    we pursue not only targets terrorist groups but the polarizing
    policies that often lead to societal division, and to do this,
    a balance between security and liberties must be maintained.
        The subject of today's hearing is of the utmost concern to
    our national security and I look forward to hearing from our
    witnesses and thank them for being here and their perspectives
    on this timely issue.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back my time.
        Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman.
        The Chair will recognize other members for their 1-minute
    opening statement. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
    California, Colonel Cook, for 1 minute.
        Mr. Cook. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I want to compliment you on having this hearing. As
    somebody who has been characterized as being born in Jurassic
    Park, this is a hearing which, I don't know how many years
    ago--10 years ago, what have you--didn't have a clue what was
    going on and, unfortunately, there is a lot of Americans that
    still do not understand social media and the importance of it.
        I am also somebody that spent a long time in the military,
    read all the books and everything else including Sun Tsu about
    knowing your enemy, and this new enemy that we have,
    international terrorism, which every week, every day something
    horrible happens and they are using a weapons system that,
    unfortunately, I and many of my colleagues were very, very
    naive in understanding this.
        I have had an education the last few years or I wouldn't be
    here. We all use it now. I think everybody in this room uses
    social media and it is something that young people they listen
    to, the 30-second, the 15-second sound bite, even a minute, and
    it is almost addictive.
        And, obviously, our enemies are enemies of democracy. They
    have used this so effectively in recruiting and finding out
    exactly how to get to people and using it as a strategy against
    us.
        So I actually believe we are going to need more of these
    hearings. Unfortunately, a lot of our colleagues couldn't make
    it. But this is the wave of the future because it works,
    unfortunately.
        So thank you again for having this very timely hearing. I
    yield back.
        Mr. Poe. Gentleman yields back his time. The Chair will
    recognize the former ranking member of this subcommittee, the
    gentleman from California, Mr. Sherman.
        Mr. Sherman. Judge, Bill, I am very much looking forward to
    working with you on the subcommittee in this Congress. I should
    point out that this subcommittee came into existence in 2003
    and for 12 years I have been either chair or ranking member of
    this subcommittee.
        It began as the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation
    and Human Rights. Two years later, the human rights part was
    transferred to another subcommittee. Then in the 110th Congress
    as well as the 111th, I was able to serve as chair of the
    subcommittee and persuade then-Chairman Lantos to add the
    economic jurisdiction of the full committee to this
    subcommittee, dealing with trade promotion, dealing with trade
    licensing and other limits on exports.
        And so I look forward to this next 2 years with the chair,
    the ranking member and all the members of the subcommittee.
        As to the matter at hand, I look forward to hearing from
    our witnesses on not only how we can be on defense and take
    down the bad stuff, but how we can be on offense and use social
    media and traditional media to get our message out.
        As to taking down the bad stuff, that is what First
    Amendment lawyers would call prior restraint if we did it
    through government fiat. So among our possible policies are to
    simply name and shame and nudge these Internet publishers, if
    you will, to take down the bad stuff.
        If we want to go further and use the power of the state to
    take down information, I think it is incumbent on Congress to
    craft a new statute defining what the responsibilities of these
    Internet companies are, and I yield back.
        Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman.
        I will introduce the witnesses that we have before us today
    and then they will each be allowed to give us 5 minutes of
    their testimony.
        Ambassador Mark Wallace is the CEO of the Counter Extremism
    Project. He is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
    Prior to his political work, practiced law as a commercial
    litigation attorney.
        Mr. J.M. Berger is an author and analyst studying
    extremism. He is also the founder of the Web site
    IntelWire.com, which publishes investigative journalism,
    analysis, and primary source documents on terrorism and
    international security.
        Mr. Evan Kohlmann is the chief information officer at
    Flashpoint Partners where he focuses on innovation and product
    development. Mr. Kohlmann has served as a consultant in
    terrorism matters to various government and law enforcement
    agencies throughout the world.
        Ms. Rebecca MacKinnon is the director of the Ranking
    Digital Rights program at New America. She is the co-founder of
    Global Voices Online and author of the book, ``Consent of the
    Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.''
        The Chair now will recognize Ambassador Wallace. We will
    start with you. You have 5 minutes.

       STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MARK WALLACE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE
                   OFFICER, COUNTER EXTREMISM PROJECT

