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After Poway Shooting, How Can Law Enforcement Monitor Violent Extremists Online?

 May 16, 2019 at 10:18 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 In the aftermath of the shooting at the Habbat of Poway synagogue. Questions have been raised about what could've been done to prevent this attack from happening KPBS report or [inaudible] or looks into what law enforcement is doing to monitor the online activities, a potentially violent extremists. Speaker 2: 00:18 On the last day of Passover celebrations, a gunman entered a synagogue in Poway, opened fire killing one 60 year old congregant and injuring three others. According to authorities, the suspect 19 year old John Ernest had no criminal record and no prior interactions with law enforcement. San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore. Speaker 3: 00:41 You're collecting digital evidence and we're aware of his manifesto, which we are in the process of, uh, reviewing the determine it's validity and authenticity. Speaker 2: 00:50 That manifesto was reportedly posted on an online message board called eight Chan. It's the same website that was allegedly used by a suspect charged with murdering 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand. In March, the site welcomes users to the quote, darkest reaches of the Internet and promotes free speech. Above all else, Speaker 3: 01:11 we're talking about individuals who are self radicalized through the Internet. Speaker 2: 01:16 Daryl Foxworth is a retired FBI special agent with 30 years of experience. Speaker 3: 01:21 And now how does, how does that occur? Uh, through a number of ways. I mean, they go on the Internet, they identify a chat room, social media sites, things of that nature, and they start, you know, ingesting this, digesting this internally, and then they find some reason to identify this, to identify with these groups and take violent actions against others. Speaker 2: 01:42 He says federal law enforcement agents will sometimes monitor chat rooms when they're involved in specific investigations Speaker 3: 01:50 and everything that they do, it's going to be done based on the law. They're not going to break the law to enforce it. So you're going to make sure that, that you have a court order or some lawful authority that's going to allow you to do that. And usually that means that you're going to have to be involved in some type of, um, intelligence collection or, or investigation Speaker 2: 02:10 because the Internet is vast. That monitoring usually happens at the federal level. And when a specific threat is identified, the agency involved in the investigation, we'll pass that information on to their regional field offices who will then work in cooperation with the local law enforcement agency. Lieutenant Sean Taki Uchi is with the San Diego Police Department Speaker 4: 02:33 in terms of Internet and monitoring the Internet. That's something very, very difficult to do because again, that credibility has to exist. And so, um, oftentimes we rely on our federal partners for that. Um, with the Internet, we don't know where that information is coming from. If the threats being made in another state and it's coming across state lines, well that's, that's going to be very, very difficult for us to investigate. Speaker 2: 02:53 He says, another challenge is identifying whether a threat on the Internet is criminal and credible or if it could be protected by freedom of speech. Speaker 4: 03:02 We have the bill of rights where we are the first amendment and freedom of speech. So in this country we have the ability to say things that we want to say, um, without fear of prosecution, without fear of government intervention. Speaker 2: 03:13 According to the California Penal Code, a criminal threat is defined as a willful threat to commit a crime that will result in death or bodily injury to another person. The threat can be made in writing verbally or by electronic communication. Today those threats have become even more difficult to track things to encryption services or private chat rooms. More Hackman is a cybersecurity professor at the University of San Diego Speaker 5: 03:40 as a new tools who developed the governments are law enforcement comes up with with countermeasures which forces the development of, of new measures and a that's never ending and I don't, I don't see that we'll ever have the last word on that. Um, is very difficult to stay up on. What's new on the latest thing that's happening. Any tool that can be used for good could also be used for evil. Speaker 2: 04:05 He says, trying to find a balance between monitoring the Internet and maintaining privacy is an ongoing debate. Speaker 5: 04:12 We're right on the park boundary between privacy and security and perfect privacy and perfect security are I think both impossible. Speaker 2: 04:20 Federal authorities have charged the suspect in the Poway shootings with 109 counts of hate crimes. That includes setting fire to a mosque in Escondido. He also faces state charges of murder and attempted murder. Joining me now is KPBS reporter Prius or ether and prio. