FBI Director Says San Bernardino Shooters Didn’t Post Public Social Media Messages

Did Amer­ic­an in­tel­li­gence miss cru­cial warn­ing signs about San Bern­ardino shoot­ers Syed Rizwan Farook and Tash­feen Ma­lik? FBI Dir­ect­or James Comey sought to dampen spec­u­la­tion Wed­nes­day morn­ing, speak­ing with New York Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Bill Brat­ton.

For years be­fore they at­tacks, “they are com­mu­nic­at­ing on­line, show­ing signs in that com­mu­nic­a­tion of their joint com­mit­ment to ji­had and to mar­tyr­dom,” he said. “Those com­mu­nic­a­tions are private dir­ect mes­sages.”

In fact, he said, there was no evid­ence of pub­lic post­ings that might have raised red flags.

“So far in this in­vest­ig­a­tion, we have found no evid­ence of post­ing on so­cial me­dia by either of them at that peri­od of time and there­after re­flect­ing their com­mit­ment to ji­had and to mar­tyr­dom,” Comey said. “I’ve seen some re­port­ing on that and that’s a garble. The in­vest­ig­a­tion con­tin­ues, but we have not found that kind of thing.”

Soon after the at­tacks, mul­tiple news or­gan­iz­a­tions re­por­ted, gen­er­ally with Face­book’s say-so, that Ma­lik had pos­ted on Face­book a pledge of al­le­gi­ance to Abu Bakr al-Bagh­dadi, the IS­IS chief. At the time, the FBI merely said it was aware of the re­ports. But in re­cent days, news re­ports have raised ques­tions about wheth­er the Home­land Se­cur­ity De­part­ment should have no­ticed post­ings by Ma­lik that might have tele­graphed her in­ten­tion to con­duct an at­tack. Ac­cord­ing to some re­ports, U.S. in­vest­ig­at­ors are barred from even check­ing the so­cial-me­dia pres­ence of visa ap­plic­ants.

Dur­ing Tues­day’s Re­pub­lic­an de­bate, can­did­ate Carly Fior­ina blas­ted the pro­cess.

“For heav­en’s sakes, every par­ent in Amer­ica is check­ing so­cial me­dia and every em­ploy­er is as well, but our gov­ern­ment can’t do it,” she said. “The bur­eau­crat­ic pro­ced­ures are so far be­hind. Our gov­ern­ment has be­come in­com­pet­ent, un­re­spons­ive, cor­rupt. And that in­com­pet­ence, in­eptitude, lack of ac­count­ab­il­ity is now dan­ger­ous.”

As Comey noted Monday, the FBI does not—and, he im­pli­citly ar­gued, should not—comb through dir­ect com­mu­nic­a­tions that Amer­ic­an cit­izens send un­less there’s prob­able cause to be do­ing so. It’s not clear wheth­er metadata on this sort of mes­sage would have been swept up in the NSA’s col­lec­tion of in­form­a­tion. After wide­spread back­lash to the rev­el­a­tions provided by Ed­ward Snowden about mass sur­veil­lance, there’s been a turn to­ward a de­mand for great­er sur­veil­lance since the San Bern­ardino at­tacks, both in pub­lic polling and by politi­cians.