        Mr. Wallace. Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Keating and
    members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
    testify on the hijacking and weaponization of social media by
    extremist groups to radicalize and recruit new members and to
    plan violent attacks against innocent people.
        The evidence of social media's reach can be seen in the
    thousands of people who continue to pour into Syria and Iraq in
    response to online propaganda by radical extremist groups and
    the grim aftermath of terror attacks that bear witness to the
    power of social media to radicalize and encourage violence.
        This hearing can lead to a better understanding of the
    growing problem of social media abuse and a more coordinated
    and cooperative relationship between technology companies like
    Twitter and those who want to stop extremists from anonymously
    abusing social media platforms.
        American companies have led the world in revolutionary
    online technology and social media. Unfortunately, these open
    platforms are also the tools of choice to spread messages of
    hate and for extremist groups like ISIS to propagandize,
    radicalize, recruit and commit cyber jihad.
        A major focus of the Counter Extremism Project's work is to
    combat extremist recruitment, rhetoric and calls for acts of
    terror online, starting with Twitter.
        Through our crowd sourcing campaign, #CEPDigitalDisruption,
    we have researched and reported hundreds of extremists to
    Twitter and to law enforcement. The question today is whether
    or not companies like Twitter will partner to combat those
    extremists who hijack and weaponize social media for terror.
        We have reached out in the spirit of cooperation to
    Twitter. The response we get from Twitter is dismissive to the
    point of dereliction. A Twitter official has said publically
    that ``one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.''
        This statement is insipid and unserious. Social media sites
    have a responsibility to act against extremists. An American-
    born jihadi from Minneapolis operates on Twitter with the alias
    Mujahid Miski.
        He is one of the most influential jihadis using Twitter and
    has tweeted some of the most heinous content we have seen,
    including threats to behead CEP's president, the former
    Homeland Security adviser, Fran Townsend.
        He boasted he has been suspended from Twitter 20 times and
    keeps coming back, yet Twitter does nothing to remove his new
    accounts. As a result, we have been playing a never ending game
    of Whac-A-Mole in trying to stop him.
        We have raised these issues to Twitter. Twitter has not
    taken further action against him. I respectfully request that a
    copy of the tweets we have reported over the course of our
    digital disruption campaign be included along with my prepared
    testimony as part of this hearing's record.
        Mr. Poe. Without objection, it will be made part of the
    record.
        Mr. Wallace. Thank you, sir.
        I would like to clarify why our focus is on Twitter. In the
    case of jihadis online, Twitter is the gateway drug. This is
    where vulnerable people are first exposed to radical content.
    From Twitter, the conversation moves to platforms like AskFM,
    where those being recruited can ask questions, for example:
    What is life like in ISIS, or how can I get to Syria?
        Then the conversation moves to private chat applications
    like Kick or WhatsApp. The path I just described is not
    fictional. It is exactly how three Denver girls were
    radicalized and tried to join ISIS.
        We must stop recruitment at the gateway, Twitter. We stand
    ready to work with governments and any company in finding the
    right mix of remedies that effectively attacks this growing
    problem while protecting our values and liberties.
        There are immediate actions that Twitter should take.
    Twitter should grant trusted reporting status to governments
    and groups like ours to swiftly identify and ensure Twitter's
    expeditious removal of extremists online.
        The reporting process on Twitter is long and cumbersome. A
    more accessible reporting protocol should be added for users to
    report suspected extremist activity.
        America's leading tech company should adopt a policy
    statement that extremist activities will not be tolerated--
    simple but important.
        Twitter has a system where people can verify their
    accounts. This concept can be the foundation for a tiered
    system whereby unverified accounts are restricted and subject
    to streamlined review.
        When one of the most influential and pro-ISIS Twitter
    accounts, ShamiWitness, was publically revealed to be an Indian
    businessman, it shook the cyber jihadi network. He immediately
    stopped his online jihad.
        Twitter should reveal detailed information, including the
    names and locations of the most egregious cyber jihadis. We can
    collectively agree that the most egregious of cyber jihadis do
    not deserve anonymity or the right to engage in hate and
    incitement of terror speech.
        The FBI shut down Silk Road. There are other enforcement
    successes: Online drug distribution, child pornography, tobacco
    sales and sex trafficking, among others. If we can confront
    these activities there are strategies that we can use on those
    who hijack and weaponize social media.
        Thank you, Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Keating and members
    of the subcommittee, and I would just like to introduce Alan
    Goldsmith, Jen Lach, Darlene Cayabyab and Steven Cohen who are
    really the brains of the operation because it depends on young
    people to understand these complicated networks. I just wanted
    to introduce them.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Wallace follows:]

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                                  ----------

        Mr. Poe. The Chair will next recognize Mr. Berger for his
    5-minute testimony.

                  STATEMENT OF MR. J.M. BERGER, AUTHOR

        Mr. Berger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, members
    of the committee.
        I want to talk a little bit about the scope of the problem
    and sort of try and put some hard numbers on what we are
    talking about here because a lot of the discussion we have
    about this is often very general and on principle--we know it
    is bad but we don't know exactly what it is.
        We are going to focus on Twitter partly because it is
    easier to do this kind of analysis on Twitter and also, as the
    chairman noted and as Ambassador Wallace noted, Twitter has a
    particular problem with this that it is in the process of
    adjusting its approach to, as opposed to Facebook and YouTube
    who have made changes over the last couple of years.
        So in a forthcoming study on ISIS' use of Twitter, which
    was commissioned by Google Ideas and will be published by the
    Brookings Institution's project on U.S. relations with the
    Islamist world, technologist Jonathan Morgan and I set out to
    develop metrics that could define the size and function of the
    Islamic State's presence on Twitter.
        While our analysis is not complete, we can confidently
    estimate that throughout last fall at least 45,000 Twitter
    accounts were used by ISIS supporters. This figure includes
    accounts that were both created and suspended during the time
    it took us to collect the data.
        The size of the network has certainly changed since this
    estimate but it remains only a minuscule fraction of the
    overall Twitter user base. Our research began at the same time
    that Twitter started an aggressive campaign of suspending
    accounts so it reflects some of the effects of those
    suspensions.
        What it doesn't do is give us a baseline to look at to see
    what the environment without suspensions is, which is
    unfortunate, but the timing dictated that.
        Almost three-quarters of ISIS supporters on Twitter that we
    studied had fewer than 500 followers each. Only a handful had
    more than 20,000.
        Suspended users--people we were able to determine
    definitively had been suspended as opposed to changing their
    name or deleting their own account--had generally tweeted three
    times as often as those who were not suspended, and received
    almost 10 times as many retweets from other ISIS supporters.
        Suspended users averaged twice as many followers as those
    who were not suspended. When users are removed from the system,
    when they are suspended or they delete themselves or for
    whatever reason they stop taking part, we did see some evidence
    that the existing accounts compensate.
        So other people step up or new accounts are created. The
    accounts that already exist increase their activity. But the
    preliminary evidence suggests that they can't fully regenerate
    the network if suspensions continue at a consistent pace.
        One big part of this debate, you know, has been this Whac-
    A-Mole concept. It is, like, you know, does it help to delete
    these accounts, does it help to suspend these people? And I
    think that so far what we are seeing is there is pretty good
    evidence that it does limit what they can do online.
        We confirmed at least 800 ISIS supporters suspensions
    between last fall and this month's and there are indications
    there were thousands more that we could not confirm, possibly
    well over 10,000 more.
        While tens of thousands of accounts remain, ISIS supporters
    online called the effects of these suspensions devastating.
    There are three important benefits to the current level of
    suspension.
        First, they reduce ISIS' reach among users at risk of
    radicalization. People don't spring from the womb fully
    radicalized. They have to find a path to radicalization, to
    talk to a recruiter, to get information about the movement.
    Suspensions don't eliminate that path but they increase the
    cost of participation.
        Second, while ISIS' reach has been reduced, enough accounts
    remain to provide an important open source intelligence. So
    that is the other piece of this debate, you know, is there
    valuable intelligence that we are losing out on when we suspend
    these guys.
        And, you know, if you have 30,000 or 40,000 accounts that
    are all very limited reach, you can get a lot of intelligence
    from that without necessarily allowing them to operate
    unfettered.
        Third, the targeting of the most active members of the ISIS
    supporter network, which is what is currently happening in
    terms of the Twitter suspensions we have seen, undercuts ISIS'
    most important strategic advantage on this platform, which is
    about 2,000 to 3,000 supporter accounts that are much more
    active than ordinary Twitter users.
        This is an explicit strategy of ISIS. They put out
    documents about it. They have a name for the group--they call
    them the mujahideen, which is Arabic for industrious--and they
    are the people who drive this activity.
        The reason we are talking about this now is that these over
    achievers who get online and are extremely active are able to
    drive a lot more traffic. They are able to cause ISIS hashtags
    to trend and get aggregated by third parties.
        They are able to influence search results. So if somebody
    is searching for information on Baghdad they might get an ISIS
    threat instead of whatever information they were trying to
    seek.
        So what we see right now is that there is a lot of pressure
    on this network and I think that there is a balance that we are
    pretty close to achieving. But there is definitely room for
    improvement.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Berger follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  ----------

        Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back his time.
        The Chair now recognizes Mr. Kohlmann for his 5-minute
    opening statement. Mr. Kohlmann?

      STATEMENT OF MR. EVAN KOHLMANN, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER,
                          FLASHPOINT PARTNERS

        Mr. Kohlmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members
    of the committee.
        As more young people from the U.S. and other Western
    countries seek to depart to join jihadi front lines abroad,
    there has been an increasing public awareness of the role that
    online social media is serving and recruiting them to the
    cause.
        Yet, recently there has been a noticeable divergence from
    traditional jihadi chat forums to the slicker interfaces and
    enormous global audience that has been afforded by services
    like Facebook and Twitter.
        Indeed, the trend toward jihadists exploiting Western
    commercial social media platforms has been in full view in the
    aftermath of this month's terrorist attacks in Paris.
        Through relatively little is known about how the Kouachi
    brothers and Amedy Coulibaly were using social media, claims of
    responsibility for the attacks in Paris emerged quite quickly
    from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, all of which were
    distributed exclusively via Twitter.
        On January 9, AQAP's media wing used its account on Twitter
    to disseminate download links for a message from its official,
    Hareth al-Nadhari, praising the Paris attacks and lamenting
    only that, ``I wish I had been there with you.''
        On January 14, again, using the exact same Twitter account,
    AQAP distributed download links for a direct video recorded
    claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks from senior
    official, Nasr al-Ansi, in which he declared, ``The one who
    chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation is
    the leadership of this organization.''
        In fact, as of right now, AQAP, which is a designated
    terrorist organization under U.S. law, has not one but two
    official accounts on Twitter: One for releasing videos and one
    for releasing breaking news updates.
        Nor is AQAP alone. Other allied factions such as al-Qaeda
    and the Islamic Maghreb have also begun to eschew the
    traditional route of publishing media on these forums and
    instead are releasing material directly on Twitter.
        Over the past 3 months, AQAP's public Twitter account has
    only been disabled by administrators on four occasions. Each
    time it has been disabled, AQAP has merely created a new
    account with the same name appended with 1, 2, 3, 4,
    respectively. There is not much mystery in which Twitter
    account AQAP will register next unless you have trouble
    counting to five.
        Nonetheless, Twitter is not the only offender here and this
    leads to another aspect of jihadi social media that surfaced as
    a result of Paris and that is the Internet video that featured
    Amedy Coulibaly claiming responsibility for the attacks in the
    name of ISIS.
        In the video, Coulibaly condemned recent Western air
    strikes on ISIS and threatened, ``If you attack the Caliphate,
    if you attack the Islamic State, we will attack you.''
        Links to this video were first posted on ISIS' main online
    chat forum, alplatformmedia.com and, naturally, the question
    that follows from this analysis is: How is ISIS able to operate
    its own official .com social media platform on the Internet in
    order to disseminate its media?
        And the answer to that question is another billion-dollar
    San Francisco-based company called CloudFlare, which aims to
    shield Web sites from being targeted by spammers, cyber
    criminals and denial of service attacks.
        CloudFlare in essence serves as a gatekeeper to control the
    flow of unwanted visitors to a given site. It has advanced
    detection features that thwart attempts by automated robots to
    scrape data from and monitor these forums.
        In fact, two of ISIS' top three online chat forums,
    including alplatformmedia.com, are currently guarded by
    CloudFlare.
        Without such protection, these sites would almost certainly
    succumb to the same relentless online attacks that have
    completely collapsed several major jihadi web forums in recent
    years.
        In 2013, after CloudFlare was accused of providing
    protection to terrorist Web sites, the company CEO insisted
    that,

            ``It would not be right for us to monitor the content
            that flows through our network and make determinations
            on what is and what is not politically appropriate.
            Frankly, that would be creepy.''

        He also asserted,

            ``A Web site is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no
            imminent danger it creates and no provider has an
            affirmative obligation to monitor and make
            determinations about the theoretically harmful nature
            of speech a site may contain.''

        It is extremely difficult to reconcile the logical paradox
    that it is currently illegal under U.S. law to give pro bono
    assistance to a terrorist group in order to convince them to
    adopt politics instead of violence but it is perfectly legal
    for CloudFlare to commercially profit from a terrorist group by
    assisting them to disseminate propaganda which encourages mass
    murder.
        In fact, CloudFlare's CEO has been adamant that,
    ``CloudFlare abides by all applicable laws in the countries in
    which we operate and we firmly support the due process of
    law.''
        The multi-billion-dollar U.S. companies who provide social
    media services to ISIS and al-Qaeda are well aware that the way
    American law is presently structured it is almost impossible
    for them to ever be held responsible for the mayhem that their
    paying users might cause.
        The only real incentive they have to address this problem
    is when it becomes so glaring, as it was in the case of James
    Foley, that they are briefly forced to take action to save
    public face.
        Permitting U.S. commercial interests to simply ignore vital
    national security concerns and earn profits from consciously
    providing high-tech services to terrorist organizations is not
    an acceptable legal framework in the 21st century.
        Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Kohlmann follows:]

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                                  ----------

        Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman.
        Now we will hear from our final witness, Ms. MacKinnon, for
    your 5-minute opening statement.

