The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security is preparing a new bill, the “Intelligence Authorization Act”. This is a new bill that will include a special clause that will leave site providers no choice but to they denounce immediately to the authorities any terrorist activity they observe on their pages.
The new version of the Intelligence Authorization Act is expected to be voted on in the Senate in the coming days. If approved, it will now grant permission to monitor users from the hands of the state, to private businesses and companies.
As the Washington Post reports, where the issue was first published, this new bill emerged after the 2008 “Protect Our Children Act,” which required companies to investigate and report any child pornography activity they identified.
This monitoring of users by companies will not be the only measure taken by the government, of course; the authorities will continue to act through their own means and systems to combat terrorism on popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Companies are urged to notify authorities as soon as they detect suspicious activity on their sites and investigate the profile of the "dangerous" user. There is currently no mention of content removal.
The bill is expected to affect not only social media, but also websites that allow users to freely express their opinions, such as video portals like Vimeo and YouTube, email services like Yahoo and Gmail, as well as comments on blogs and forums.
