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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

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

TOM EMMER, Minnesota 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania

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 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

PAUL COOK, California 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

(III)

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

(1)

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. 

2

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 pheVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Mar 03, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\012715\92852 SHIRL
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nomena. 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 

4

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. 

5

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 pubVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Mar 03, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\012715\92852 SHIRL
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lishes 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 

7

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 activiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Mar 03, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\012715\92852 SHIRL
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ties 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. 

41

One big part of this debate, you know, has been this Whac-AMole 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:]

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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 alQaeda 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 alAnsi, 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. 

47

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 

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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. 

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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:]

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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 

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cause 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. 

65

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——

66

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. 

67

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 

68

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 alQaeda 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 comVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Mar 03, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\012715\92852 SHIRL
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puter, 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? 

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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 

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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——

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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. 

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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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