     STATEMENT OF MS. REBECCA MACKINNON, DIRECTOR, RANKING DIGITAL
                          RIGHTS, NEW AMERICA

        Ms. MacKinnon. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
    Member Keating, members of the committee.
        So how do we fight terrorism and violent extremism, which
    are obvious problems as we have just been hearing, in the
    Internet age while not undermining the core principles and
    freedoms of democratic and open societies?
        As it happens, yesterday I returned from the Philippines
    where I participated in a conference of bloggers, activists and
    citizen journalists from all over the world, people who believe
    in freedom of expression, the open Internet and multicultural
    tolerance.
        I can tell you terrorists are not the only people who are
    using social media powerfully and effectively. However, many
    people connected to this community face serious threats of
    censorship and imprisonment when they write about subjects or
    advocate policy positions that their governments find
    threatening.
        In countries like Ethiopia, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco,
    China and elsewhere, some have even been charged under broad
    anti-terror laws that are habitually used as tools to keep
    incumbent regimes in power.
        In response to the tragic massacre in Paris, the French
    Government has called for United Nations member states to work
    together on an international legal framework that would place
    greater responsibility on social networks and other Internet
    platforms for terrorists' use of their services.
        In addressing the problem of terrorists' use of social
    networking platforms, I believe the United States should adhere
    to the following principles.
        First, multi-stakeholder policymaking. The U.S. opposes
    U.N. control over Internet governance because many U.N. member
    states, such as some of the ones that I just listed, advocate
    policies that would make the Internet much less free and open.
        Instead, the U.S. supports a multi-stakeholder approach
    that includes industry, civil society and the technical
    community alongside governments in setting policies and
    technical standards that ensure that the Internet functions
    globally.
        In constructing global responses to terrorists' use of the
    Internet, we need a multi-stakeholder approach for the same
    reasons.
        Second, any national level laws, regulations or policies
    aimed at regulating or policing online activities should
    undergo a human rights risk assessment process to identify
    potential negative repercussions for freedom of expression,
    assembly and privacy.
        Governments need to be transparent and accountable with the
    public about the nature and volume of requests being made to
    companies. Companies need to be able to uphold core principles
    of freedom of expression and privacy grounded in international
    human rights standards.
        Several major U.S.-based Internet companies have made
    commitments to uphold these rights as members of the multi-
    stakeholder Global Network Initiative.
        Guidelines for implementing these commitments include
    narrowly interpreting government demands to restrict content or
    grant access to user data or communications, challenging
    government requests that lack a clear legal basis, transparency
    with users about the types of government requests received and
    the extent to which the company complies, and restricting
    compliance to the online domains over which the requesting
    government actually has jurisdiction.
        Third, liability for Internet intermediaries, including
    social networks, for users' behavior must be kept limited.
    Research conducted around the world by human rights experts and
    legal scholars shows clear evidence that when companies are
    held liable for users' speech and activity, violations of free
    expression and privacy can be expected to occur as companies
    preemptively and proactively seek to play it safe and remove
    anything that might get them in trouble.
        Limited liability for Internet companies is an important
    prerequisite for keeping the Internet open and free.
        Fourth, development and enforcement of companies' terms of
    service and other forms of private policing must also undergo
    human rights risk assessments.
        Any new procedures developed by companies to eliminate
    terrorist activity from their platforms must be accompanied by
    engagement with key affected stakeholders, at-risk groups and
    human rights advocates.
        Fifth, in order to prevent abuse and maintain public
    support for the measures taken, governments as well as
    companies must provide effective, accessible channels for
    grievance and remedy for people whose rights to free
    expression, assembly and privacy have been violated.
        Thank you for listening, and I look forward to your
    questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. MacKinnon follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  ----------

