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| US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is vying to the Democrat's candidate in 2016 |
JIHADI militants from the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group should be BANNED from social media to prevent them spreading their hate-filled messages, US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has said.
The former secretary of state, who is running for the White House in 2016, said extremists should be blocked from sites such as Twitter.
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| Islamic State fighters use Twitter to recruit new jihadis |
Mrs Clinton said it was vital that authorities "shut down" the internet presence of fanatical Islamist groups such as ISIS, in a bid to counter their largely-successful propaganda campaign that has wooed hundreds of fighters from the West.
The wife of former US president Bill Clinton said: "You've got to look carefully at terrorist groups and criminal cartels and other illegal actors to figure out whether they can use the internet to cause crimes, to cause harm, to wage terrorist attacks and we can't just let that go on unabated."
The threat posed by home grown extremists was brought to the fore today when an American citizen was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction on US soil.
ISIS sympathisers used a staggering 46,000 Twitter account in 2014, according to a recent study, with the figure this year likely to be even higher.
The study by the Brookings Institution found roughly 20 per cent of those accounts tweeted in English, while a further 73 per cent tweeted in Arabic.
We can't just let that go on unabated
Until now, Twitter has been able to block individual accounts known to be affiliated with the depraved terror network.
But experts say a blanket ban on all ISIS-inspired accounts on the US social media giant would be almost impossible.
Speaking last week, FBI director James Comey said Twitter was a key tool used by jihadists to recruit youngsters from the US.
He described how once they had engaged with their victims, they moved conversations from Twitter onto encrypted private networks that were more difficult for intelligence agencies to track.
US security services had considered blocking Isis-affiliated users, Mr Comey said, but terrorists' online activity also provides a useful insight into how the militants operate and the FBI had yet to decide which option was best.
"What worries me most is that ISIS's investment in social media — which has been blossoming in the last six to eight weeks in particular — will cause a significant increase in the number of incidents that we will see," he said.
Earlier this year, ISIS sympathisers made death threats against Twitter employees, including co-founder Jack Dorsey, over the social network's blocking of accounts associated with the group.
In a chilling threat to the social network, they warned that "your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you" and said the firm's employees had "become a target for the soldiers of the Caliphate and supporters scattered among your midst".
In May, cyber jihadis linked to the group also used Twitter by claiming to be plotting an imminent attack on the streets of London using the hashtag #LondonAttacks.
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