Mass shooting in San Bernadino

[Admiral Yi]

That web site has a bizarre set up.

[grumbler]

I guess I am curious how the investigators would know which Tashfeen Malik was posting what, even if she used her real name and it was unique in the world.  The story, as I see it, is that officials pressed for a change in policy, and a pilot program was set up to determine how useful and feasible such a change would be.  I guess we should be outraged that the DHS didn't change the policy for her alone, even if they didn't change it for anyone else, because then, maybe, "some of those San Bernardino people would still be alive."

[grumbler]

Anybody else think that Tashfeen in that picture (the one on abcnews.com) looks just like Brian's mother in Life of Brian?

[Razgovory]

She's not exactly a looker.

[Jaron]

She's fly as fuck.

[MadImmortalMan]

Which one is the woman?

[viper37]

I guess I am curious how the investigators would know which Tashfeen Malik was posting what, even if she used her real name and it was unique in the world.

I guess the moment she applies for citizenship or visa, they have her full name, birth certificate and picture.  From doing further investigation, they will know her current employment and her school.  With that, it should be relatively easy to perform a check on her social media pages.

The downside of course, is that it is entirely possible there would be more than one person with the same name originating from the same city or graduating from the same school accross various years and they could easily make mistakes and reject valid application.

[garbon]

I guess I am curious how the investigators would know which Tashfeen Malik was posting what, even if she used her real name and it was unique in the world.

I guess the moment she applies for citizenship or visa, they have her full name, birth certificate and picture.  From doing further investigation, they will know her current employment and her school.  With that, it should be relatively easy to perform a check on her social media pages.

I can thing of many social media accounts that don't even have my full name, let alone all of that information.

[derspiess]

I have no idea where the balance is between safety and intrusiveness.  But I know enough to know that there is one, and that saying "fucking fuck" instinctively isn't instrumental in judging whether you're on the right side.  It's especially hard to hit that balance right because single-celled organisms and political opponents of the administration will go "fucking fuck" when it goes wrong one way, but when it goes wrong the other way it will be unobservable.

You need to get laid.

[derspiess]

I guess I am curious how the investigators would know which Tashfeen Malik was posting what, even if she used her real name and it was unique in the world.

I guess the moment she applies for citizenship or visa, they have her full name, birth certificate and picture.  From doing further investigation, they will know her current employment and her school.  With that, it should be relatively easy to perform a check on her social media pages.

I can thing of many social media accounts that don't even have my full name, let alone all of that information.

I'd have to think the NSA or similar organization would be pretty good at cross-referencing people's real names with their twitter handles & whatnot.  Maybe using IP address?  Dunno.

[The Minsky Moment]

Trying to watch my language these days, but what the fucking fuck??

http://abcnews.go.com/US/secret-us-policy-blocks-agents-social-media-visa/story?id=35749325

Seems like a lot of scrambling about to CYA.  Whatever protocols were in place at the time were presumably put in by Cohen so he is not exactly a disinterested observer.

[derspiess]

I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone (yet).  Just absolutely blows my mind that social media activity was specifically excluded from the review process.

[Jacob]

I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone (yet).  Just absolutely blows my mind that social media activity was specifically excluded from the review process.

Without having investigated it any further, I'd guess it's a bureaucratic thing as per grumbler... how do you make sure you have the right person, the right staff with the right training, the right procedures and so on? From what I understand of US bureaucracy, it generally is super check-box driven and big on verifiable, repeatable results from a procedure. It's not, I don't think, a matter of just letting random reviewers google names when they feel like it and running with the results. You need a clear, equitable plan for doing this sort of review in a way that meets all kind of program and legal standards.

That and how do you judge the content of someone's social media accurately as a process, assuming you ascertain the identity correctly? Is it a key-word based system? Is it a points based thing? Does someone posing with a gun increase their likelihood of being a security hazard in a way that makes sense? What if they post something in Arabic? What if something was sarcasm or an accidental repost?

I'm sure you can eventually design a program of social media review that achieves some policy objectives, but first you have to identify those policy objectives.

So yeah, I don't think it's as trivial as all that once you get down to the details.

[DGuller]

I have no idea where the balance is between safety and intrusiveness.  But I know enough to know that there is one, and that saying "fucking fuck" instinctively isn't instrumental in judging whether you're on the right side.  It's especially hard to hit that balance right because single-celled organisms and political opponents of the administration will go "fucking fuck" when it goes wrong one way, but when it goes wrong the other way it will be unobservable.

You need to get laid.

I may have been unnecessarily harsh, but you just tripped a couple of pet peeves all at the same time.  That attitude of immediately going "fucking fuck" before asking questions is why we go through rape scans at airports. 

I don't know if a policy of trawling through someone's social media is reasonable or not, but you weren't even thinking of asking that question.  And because of people with that mindset, no politician will go with reasonable security precautions when highly unreasonable precautions could've in retrospect prevented one terrorist act.  Even if the unreasonable precautions result in damage equivalent to hundreds of terrorist acts quietly, under the news radar.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's pretty standard in legal cases to check on social media where relevant (e.g.accident cases).  A privacy rationale doesn't make much sense in this context.  There may be other reasons already alluded to why social media wasn't being routinely checked but it does seem like an area one would expect would be checked out.