        Mr. Poe. I thank all of our panelists for being here. I
    agree with you, Ms. MacKinnon. This is a very complex issue. I,
    like everybody else on the dais here, are great believers of
    the First Amendment.
        It is first because it is the most important, and anything
    Congress does to try to make exceptions is always suspect. But
    the Immigration and Nationality Act's Section 219 says that no
    one can aid a foreign terrorist organization.
        So we are not talking about some individual who makes some
    comments on the Internet that is tweeting something. The first
    requirement is that it is a foreign terrorist organization that
    is doing this.
        It seems to me that that legislation--giving aid to a
    foreign terrorist organization--was upheld in the Holder v.
    Humanitarian Law Project in 2010. I think that is the only case
    where the Supreme Court addressed the issue of Internet, free
    speech and foreign terrorist organizations.
        So we set aside all those other folks out there that are
    saying things on the Internet--I would like to just address
    that specific issue--foreign terrorist organization, a member
    of a foreign terrorist organization, recruiting folks in jihad,
    radical jihadists to kill other people, like Americans.
        What suggestions specifically other than the one Ms.
    MacKinnon has made--several that she has made--do any of the
    rest of you have on that specific issue? I know that companies
    vary and many are, I think, trying to cooperate and bring down
    these sites on their own.
        Mr. Kohlmann, would you like to weigh in on that question?
    Foreign terrorist organization, member of a foreign terrorist
    organization, using the Internet to recruit jihadists to kill
    folks, being very specific about that question.
        Mr. Kohlmann. Sure. I think to the average person, the idea
    of how would you find terrorist propaganda on Twitter or how to
    find the important parts, sounds like a gargantuan task.
        But the reality is is that the companies we are talking
    about already have the technology which is capable of doing
    this without human intervention. And how do I know that?
        It is the same reason that when you go on YouTube or
    Twitter you don't see child pornography. You don't see stolen
    commercial videos. There is a reason for that. It is not just
    happenstance.
        The reason is because of the fact that the companies that
    operate those social media platforms have a strict policy when
    it comes to things like child pornography and stolen
    copyrighted material and they have proactive means of removing
    them.
        The exact same way that they remove that material they can
    also remove terrorist propaganda. It is just a matter of
    switching the search terms, the hash values, the images that
    they are looking for. The answer is that they don't have an
    incentive to do that right now.
        Mr. Poe. And what should that incentive be?
        Mr. Kohlmann. Well, look. Right now there is no legal
    remedy for anyone in the event that these companies are hosting
    a terrorist Web site.
        I mean, Twitter has never been sued and it has never been
    held criminally liable or civilly liable by anyone. Why? The
    answer is because of the fact that--the way that it is right
    now--Internet hosting provider law is written so that an
    Internet hosting provider, if they don't have active knowledge
    of what is going on, they are not really responsible.
        And look, I don't want to crack down on the freedom of
    speech and I don't want to make Internet companies responsible
    for everything that their users do, when there are some things
    that their users do we will never really be able to know about.
        But there is a certain level of basic responsibility that
    companies like Twitter and CloudFlare are failing to meet. We
    are not asking that they find every single terrorist Web site
    or they shut down every single terrorist video, just to make a
    best effort. And anyone who says that the effort that is being
    made right now is a best effort has no idea what they are
    talking about.
        Mr. Poe. Okay. I have a question for you, Ambassador. Once
    again, I am talking specifically not about terrorists. I am
    talking about members of a foreign terrorist organization,
    which the law specifically addresses currently.
        Ambassador Wallace, the FBI follows these chats and they
    don't seem to encourage the bringing down of some of this
    Internet material because they want to follow the bad guys all
    over the world, what they are saying, who they are, et cetera.
        What is your reaction to that?
        Mr. Wallace. I think it is very clear that the intelligence
    value of having everything open and accessible is incredibly
    overstated. It is very much like, with due respect, the
    demagoguery associated that somehow we are all talking about
    impairing First Amendment rights.
        All of us support the First Amendment here but this isn't
    free speech. This is hate speech, and I think that, having
    previously served in our Government and having been a consumer
    of our intelligence data, we have so many good tools that allow
    us to track terrorists' activity that we don't need to solely
    rely on the open forums.
        The value of taking down these recruiters, these
    propagandizers, far exceeds the intelligence value that we
    would get from fully tracking all the individual users of
    social media.
        So I think it is very clear. Maybe at one point when there
    were only a few abusers a long time ago there might have been
    intelligence value. But right now, the Internet is awash with
    those that would propagandize, recruit and incite terror. We
    have to take these down, and as J.M. said, it matters. It has
    an effect.
        Mr. Poe. The Chair will yield to the ranking member 5
    minutes for his questions of the panel.
        Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        One area, and I would initially do it with Mr. Berger
    because he alluded to metrics that were used themselves, but in
    your analysis, and I will throw it open to the other witnesses
    as well, part of the difficulty will be--you know, the chairman
    set one specific example but as you go along it becomes a
    little more difficult.
        What material, you know, and to what extent when you were
    looking at your metrics did you draw the line in some of these
    postings to have them fit into your analysis? You had to draw a
    line somewhere if you had metrics.
        Can you give us some examples of what, in your analysis,
    was on one side of the line and what was on the other?
        Mr. Berger. So for this particular paper what we wanted to
    do was----
        Mr. Poe. Would you speak up a little bit, please?
        Mr. Berger. Sure. I don't know if--okay.
        Mr. Poe. I am just a little deaf so talk louder, Mr.
    Berger.
        Mr. Berger. For this particular paper what we did was we
    wanted to identify people who were specifically ISIS supporters
    and not supporters of other jihadist groups.
        So what we developed was a metric to sort the 50,000
    accounts we had really robust information on and we evaluated
    them based on whether they appeared to be interested in just
    ISIS and whether they were promoting ISIS or whether they were
    more broadly interested in following jihadist activity.
        So in this case, we got very, very specific. What I will
    say about the intelligence question and the metrics in this
    kind of material is relevant to that it is possible to sift out
    the noise on here.
        So we did a demographic study that we will publish in
    detail on 20,000 ISIS supporters. But within that group it is
    eminently possible to zero in on who the media people are, on
    who the foreign fighters are, who is in the country, who is not
    in the country.
        You know, the issue that you run into with this is that you
    can't do it 100 percent. So we created a sample group to do our
    demographics as 20,000 accounts that is 95 percent ISIS
    supporters.
        So if you are going to approach this problem legislatively
    or encourage companies to take a more aggressive role, one of
    the things you have to do is figure out first where you are
    going to draw the line, whether it is going to be a member of
    the organization. There aren't 20,000 ISIS members on Twitter.
    There are 20,000 ISIS supporters that we can point to.
        So how much involvement do they have to have and how are we
