Senators revive bill requiring tech sector to report online terror activity

Senators revived legislation requiring the tech sector, like Facebook and Twitter, to report to the authorities suspected online terror activity.

"We’re in a new age where terrorist groups like ISIL are using social media to reinvent how they recruit and plot attacks," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in a statement about the legislation she is sponsoring with Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). "That information can be the key to identifying and stopping terrorist recruitment or a terrorist attack, but we need help from technology companies. This bill doesn’t require companies to take any additional actions to discover terrorist activity, it merely requires them to report such activity to law enforcement when they come across it. Congress needs to do everything we can to help intelligence and law enforcement agencies identify and prevent terrorist attacks, and this bill is a step in the right direction."

The move is already drawing sharp criticism from industry and civil liberties groups that say putting such requirements on firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google would jeopardize consumers’ privacy and free speech and overload the government with useless information.