Homeland Security officials debated a policy that would have allowed authorities to review the social media profiles of foreigners who applied to come to the United States as far back as 2011, but ultimately decided against the idea, MSNBC reported on Thursday.

The news agency published a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo detailing a proposed policy that would have allowed officials to utilize social networking sites “for purposes of verifying information related to applications and petitions.” The memo indicates doing so could help detect “criminal activity, or egregious public safety or national security concerns.”

The memo itself isn’t dated, though MSNBC reported it was ultimately rejected in 2011 after a lengthy process that included multiple revisions. Speaking anonymously to the news agency, a former senior Homeland Security official said it was “unusual” for the policy to go through the revision process, which took about a year to complete, only for it to be axed by senior officials.

Public demand to check foreign applicant’s social media profiles before allowing them to come to the United States has surged after the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook killed 14 people and wounded 21 more during a holiday party for Farook’s coworkers in what President Barack Obama has called an act of terrorism.

FBI Director James Comey has testified before federal lawmakers and said the shooters were communicating about jihad and martyrdom over the Internet as far back as 2013, yet Malik was still able to obtain a fiancee visa and move to the United States despite those communications. She was living in Saudi Arabia when she met Farook, a U.S. citizen, on an online dating website.

Since then, lawmakers have said they’re crafting bills that would make checking an applicant’s social media profiles, or at least the publicly available information on them, a required part of the visa screening process. While there are some pilot programs for those reviews in place, ABC News has reported it’s still not a widespread policy, partly due to civil liberties concerns.

But the memo obtained by MSNBC indicates that federal policymakers had discussed allowing employees to review applicants’ social media profiles at least four years before the San Bernardino shootings.

The memo indicates that “many social networking websites” actually could not be accessed from Homeland Security computers, as the department’s security controls blocked them. The memo doesn’t specify what websites could not be viewed by employees, but says that “access to certain sites may be blocked to maintain employee productivity or to reduce security risks to agency networks.”

The policy would have allowed “certain agency personnel to access social networking sites for verification purposes.” The memo notes that while some sites have privacy settings that hide information, it’s possible for anyone on the Internet to see certain personal details or posts. The memo indicated that officials would only be allowed to review “publicly available information.”

The axed policy would have allowed applicants “to explain or refute any derogatory information obtained from social networking sites,” before any immigration ruling, according to the memo.