    going to determine that without going in with a search warrant
    and really getting, you know, very invasive about how we are
    going to get that information out of the company.
        Mr. Keating. So you did it based on, you know, people that
    you identified through your analysis as ISIS. Can I just be a
    little more broader and thematic in this?
        Can you give me any examples just off the top of your head
    where it is clear, you know, where you are on one side of the
    line where it is a difficult choice, and the other side of the
    line when it isn't? Because those are the kind of decisions----
        Mr. Berger. Sure.
        Mr. Keating [continuing]. We might have to do it, and I
    would ask anyone if they wanted to venture in. Ms. MacKinnon,
    did you get a chance? Where would you say--can you give an
    example where it is clearly an issue where action should be
    taken and it is one where even though it might be a close call
    it is not?
        Ms. MacKinnon. I am not a counter terrorism expert so I am
    not going to go outside of my field of expertise. But I,
    certainly, can say that the question is: Who is going to make
    the determination where the line is drawn, right? Is it the
    company? Is it the government? Is it someone else? Is it an
    outside expert?
        Mr. Keating. And do they use a common----
        Ms. MacKinnon. And in order to determine what side of the
    line this person falls on, is the company going to need to
    conduct an investigation of that person and where they are
    coming from?
        This leads to an issue of there is already a great public
    backlash about the amount of information that companies are
    collecting on people and the way in which it is shared with law
    enforcement and national security.
        And so companies, in thinking about not just their domestic
    trust with users but their trust with international users which
    is the main growth area for all of these companies, are they
    going to have to start building their own profiles on, you
    know, users of interest in order to decide which side of the
    line they fall on.
        Mr. Keating. Okay. Let me just ask the other witnesses that
    we have. What could we do to establish those kind of guidelines
    that would be useful from company to company? Can it be done in
    a uniform way?
        Mr. Wallace. Sure, I will take a quick crack. Look, the
    clear line to us is incitement of violence, right? I mean,
    there are a lot of lawyers in the room. Incitement of violence,
    clearly, or terror is clear.
        Threatening to behead Fran Townsend on Twitter, I think,
    shouldn't be on Twitter. I think that is very clear and
    constitutes a bright line. I think we would all agree that
    shouldn't be there.
        Mr. Keating. But where it gets a little gray?
        Mr. Wallace. Where it gets a little bit gray is saying that
    you support these groups. I would say that now is the time to
    change. Inspire magazine is a classic example.
        This is a publication that has been providing material
    support for al-Qaeda for a long time. We have been tolerating
    it under the right of free expression.
        There is an excellent op-ed in the New York Times I think 2
    days ago that said, ``No more al-Qaeda magazines.'' I think now
    we can say that as it pertains to terrorist organizations, we
    have taken a decision that promoting these groups is a
    violation of law.
        We should not tolerate hate speech that supports these
    entities and we shouldn't allow the Internet versions of
    Inspire magazine.
        Mr. Keating. All right. I will just have this one comment,
    Mr. Chairman, and yield back. The answers were basically group
    centered, and when it comes to that we have to move forward
    somehow and grasp the content--maybe we will deal with that in
    a second round.
        I yield back, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Poe. The Chair will recognize the gentleman from South
    Carolina, Mr. Wilson, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I thank all of you for being here today and I want to thank
    you, Ambassador, for pointing out the circumstances of Whac-A-
    Mole because it seems like that is where we are. Then you
    proceeded that we can be successful and have been in blocking
    child pornography, drug sales, human trafficking.
        And, Mr. Kohlmann, thank you for pointing out about stolen
    copyrighted material. There is hope, and for the American
    people we need this because respecting, indeed, as Ms.
    MacKinnon has pointed out, the First Amendment rights that we
    so respect, certainly, that doesn't include promoting mass
    murder.
        And I just sincerely hope that with the good minds who are
    here that, indeed, positive programs can be developed. In fact,
    Ambassador, could you tell us about the Think Again campaign
    and has there been success or limitations based on that
    particular program by the State Department?
        Mr. Wallace. You know, there are various tools in the
    toolshed. One of them is the counter narrative argument and
    that has been the State Department's effort of trying to win
    the war of ideas.
        At the Counter Extremism Project, we take the position that
    we should be pursuing all items on the menu, order every item
    on the menu. And the counter-narrative option is important.
    Obviously, the State Department has had some fumbling around
    initially with the Think Again program; it has had some
    difficulty. Our focus right now is there are many tens of
    thousands of these actors on the Internet.
        I think if we focused on the seed accounts, those that are
    really driving this conversation, and work cooperatively with
    the online platforms and systematically took them down, it
    would provide opportunities for the State Department and others
    to engage in legitimate counter narrative conversations because
    they would have the advantage of not having the jihadis online.
        So I think this is something that we need to do
    collectively and collaboratively.
        Mr. Wilson. And, to me, it is so important that we counter
    the brainwashing messages that are utterly bizarre. A couple
    years ago I was in Pakistan and I was reading a newspaper that
    was very vibrant and seemed very positive and very open minded,
    and then I read an op-ed and it was accusing the United States
    of intentionally targeting mosques and all kind of bizarre
    accusations that had no basis at all in reality.
        And then I looked to see who the author of the article was:
    Fidel Castro. How would he know this? It was an utter
    fabrication. And so whoever would like to answer, how are our
    governments and civil service organizations using social media
    platforms to counter terrorist messaging and propaganda?
        Mr. Kohlmann. I would just say this. I would say that it is
    a great thing to counter terrorist propaganda. I would say that
    thus far the efforts of the State Department and social media
    to do this have not been very successful, and I can tell you
    that from directly studying them.
        Most of the time when State Department social media
    representatives get involved on jihadi forums or any forums
    that have people from the Middle East on them they have to
    identify themselves, first of all, as being State Department
    representatives, and that kind of ends the discussion right
    there because the rest of the people then start spouting off
    about--why is America sticking its nose in our business, and
    why are there spies observing our conversations and what not.
        So that program by and large, in my opinion, is a complete
    failure. The most successful single thing we can do to counter
    their ideology is show where the rubber meets the road. And
    what do I mean by that?
        Right now, ISIS and al-Qaeda, in particular AQAP, right now
    they are locked in this test of wills where they are putting
    out nasty, nasty stuff about each other on the Internet in
    English and Arabic and all sorts of languages.
        ISIS just put out a whole magazine in which they accused
    al-Qaeda and the Taliban of being deviant morons. Now, that is
    what needs to go out there. That is what we need to be
    rebroadcasting, the fact that these guys think that each other
    are a bunch of clowns.
        There is no honor in this. There is no courage or valor.
    They both think that they are idiots, and if you put that out
    there and you show that these guys are really amateurs, they
