Invasion of Privacy?
A new rule due to be implemented on October 18 by the Department of Homeland Security which allows DHS to collect complete social media information on all immigrants has privacy and civil libertarian advocacy groups alarmed. The rule goes beyond would-be visitors to the U.S. and would also apply to those who have already obtained a green card or gone through the naturalization process.
The rule also directly impacts U.S. citizens who communicate with immigrants on social media by making their conversations the subject of government surveillance according to Adam Schwartz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Speaking with a journalist from Buzzfeed Monday, Schwartz said, “We see this as part of a larger process of high tech surveillance of immigrants and more and more people being subjected to social media screening. There’s a growing trend at the Department of Homeland Security to be snooping on the social media of immigrants and foreigners and we think it’s an invasion of privacy and deters freedom of speech.”
One immigrant rights advocate who declined to be identified labeled the new rule as “one more step on the way to the slippery slope by the U.S. government in abrogating its constitutional mandate to uphold the rights and civil liberties of Americans.” Calling it an unprecedented move, the advocate told NCRM, “Blanket social media screening of permanent residents and naturalized citizens is a clear invasion of privacy and violates peoples’ freedom of speech and expression. This rule suggests an attempt to both limit immigration and silence political dissent among those who strongly disagree with Trump’s policies, particularly his singling out those of the Muslim faith.”
A report issued last February by DHS’s own inspector general found that all of the DHS pilot programs for using social media to screen immigration applicants “lack criteria for measuring performance to ensure they meet their objectives.”
“Although the pilots include some objectives, such as determining the effectiveness of an automated search tool and assessing data collection and dissemination procedures, it is not clear DHS is measuring and evaluating the pilots’ results to determine how well they are performing against set criteria,” the report reads.
This past May the administration had implemented a new questionnaire for use by the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs requiring all visa applicants to disclose social media handles for the past five years, as well as biographical information going back 15 years.
Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program, said this is yet another fad, started by the Obama administration, fueled by the belief that social media is going to help the U.S. stop an attack in the country.
“It’s very difficult to successfully use social media to determine what people are going or not going to do,” Patel told BuzzFeed News. “When you look at all the different ways in which we use communication tools, and social media is pretty different, very truncated. People use emojis, they use short form, sometimes it’s difficult to know what something means.”
The rule is slated to go into effect after the public comment period has ended.
Reporting by Brody Levesque for NCRM, Buzzfeed News, and Reuters
Brody Levesque is the Chief Political Correspondent for The New Civil Rights Movement.
You may contact Brody at Brody.Levesque@thenewcivilrightsmovement.com
Image by Animated Heaven via Flickr and a CC license
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