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I think we have a perception that law enforcement, especially federal law enforcement, is monitoring all sections of the web for terrorist threats, but apparently not. Yeah, Maureen, you know, I mean I think that's a little bit unrealistic. Obviously the Internet is vast and there's always new chat rooms and websites popping up that they simply don't have the time or resources or money to constantly be monitoring everything. So as you heard in the story, oftentimes they need to have credible evidence or a credible threat before they go into a website and start monitoring it. I'm a fourth amendment search is a governmental intrusion into a, a, a reasonable expectation of privacy. Speaker 2: 05:22 And that's another thing that we heard, uh, in the story is that, you know, there is an expectation that if you're on the Internet that nobody is monitoring your activities unless you're potentially making a threat that is credible and could potentially turn into violence. Allegedly the suspected Poway shooter posted a manifesto on the website, eight Chan. Now you accessed that site, what does it like? Yeah, I was kind of fascinated to go on there and read a little bit because we also had heard that the alleged suspect in the New Zealand shootings of the two mosques there were people were murdered was also on this exact same website. So I was really curious to learn a little bit more about it. And you know, right on the website when you log onto it, it says it reaches the darkest corners of the Internet. Um, and basically they believe in freedom of speech above all else and it's all about user privacy. Speaker 2: 06:15 And I was able to create a screen name and go into some of the message boards, have read what was going on and post my own comments without any sort of invitation. So really it's accessible to anybody. And if law enforcement is not involved in a specific investigation, they are not allowed to monitor sites like eight Chan, is that right? That's correct. So there is something called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. And so police can access some of your internet data with just a subpoena and they can get a subpoena without a judge's approval. But a subpoena will only give law enforcement access to things like Ip addresses that you've accessed or certain websites. The next level above a subpoena is an electronic communications privacy act, court order. And that'll give, um, police information about your online activities, but they still won't be able to necessarily look at your browser histories, emails, or files for that. Speaker 2: 07:10 They're going to need a warrant. And that's when it goes back to what we were talking about in the story about having a credible threat. And so they're going to need sort of specific language, uh, where there's a threat against a person and perhaps, you know, a date when that threat is going to be carried out. And in those situations, that's when they can get a warrant. But oftentimes people don't post that kind of specific information until moments before an attack. You mentioned that Australia and New Zealand block the message board, h Chan temporarily after the attack on the mosque in Christ church, would that be allowed to happen here? Right, so we live in the United States of America and that would essentially fall under the category of government censorship. So what can happen in a country like ours is a specific websites like Facebook or Twitter or even eight Chan can choose to delete a message board or take down a video, but they're private companies making their own private policies to have government intervention to take something down is highly, highly unusual. Speaker 2: 08:10 In the United States, the cyber security expert you spoke with described a kind of race between terrorists and law enforcement. Law enforcement cracks their encryption and secrecy and then terrorists develop a new ways to hide. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah, I mean just think about it. In the past 10 or 15 years, how much technology has advanced. I mean, we started with flip phones and now we have flip phones that actually have data and access to the Internet and these apps like whatsapp and there's another app called line that's very popular in Asia that's also a highly encrypted app. And so technology is constantly evolving and it's again, that really delicate balance between privacy and security. A lot of people want to be able to communicate with whoever they want and they don't have any sort of malicious intent. They're just simply wanting their conversations to be private. Speaker 2: 08:59 So, uh, you know, government and law enforcement is constantly trying to find ways, uh, to up their technology in order to monitor these kinds of encrypted services. But again, the second they figure out how to do something like that, uh, the potential adversaries are also learning new technology to get around those, those new avenues that they've found. Now, did you get the sense that the investigation into the Poway shooting is ongoing? And by that I mean that law enforcement is checking for links with other people or other groups that may have inspired the shooting. So one thing that I found particularly interesting about this incident, and unfortunately I've covered several incidents like this in the past 10 years, but authorities were very quick to say that the suspect in this situation was a lone wolf and that he wasn't tied to any sort of terrorist group. Speaker 2: 09:51 And that's something that we're seeing a lot of talk about on the Internet. That how could this guy not be considered a terrorist or B, you know, investigated in that kind of way be just because he's not tied to a specific group like the way that we might have historically viewed it, like the KKK or isis. And so I think that that's what's fascinating about these chat rooms that just because the group might not have a name, they might not physically meet in a meeting place, they might not have a sets, uh, you know, a set standard of rules that they still could be considered a defacto group. So it's difficult to say. I think a lot more is going to be coming out in, in the coming weeks and months. I'm about this investigation and the evidence that the authorities have on this suspect, but as of right now, they're saying that he's not tied to a group. So I don't really see any other suspects being linked with this specific incident. And I've been speaking with KPBS reported Prius there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Speaker 6: 10:48 [inaudible].

In the aftermath of the shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue, questions have been raised about what could have been done to prevent the attack. Law enforcement faces many challenges in monitoring potentially violent extremists online.
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