    are clowns, that most of the people that are involved in this
    don't even believe in the ideology, that is where you really
    crack the seal.
        That is where you start breaking the hold that these folks
    have in social media. You have to show that they are full of
    it, and they are, and the only way you can do that is by
    showing their own videos in which they are massacring people,
    massacring Muslims.
        There is no explanation for that anywhere in their
    propaganda. You have to show that. That is what weakens them.
        Mr. Wilson. Well, again, thank you, and--to show the truth.
    Thank you so much and, indeed, how sad it is that the chief
    victims of what is going on are fellow Muslims first. We seem
    to be second. Thank you.
        Mr. Poe. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
    California, Mr. Sherman, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Sherman. I want to focus first on getting our message
    out. The Internet as a tool favors the side that is trying to
    get information out and puts grave, both legal questions and
    technological questions, and just Whac-A-Mole difficulties on
    somebody who is trying to keep information from getting out. So
    if we can get our message to defeat their message the
    technology is with us.
        I want to bring to the attention of this subcommittee
    something I have mentioned, I think, in the full committee and
    that is the State Department refuses to hire a single Islamic
    expert, not a single person who is really qualified to quote
    Hadith and Koranic verses. Not one.
        And so we are in a circumstance where we think the best
    argument to use on those who are close to embracing Islamic
    extremism is to say they kill children, isn't that obviously
    bad?
        Well, in the world of Islamic extremists maybe that is not
    one of the top 10 sins. If we had some understanding of basic
    Islam and then extremist Islam from people who are not just
    passing knowledge but are people who have memorized the Koran
    then we can do a much better job.
        But that would mean taking State Department jobs away or at
    least one away from people with fancy degrees from U.S. and the
    Western European universities, and it has been completely
    rejected by the State Department, who thinks they are going to
    make arguments thought of in our minds to people of a
    completely different mindset.
        So, I mean, these are folks who barely know enough not to
    hold a get-together with ham sandwiches and beer to discuss
    what Islam does not allow, okay?
        Mr. Kohlmann, do they have the technology not only to
    deactivate a particular user but to deactivate that IP address,
    that computer, so that they can't just log in from that
    particular site and give a different name?
        Mr. Kohlmann. One hundred percent, and----
        Mr. Sherman. Do they use it?
        Mr. Kohlmann. No, and I--that is----
        Mr. Sherman. Wait a minute. So you go online and you put up
    something so bad that Twitter actually does take you down.
        Mr. Kohlmann. They don't ban the IP, no.
        Mr. Sherman. You eat lunch, you go back on, you use the
    same computer to put up similar material but you identify
    yourself as, you know, with a different name and they leave you
    up?
        Mr. Kohlmann. There is a jihadist that just commented the
    other day. He actually tweeted at Twitter and said why don't
    you just stop this pantomime and stop doing this whole thing
    where you shut down our accounts occasionally; it just takes us
    2 minutes to create a new account when you shut one down.
    They----
        Mr. Sherman. And they can do it from the same computer?
    Okay.
        Mr. Kohlmann. Yes. Twitter doesn't look at these kind of
    things because, again, they don't have any incentive to.
        Mr. Sherman. Well, that raises the next issue and that is
    how do we put the right kind of pressure on these
    organizations. At a minimum, this subcommittee ought to be
    involved in naming and shaming.
        But then you go beyond that to perhaps changing our tax
    laws, which doesn't raise some of the same First Amendment
    arguments, or otherwise penalizing those that carry the message
    at least when the author is an identified foreign terrorist
    organization, because that doesn't require delving into content
    and parsing words.
        Even if it is just weather reports from Mosul, if they are
    brought to you by ISIS, they shouldn't be on Twitter. Just to
    give you an illustration of how difficult it is to get our law
    enforcement authorities to take seriously anything that is a
    few steps away from the dead body, something that is in the
    realm of finance and propaganda, I brought to the attention of
    Eric Holder himself a video showing Americans in Orange County
    raising money for Hamas.
        They still haven't even lost their tax exemption so we are
    subsidizing it, and the Americans who were on the flotilla that
    took building materials to Gaza and turned them over to Hamas,
    not even a letter of inquiry.
        So we live in this world where, yes, if we see you with a
    gun or a bomb we know you are a threat but if you violate our
    clearest laws but you are white collar, we don't want to do
    anything.
        So I realize it is going to be tougher to get these, to
    force by rule of law taking down certain messages because,
    where do you draw the line between those who advocate for ISIS
    and those who say, well, ISIS isn't quite as bad as Brad
    Sherman says they are?
        But we can certainly take down anything that claims,
    whether it is true or not, to be posting to a foreign terrorist
    organization. Ms. MacKinnon, you haven't commented. You have
    been an advocate for privacy here. Why not just take it down if
    it says brought to you by any organization on the U.S. foreign
    terrorist organization list?
        Ms. MacKinnon. Well, I think at root here we have a trust
    problem that is going three ways. I think that there has been
    sort of a history over the last couple of years of Internet
    companies, particularly in light of the Snowden revelations, of
    feeling that they need to restore trust with their users in
    terms of what kinds of information they are handing over to the
    government, what kinds of requests they are responding to and
    so there is an incentive on the part of the companies not to
    comply further.
        Mr. Sherman. My time has expired. But if these rich
    companies making a fortune can't lose a few percentage points
    on their profit to help us in the war on terrorism, there is
    something the matter with their souls, and I yield back.
        Mr. Poe. The Chair will recognize the gentleman from Texas,
    Mr. Castro, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Castro. Thank you, Chairman Poe. Thank you to each of
    the panelists who are here to testify before us. We appreciate
    you being here and your sharing your wisdom.
        You know, I think, like most Americans, after there is an
    attack in Paris, for example, the Boston bombing, and we see
    people take credit for that on Twitter--one of the social media
    sites--you ask yourself, you know, why the hell do these people
    have a Twitter account or a Facebook account. I think that is
    what the average American thinks.
        So I certainly support asking Twitter to be cooperative in
    developing protocols to make sure that we root some of this
    stuff out, as you have suggested, that Facebook and others
    have. And so I have a few questions, though.
        Have they done that for any nation? Are there different
    rules in the United States versus Europe, for example, or
    somewhere else?
        Mr. Kohlmann. As far as I am aware, there are no different
    rules in terms of terrorist organizations. It really seems--
    especially, at least as we take the example of Twitter.
    Twitter, generally speaking, only takes action when there is a
    public embarrassment, when there is a public spectacle. So when
    the James Foley video came out, all of a sudden you see public
    comments from Jack Dorsey.
        You see Twitter all of a sudden rashly knocking out a whole
    bunch of accounts, and then all of a sudden silence for months.
    Then, all of a sudden, there will be a new video that will make
    it to a front page headline on CNN or MSNBC, and then once
    again Twitter will go on a rampage for a week. But, again, that
    is just for----
        Mr. Castro. Let me ask Ms. MacKinnon and anyone can chime
    in.
