Just in case anyone missed this before they planned their next visit to the United States, and as reported in the New York Times:
Visa applicants to the United States are required to submit any information about social media accounts they have used in the past five years under a State Department policy that started on Friday.
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“We already request certain contact information, travel history, family member information, and previous addresses from all visa applicants,” the State Department said in a statement. “We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect U.S. citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States.”
It’s always about “protecting U.S. citizens.” Except for this administration that’s not what it’s really about at all, is it?
Really, anyone who trusted their “opinions” to “social media” (which includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and presumably any other social forum requiring a password) should have realized this was coming. Now it’s here. So if you’ve written something negative on social media about Donald Trump or perhaps something unflattering or critical about one of his friends or allies, or even about some corporate or foreign government interests that he favors, be prepared to have your visa application scrutinized and possibly rejected.
Be prepared to provide all your passwords at the border. Be prepared to possibly be interrogated then, or detained. Because even if you are issued a visa permitting you to enter the country, there’s nothing precluding a “follow up” review or further “questioning” about your social media activity at that time.
Be prepared to have your travel itinerary and personal mobility placed at the mercy of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since the government will not say how it intends to use this information, what criteria are to be employed, or whom it will be disseminated to, also be prepared to have any family or friends you may have left back home investigated by whatever “authority” in your home country that our government chooses to inform about your “opinions” or “leanings.”
According to the Associated Press, the change will affect approximately 15 million foreign visitors to the U.S. every year, including those who come here for business or educational reasons. Previously such information had been sought only from those persons subject to “extra scrutiny,” such as those who had visited specific countries on a “terrorism” watch list. That amounted to about 65,000 people per year.
Both immigrant and non-immigrant visas are subject to the new rules.
The new visa application forms list a number of social media platforms and require the applicant to provide any account names they may have had on them over the previous five years. They also give applicants the option to volunteer information about social media accounts on platforms not listed on the form.
You may not be subject to as much or the same type of “scrutiny” if you’re white, and “Christian.” But you will be subject to scrutiny nonetheless. And Americans can now expect the countries that they choose to visit to demand the same of them, now that the U.S. has formally adopted this policy.
Welcome to the natural culmination of the surveillance state. It was put in place so easily, just by publishing a little notation in that oh-so-boring Federal Register.
In March 2017, President Trump asked the secretary of state, the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security and the director of national intelligence to put in effect “a uniform baseline for screening and vetting standards and procedures,” according to a memo published in the Federal Register. Requiring information about the social media accounts of visa applicants was part of that.
So, now that we’re normalizing this type of intrusion into peoples’ private lives, isn’t it just a matter of time before a set of arbitrary criteria is used to determine whether U.S. citizens who may have traveled outside our country, well, whether they should be let back in...at all?
“This is a dangerous and problematic proposal, which does nothing to protect security concerns but raises significant privacy concerns and First Amendment issues for citizens and immigrants,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said on Sunday. “Research shows that this kind of monitoring has chilling effects, meaning that people are less likely to speak freely and connect with each other in online communities that are now essential to modern life.”
Regardless of its supposed "intent," social media "policing" goes well beyond determining names, addresses,contacts, and travel history. By its nature it necessarily implicates an inquiry into a person’s beliefs, expressions and associations: quite literally, their "likes" and "dislikes." In other words, their "thinking" about anything they choose to share with others. In fact, the purported goal of this policy—to fight “terrorism”--is essentially impossible to achieve without actually reviewing the content of someone’s postings.
The social media web today is a map of our contacts, associations, habits and preferences. This kind of requirement will result in suspicion of surveillance of travelers and their networks of friends, families and business associates, Ms. Shamsi said, adding that the government had failed to explain how it would use this information.
Hint: they never will.
Immigration Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration is the most xenophobic and anti-immigrant in memory. The only real intent that can be assumed from this intrusive policy is to deliberately harass and intimidate foreign citizens from entering the U.S., thereby reducing their presence in our society. It fits the administration’s white nationalist sympathies like a glove, under the convenient fig leaf of “fighting terrorism.” It will not make us more secure, but it will help to cement our growing status as a pariah among the world’s nations, while setting the stage for further invasions of our dwindling right to privacy.
Which seems to be this administration’s goal in the first place.