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Service members might be punished for “liking” extremist content material on-line below a brand new extension to the Pentagon’s anti-extremism coverage that was prompted by the Jan. 6 assaults on the U.S. Capitol.
The coverage is the results of a overview launched by Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin shortly after he took workplace in January. The overview aimed to find the extent of extremism inside the ranks, and to take a look at how the Pentagon can stability privateness rights with the necessity to forestall individuals who espouse extremist views from serving in uniform.
The brand new coverage, a revision of DOD Instruction 1325.06, introduces the division’s first guidelines that particularly govern troops’ actions on social media, stated a senior protection official who briefed reporters earlier than the report’s launch.
“It mainly clarifies precisely that service members are accountable for the content material that they publish on all private and public web domains. together with social media websites, blogs, web sites and functions,” the official stated.
Underneath the brand new coverage, “liking” extremist content material might lead to navy punishment.
At a Pentagon briefing after the report’s launch, press secretary John Kirby stated the acts of clicking “like,” utilizing sure emojis, or favoriting a web site would violate the brand new extremism coverage.
“The bodily act of liking is, after all, advocating, proper? And advocating for extremist teams, teams that advocate violating their oath to the Structure, overthrow the federal government, terrorist actions… Liking is an advocation and that’s laid out clearly within the instruction,” Kirby stated.
He stated new coaching will train all troops what social media exercise is prohibited.
The brand new guidelines don’t checklist on-line teams that troops are barred from becoming a member of. As a substitute, they specify proscribed actions.
“We had been very acutely aware of not specializing in any explicit ideology or any political group focusing completely on actions,” a second senior protection official instructed reporters Monday.
As a part of the overview, the Pentagon tried to find out what number of energetic responsibility troops had been participating in extremist conduct. The overview discovered about 100 that had been being investigated by the inspector basic or the providers’ felony investigators, the officers stated.
The officers who wrote the brand new coverage thought of crafting a brand new definition for extremism, however as an alternative determined to make clear what behaviors would run afoul of navy code.
The overview additionally checked out how the division might successfully display screen recruits and their on-line exercise with out violating free speech or privateness rights. Till an individual formally enlists, they’re nonetheless a non-public citizen.
“As of this time, we’re not reviewing the social media content material of recruits. We do ask a collection of questions in the course of the recruiter interviews, after which we do look extensively on previous involvement with regulation enforcement embody arrest costs, citations, parole, probation detention, We additionally do superior fingerprint pictures and an FBI identify examine, which serves as a preliminary screening for any historical past of this exercise,” the official stated.
Recruiters additionally have a look at issues like physique tattoos which may point out membership in an extremist group.
As soon as a recruit formally joins the navy, their actions, on and off responsibility, are topic to the UCMJ—together with the brand new anti-extremism guidelines.
The overview additionally beneficial updates to a transition help program that goals to assist folks leaving the navy stave off recruitment by extremist teams. A examine launched final week by the Nationwide Consortium for the Examine of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, discovered that former and a few present service members have been concerned in 458 crimes tied to extremism since 1990.
The Pentagon’s earlier model of DOD Instruction 1325.06, issued in 2012, prohibited service members from collaborating in teams “that advocate supremacist, extremist, or felony gang doctrine, ideology, or causes; together with people who try to create unlawful discrimination based mostly on race, creed, shade, intercourse, faith, ethnicity, or nationwide origin; advocate the usage of power, violence, or felony exercise; or in any other case have interaction in efforts to deprive people of their civil rights.”