Pentagon to raise social media screenings in military background checks for ties to groups with ‘strong conservative elements’

This notion was first entertained in Washington DC during the tense two weeks between the US Capitol riot and Inauguration Day. Top Democrats demanded members of the National Guard be screened for any potential radicalization in their online presence.

But new reports indicate advanced analysis of social media posts for service members and recruits is coming soon.

According to military.com the official lingo behind the move is the Defense Department wants "examining a scalable means of implementing social media screening in conjunction with background investigations.”

This was brought up in the training materials distributed amongst the military-wide stand down in order to discuss extremism. According to the documentation being circulated, the FBI already has such measures in place for their people, and this would be about bringing the DoD in line with that.

The outlet interviewed lawyer Anthony Kuhn, a specialist in security clearance issues, who stated that the military didn’t have a formal procedure for social media screening up until recently. The only time social media posts were really looked into was when a third-party took notice of them and alerted military authorities about it.

The commonly held standard before: military members can express whatever political opinions they want, when not on duty or in uniform. Now, according to the new “training materials” there’s limits:

The training materials go on to state that anyone who is directly involved, associates with, or expresses sympathy for any so-called radicals looking to overthrow the government, will find themselves suspect to scrutiny from their superiors.