You always see people on Twitter writing this specific quote in their bios “Retweets are not endorsements” so as to avoid litigation of some sort, but when it comes to performing illegal acts online, those retweets are endorsements.
In another case of combating ISIS through social media, the FBI arrested a guy from New York who retweeted tweets that was allegedly connected to the extremist group. Ali Saleh was arrested since it was allegedly found that he had intentions from joining ISIS with evidence being tabled from his activity on Twitter since 2013. He apparently retweeted a tweet that said “I’m ready to die….prison is nothing”
Saleh was also reported trying to fly east, where he initially booked a flight to Istanbul and two days later so as to visit his family in Yemen. An attorney from Brooklyn, Kelly Currie was quoted as saying“Saleh was relentless in his attempts to travel to the Middle East to join a terrorist organization”
The US government has been recorded to use social media to monitor user generated content if they contain hints of the extremist group. Recently, a teenager was sentenced to 11 years in prison for tweeting content that were pro-ISIS. Also, the US Air Force was able to identify through a forum that an alleged member of ISIS talked about their headquarter and its capabilities and was able to later destroy it within a day.
So far, they are winning the war against the terror group online which is ironical because ISIS is known for how it uses social media to display its heinous crimes. Such incidences like this will only increase in the future as the fight against ISIS intensifies.
Source: NY Daily News
