14 DAY TRIAL // The US Senate Security Committee is working on a new Intelligence Authorization Act, which includes a special clause that will force electronic communication service providers to actively search for and report terrorist activity to law enforcement authorities.
This new version of the Intelligence Authorization Act will be submitted to the Senate for voting in the following days, and if approved, it will take the user monitoring activities out of the state's hands and place them with privately run companies.
Since the US Senate voted to cut down on the NSA's spying capabilities, this new bill is trying to move all the controversy related to user monitoring activities to someone else's backyard, without the government having to deal with all the privacy-related consequences.
The bill is modeled after the child pornography protection law
According to The Washington Post, who first reported on the issue, the bill is modeled after the 2008 Protect Our Children Act, which requires online companies to monitor and report on child pornography.
The same principles will be used in this case, with websites like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram having to implement their own monitoring system that looks for terrorism-related content.
Once it detects user posts, they'll then have to inform law enforcement agencies and provide details about the user's account.
The new bill does not say anything about companies having to remove the content, but most websites will do it regardless, mainly because of their terms of service, or the negative publicity that can ensue.
The new Intelligence Authorization Act does not affect only social networks, as it applies to any type of website where users express their thoughts, including video sharing portals like YouTube and Vimeo, email services like Yahoo or Gmail, or even measly user comments at the end of tiny blog posts.