With representatives of Twitter, Facebook and Google, Smith provided expert testimony during the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism's October 31, 2017 hearing focused on extremist content and Russian disinformation online.[18] In his testimony, Smith argued anonymity provided to social media users by major companies has increased the attractiveness of their technologies for terrorist groups like ISIS and he suggested that legislation should be implemented to compel tech companies to restrict VPN use on their platforms only to those whose identities they know.[19][20]