Dear Honorable Next President of the United States of America,

It is devastatingly enough just to see a person murdered by another, but it is even worse to witness this scenario that happened in 2001: two hijacked planes crashing into the world’s tallest structure killing 3,361 people and injuring another 6,000. As you see five men running out of the dust, blood gushing out from one of them and leaving another covered in blood, another devastatingly crying for his relatives. The rest are first respondents who were rushing to save more lives, and you see others with tears as it runs down on their cheeks. You hear screaming, yelling, and crying. We were losing families of firefighter, first respondents, and police who were rescuing our citizens. How could these faceless terrorists do this to us? Why did Osama Bin Laden mastermind this attack?

Terrorism is killing our citizens and terrorist are rapidly increasing in quantities over the years. Terrorists had been recruiting members through force and social media, and creating public fear especially through social media. In the past three years, many terrorists, including ISIS, Taliban, ISIL, Boko Haram, and etc., were one of the few that conducted 11,774 attacks in 2015 all around the world compared to 2,480 attacks in 2012. In a span of three years, terrorist have attacked the country we live 9294 more times. It is problematic to think it is safe to live in where we are living right now. However, we are in pure danger. I want to be safe where I am living along with my families, and friends along with the freedom to surf the internet without thinking again about Terrorist in social media.

According to Washington Post, Europe and America had been attacked 50 times less than the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. For example, there was an attack on July 14, 2016 on Bastille Day at Nice where Mohamed Lahouaiej drove a truck into a group of people and killed 89 people and injured 434 more. This had been the largest single attack since the past 18 months when a gunman had killed 130 people in Paris. In comparison, on July 25, 2015, there was an ISIS attack in Kobane, which killed a total of 396 people. In Baghdad on July 3rd, 2016, there was an ISIS suicide bombing, which killed 292 people.

It is horrifying that recruits of ISIS come from the country we live in. Terrorists are recruiting members in many ways. One of the most popular ways is through social media. According to the Brooking Institute, ISIS supporters used around 46,000 twitter accounts from September through December 2014. This can be a threat if you accidentally encounter a terrorist online and threaten you to do things.

Twitter “aggressively” approach ISIS video and pictures after ISIS have beheaded James Foley and show that we are weak to what ISIS thinks of us at the same time celebrating what violent things they have done. Stalinsky said raised the problem that “If they (social media) were serious, they’d use the proper technology to get them to not come back.”

Although social media are trying to prevent the terrorist media pages, but it is not that easy. Social media have to connect with another platform and determine the community norms or as threats to the CEO of the social media companies. “You announce daily that you suspend many of our accounts, and to you we say: Is that all you can do?" the hackers (ISIS) wrote in text across the video. "You are not in our league.... If you close one account we will take 10 in return and soon your names will be erased after we delete your sites, Allah willing, and [you] will know that we say is true." this is one of the reason why social media have a dilemma whether to prevent the pages from terrorists.

At the same time, Twitter and Facebook have different standards. For instance, Facebook strictly prohibit nudity and porn, in the other hand, twitter is “more open” and has guidelines when something “goes too far.” Twitter also said that they stand for freedom of expression. Those are just two of the most popular social media site, and they’re are doing this, how can you expect us to prevent recruitment from social media if they continue to act like this?

One lawsuit had been filed by Reynaldo Gonzalez saying that Facebook, Twitter, and Google are liable for terrorism after the Paris attack for “material growth” after one of his daughter was killed.

In conclusion, I feel that all of the countries should work together and defeat Islamic or other terrorists to keep us citizens safe. I wanted to choose this topic because every time I hear death from Terrorism anywhere, my heart breaks. I feel it is so unfair to victims who died innocently and for no reason murdered in horrible ways. This is the general idea. I feel that being threatened in the internet is horrible, you can’t stop it yourself and a spyware or virus can get all the information to hurt or threaten you. If you are not a computer geek, ( like me) you are vulnerable to attacks and I don’t want anything to happen to my screen saying something is going to happen to you.We need to improve our internet security, teaching us children in schools to be aware of what we children are searching and be careful of what they post and search, and need assurance that terrorist will not get into our personal information. Government officials give punishments to anyone related to the terrorist activities, and reward for reporting dangerous activities. Many solutions can build up and make me feel I am living in a safe country while assuring me that I would be safe to surf the internet.

Sincerely,

Briman Yang

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/the-scale-of-terrorist-attacks-around-the-world/

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism

https://chemm.nlm.nih.gov/publicinfoterrorism.htm

https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths_FactSheet_Oct2015.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/the-scale-of-terrorist-attacks-around-the-world/

http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/terrorism

http://www.defense.gov/News/Special-Reports/0814_Inherent-Resolve\

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/02/25/islamic-state-reportedly-threatens-facebook-twitter-founders-in-video.html

https://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-and-twitter-face-tough-choices-as-isis-exploits-social-media/

https://www.dhs.gov/preventing-terrorism-and-enhancing-security

https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2015/257526.htm