        Ms. MacKinnon. Sure. Yes. A lot of these companies--
    Twitter, Facebook and Google, in particular, that I have some
    familiarity with--generally have policies around the world
    where they will, in countries where they have operations,
    respond to lawful requests--so requests that are made in
    accordance with local law officially, you know, in writing.
        Mr. Castro. Right.
        Ms. MacKinnon. But if those requests do not have legal
    basis in that jurisdiction, they will not comply. Then, of
    course, they have terms of service that restrict speech that
    may or may not be legal in a given place.
        Mr. Castro. Well, I guess, and I think this is a tough
    question because the United States and Americans, obviously,
    value the First Amendment a lot and you have to start making a
    distinction between what crosses over from speech to getting
    closer to expression and action.
        For example, I know that somebody on the panel made the
    comment that this is hate speech and I would agree that a lot
    of it is. But there is a lot of hate speech on the Internet.
        And so, for example, how do you make the distinction
    between Islamic terrorism and domestic terrorism? When there
    were thousands of children who were coming across the U.S.-
    Mexico border, turning themselves over to Border Patrol, there
    were organized militias that were organizing on Twitter and
    Facebook and all the social media sites to go down there with
    arms, with weapons, and a few of them had confrontation with
    law enforcement.
        So how do you draw that distinction? Or are we just going
    to say as Americans we are going to do it for Islamic terrorism
    but we are not going to draw a line for domestic terrorism?
        I think those are some of the tough questions that we have
    got to answer among ourselves. And, like I said, I support
    movement and action on this issue. I think it is prudent. But
    there are some very deep and very tough questions that we need
    to answer.
        Mr. Berger. I just wanted to say there are some precedents
    for this. I mean, so, for instance, France has a law against
    anti-Semitic speech and Twitter was complying with that law to
    provide information on users.
        You know, the other thing that I think is not necessarily
    informing the conversation we are having here right now is that
    Facebook, YouTube and Twitter do cooperate with law enforcement
    requests to some extent and they do take accounts down based on
    government requests, to some extent.
        One reason we don't know about that is because a lot of
    that happens under national security letters and other forms of
    requests that they are not allowed to disclose, and one thing
    that would help us understand this better is if they were
    allowed to have a little more transparency about----
        Mr. Castro. Sure. Maybe let Ambassador Wallace also.
        Mr. Wallace. Good to see you, Congressman.
        Mr. Castro. Yes.
        Mr. Wallace. Look, I fully agree. But I don't think that we
    need to reinvent the definition of hate speech in this hearing.
    There has been an entire body of constitutional law that has
    developed around hate speech and that has been pretty clear.
        So I agree with you, sir, that hate speech is hate speech.
    It should come down and we should take action on hate speech.
    It shouldn't be allowed.
        But I think we are looking for a bright line, Mr. Keating.
    You know, I think that the distinction of the well-developed
    law on hate speech is take down those that are designated
    terrorist organizations, those that provide material support,
    whether it is ideological or otherwise, we have said that those
    actors are doing things that are hateful, for lack of a
    better----
        Mr. Castro. Designated by the United States Government?
        Mr. Wallace. Correct. Correct. And I think that it should
    be without doubt that if it is an AQAP supporter or an ISIS
    supporter or Inspire magazine, they should come down now. But I
    fully agree with you, Congressman. You know, hate speech is
    hate speech.
        Mr. Castro. Can I ask one more question?
        Mr. Poe. Sure.
        Mr. Castro. But would you put the same restrictions on an
    organization that is going to recruit another Timothy McVeigh
    or Terry Nichols?
        Mr. Wallace. Yes.
        Mr. Castro. Well, but that is not part of this
    conversation, right?
        Mr. Wallace. Well----
        Mr. Castro. So you start getting into a broader--and I
    agree. I just think you start getting into a broader
    conversation of moving it beyond Islamic terrorism into
    domestic terrorism also.
        Mr. Wallace. Right. I mean, Congressman, you and I have
    spent much time together. I think everyone agrees on the nature
    of bad actors like Timothy McVeigh.
        But right now, we have to be honest with ourselves that the
    grave national security concern, the threat to global security,
    are these cyber jihadis that are propagandizing.
        I certainly don't want to minimize in any way that the next
    Timothy McVeigh that we should allow him to stand or somebody
    else who would brutally seek to harm lawful or unlawful
    immigrants.
        We shouldn't. But, obviously, the focus right now has been
    because of--there are so many examples. So I don't mean to
    diminish----
        Mr. Castro. Sure. No, no, no.
        Mr. Wallace [continuing]. Those examples in any way, sir,
    and I fully agree with you, of course.
        Mr. Castro. Yes. Sure. Thank you.
        Mr. Poe. The gentleman yields back. We are in the middle of
    votes. One last comment, then I will yield to the ranking
    member for a final comment as well.
        The law makes a distinction between a foreign terrorist
    organization and non-organization using the Internet including
    domestic terrorist organizations. Those types of organizations,
    my understanding, you cannot provide any assistance, even
    helpful assistance.
        Like in the Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, they
    weren't advocating terrorism. They were advocating peace. But
    the Supreme Court said you cannot assist a foreign terrorist
    organization and it is a violation of the Section 219 of the
    law whether it is peace or advocating jihadist movements, and I
    think Congress has an obligation to look into this whole matter
    and try to see if we need to get involved.
        As Mr. Berger pointed out, some of these organizations--
    Google, for example--are doing what they can when asked to or
    on their own to take down some of these sites. Twitter, not so
    much.
        But I appreciate all four of you being here and the
    comments, I think, by the panelists and by the members were
    excellent. And I will yield the last comment--give you the last
    word, something I never do.
        Mr. Keating. Never done, and I appreciate that. I am sure
    it is just because it is my first hearing.
        Mr. Poe. It is.
        Mr. Keating. I just want to thank--this has been an
    important hearing, I think, and a frustrating one because it is
    sort of like trying to grasp a watermelon seed. Once you think
    you have it, it slips through your fingers again.
        But it is important to begin this dialogue, and there are
    some areas, I have learned today, that can be helpful where
    maybe we can limit to specific, you know, groups or individuals
    and not get involved in some of the other issues.
        But even that becomes complex because the difficulty of
    dealing with different languages, different laws and different
    countries makes it become very difficult.
        But I think one thing we can agree on it is important for
    us all going forward to try and get our hands around this a
    little bit and to see what we can do, whether it is hate speech
    or existing law.
        But, you know, you have got companies. You are their guests
    on those--you know, of those companies as well. So I think that
    working with the private side, having those discussions, will
    really serve a great benefit and I hope today was a time that
    we can refocus on this from such a broad perspective, as
    frustrating as the conversation was. Thank you all for being
    here.
        Mr. Poe. I thank all four of you for being here. It is very
    important information you have given us. I thank the members
    for participating as well, and the subcommittee is adjourned.
    Thank you very much.
        [Whereupon, at 3:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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