President Joe Biden’s Defense Department still seeks to monitor social media posts of troops, civilian staff, and even contractors to hunt down alleged “extremists,” even though few exist.
The finding was part of a 262-page report recently released by the Institute for Defense Analyses, or IDA. The Pentagon hired the IDA to review the military services to locate and help weed out “extremist ideologies and behaviors in the military community.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his top brass used the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol as the impetus for the study, which was intended to focus on the “white supremacy” allegedly running rampant through the military ranks, but which was also seen as a vehicle to ensnare and punish white, conservative supporters of President Donald Trump.
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In February 2021, Austin announced his infamous “pause” in military operations so commanders could discuss racism in their units.
Yet, as the IDA reported, the narrative promoted by Biden, Austin and others is contrived.
The Pentagon “should remain cognizant of the fact that violent extremism does not appear to be any more prevalent among service members than it is in American society as a whole,” the IDA researchers found.
Yet the IDA report also noted that “the Department is considering how to use existing authority to screen publicly available social media to identify prohibited extremist activities by service members and others in the military community (including DOD civilians and contractor employees).”
The Tampa Free Press posted about this in May 2021, noting that Austin sought to “create a committee … to ‘continuously’ monitor troops for ‘concerning behaviors’ online.
The idea was to use keywords in social media posts to identify possible extremists, especially if they happen to be white. The Pentagon also intended to avoid scrutiny for violating the First Amendment by offloading the job to a private surveillance firm.
Despite concerns about the racial, political, and constitutional issues it raised, as well as the problem of ensuring they correctly identify the people involved, the idea apparently did not die.
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In the report, the IDA found that the Pentagon is considering using something called the “Insider Threat Program” as an avenue to monitor social media use by troops.
The program was initially developed to identify issues with security from enemy forces, workplace violence, terrorism, risk management issues and even potential suicides.
It seems, according to the IDA, that the only thing holding Biden’s Defense Department back from monitoring troops are the technological issues of covering the entire expanse of cyberspace.
The IDA noted that Biden and Austin may have found a way around the First Amendment issue — even though, as the report’s authors observed, the Pentagon has failed to adequately define extremism, which means it is whatever Biden, Austin, and their subordinates say it is.
As the report noted, “The insider threat program is not a law enforcement program, but no element of the Department may utilize investigative tools unless it complies with constitutional standards requiring probable cause. Insider threat programs are able to overcome this limitation, to some extent, by requiring consent to monitoring as a condition for access to government systems and government information.”
The IDA researchers mentioned that during their interviews with many rank and file personnel, there was “significant discomfort” with monitoring troops’ social media posts.
One interviewee specifically raised the issue of how the department would handle posts that support gun rights or the Second Amendment.
The authors note that national security concerns grant the department broad latitude to “intrude” into service members’ private lives, and that most DoD employees understand this, especially as job applicants.
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These practices, the report stated, “provide a natural forum in which to incorporate social media screening,” and “DOD is moving in that direction but must address both technical issues and questions about reasonable levels of intrusiveness before determining how far to go and how to get there.”
“Senior officials interviewed by the IDA team indicated that the Department has similar authority to access online information in connection with insider threat assessments. This authority extends beyond individuals who hold or are applying for a security clearance and applies to all individuals who have access to government facilities or information systems.”
The Pentagon is also looking at ways to use such authority to cover government or privately owned computers.
In their report, the IDA cautioned that “the Department should exercise extreme care in monitoring the social media of service members.”
“Caution is warranted due to technological limitations and because of the strong likelihood of adverse reactions among members of the military community driven by perceptions of excessive (‘big brother’-like) surveillance,” the authors added.
But ultimately, they did not advise the Pentagon to ditch the whole plan.
Instead, the authors suggested, “It may be prudent to consider both strategic restraint in the amount of information actually monitored and to establish well-defined, transparent triggers that will prompt more intensive investigation.”
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