For those that are quick to think that the government should have caught her based upon her postings, consider the ramifications of such a system.
In order to be effective it would require the government spy on almost all social media. It would have to identify, in multiple languages, any anti-US wording or passages, put that account on a monitor list, then map that account name to someone either via association or via facial recognition. Lastly that information would then have to be made available to INS, FBI, DHS, etc. Technically doable.
But do we want the government to spy on and monitor our online postings? I am of the opinion that would be a step too far.
No, it would only require the ability to search for a specific person on such sites. That doesn't require them to collect data on everyone.
The real problem isn't that the government cannot access data on these people. The problem is that even when the evidence is right in front of them, they won't act on it due to political correctness. The Ft. Hood shooter made his sympathy for jihad clear to dozens of people in the military. The Russians told the FBI that Tamerlane Tsarnov was probably a terrorist. But nothing was done because the government considers "profiling" and "Islamophobia" a bigger problem than terrorist attacks. Then there is the whole "clockboy" fake bomb fiasco. Now the teacher and school district are being sued for 13 million, while Obama hosts invites him to the Whitehouse. No amount of data collection is going to catch these people when the priority is not offending Muslims.
I agree with you about universal monitoring of our online postings. We don't need that.
But spying on foreigners is what NSA does for a living. And that spying is done without limits (on foreigners) unless they are placed there by the Administration Policy or by law. There is absolutely no reason to prohibit NSA from plugging in a query to their huge database system to look for Tashfeen Malik + All Social Media and see what pops up.
I'm betting that wasn't done and it wasn't done on purpose.
A step too far, yes, but we already operate on the assumption it does.
They already are.....
If you are a muslim coming into the country, then yes, they should be monitored.
If the government feels it needs to monitor Joe average American to find *right wing extremists* and *domestic terrorists* they can spend the time and money monitoring those coming in from the outside whose background gives legitimate reason for concern.
How about monitoring everything for a couple years of any moozlum who wants to come here? Maybe even waterboard every one of them as part of the process. Let the TSA tyrants do this instead of harassing Americans.