US Wants to Make Social Media Data Collection Mandatory for All Visa Applicants

guest · Mar 30, 2018

US Wants to Make Social Media Data Collection Mandatory for All Visa Applicants
March 30, 2018
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...collection-mandatory-for-all-visa-applicants/

Diplomatic visas will be exempt from this new rule and some applicants might be asked to provide a list of emails and phone numbers used in the past five years, for additional vetting purposes.

Nearly 15 million visa applicants affected
These are visa forms that immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants must fill in and submit before being allowed to enter the US. US officials estimate 710,000 immigrant seekers and 14 million non-immigrant visa applicants will be affected.

US officials hope the new decision will help authorities track down users who shared terrorist propaganda content on social media. This is a strange approach [...]
If approved, the new decision is bound to have an impact on the tourist industry
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Minimalist · Mar 30, 2018

If you don't have social media account, will your application be granted or denied by default? I guess that sooner or later we will all have to open account, just to be able to request for visas and similar.

142395 · Mar 30, 2018

What will be regarded as social media? Is Wilders social media?

oliverjia · Mar 30, 2018

142395 said: ↑

What will be regarded as social media? Is Wilders social media?
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probably not. social media usually refers to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc

RockLobster · Mar 30, 2018

Yeah and what is considered terrorist propaganda? Accusing the US Government being complicit in 9/11? That would pretty much rule out anyone with any semblance of intelligence from comming here lol.
Everyone should teach their kids, make a social media account with their real names where they portray themselves as perfect and say how great the government and everyone in authority is all the time and then use a pseudonym for their real personality.

Minimalist · Mar 30, 2018

RockLobster said: ↑

Everyone should teach their kids, make a social media account with their real names where they portray themselves as perfect and say how great the government and everyone in authority is
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That might not be wise if next government goes after supporters of previous. What is desirable today might not be tomorrow.

RockLobster · Mar 30, 2018

Minimalist said: ↑

That might not be wise if next government goes after supporters of previous. What is desirable today might not be tomorrow.
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Yes, that's true. I think there should be some guidelines though, to teach your kids what they should and should not mention on social media because this wont stop at visa applications.
Having said that, the kids probably would take no notice and theres always going to be those of us who speak their mind regardless of the consequences.

mirimir · Mar 30, 2018

OK, so the real me does use social media. But only with my closest family and friends. All totally unremarkable. And never in English.

guest · May 31, 2019

The State Department will start asking visa applicants for their social media accounts
Applicants will be required to list their accounts
May 31, 2019
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/31/18647401/state-department-visas-social-media-trump

The Hill first reported the news. A State Department spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the new forms requiring accounts were put into use today.

The spokesperson said the policy will require both temporary and permanent travelers to list their accounts when sending an application to the State Department. According to The Hill, a drop-down menu will require the applicants to name the accounts, or to say they do not use them.
Officials will then use a screening system against the provided information.

Under the plan, applicants will be required to the United States to list the social media accounts they’ve used in the past five years. The Hill reports that the system will start with only some “major” social media services, but it could be expanded later.
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mirimir · May 31, 2019

Better hope that you compartmentalized well enough

summerheat · Jun 2, 2019

I've visited the U.S. several times, and it's a beautiful country. But now I've removed it from the list of the travel destinations worth visiting. I'm not willing to accept this new idiocy.

Soft Life · Jun 2, 2019

Not having any social media now days in the US makes you look suspicious. Absolutely an upside down world.

summerheat · Jun 3, 2019

Okay, I read somewhere that people travelling to the U.S. via ESTA are not affected.

guest · Aug 27, 2019

U.S. border officials are increasingly denying entry to travelers over others’ social media
August 27, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/border-deny-entry-united-states-social-media/

Travelers are increasingly being denied entry to the United States as border officials hold them accountable for messages, images and video on their devices sent by other people.

It’s a bizarre set of circumstances that has seen countless number of foreign nationals rejected from the U.S. after friends, family, or even strangers send messages, images, or videos over social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, which are then downloaded to the traveler’s phone.
[...] The Harvard Crimson. The officers who searched his phone and computer reportedly took issue with his friends’ social media activity.
Ajjawi’s visa was canceled and he was summarily deported — for someone else’s views.
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deBoetie · Aug 27, 2019

mirimir said: ↑

OK, so the real me does use social media. But only with my closest family and friends. All totally unremarkable. And never in English.
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VERY suspicious. Especially not in English. Dash it man, whatever happened to the Empire!

Minimalist · Aug 28, 2019

Another reminder to those that think they have "nothing to hide". They just think that they have nothing to hide, but similar incidents show that they're wrong.

guest · Sep 2, 2019

mood said: ↑

U.S. border officials are increasingly denying entry to travelers over others’ social media
August 27, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/border-deny-entry-united-states-social-media/
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Another visa holder was denied entry to the US
A graphic image sent by another person was grounds to deny a visa holder entry to the United States
September 2, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/denied-entry-united-states-whatsapp/

As a a Pakistani national, Dakhil needed a visa to enter the U.S. He obtained a B1/B2 visa, which allowed him to temporarily enter the U.S. for work and to visit family.

[...] “Then the officer who took my phone showed me an image,” he told TechCrunch.
Dakhil told the officer that the image was sent to him in a WhatsApp group. It’s difficult to distinguish where a saved image came from on WhatsApp, because it automatically downloads received images and videos to a user’s phone. Questionable content — even from unsolicited messages — found during a border search could be enough to deny the traveler entry.

Dakhil told the officer that the image could be easily found on the internet, but the officer was more interested in the names of the WhatsApp group members.
“You can search the image over the internet,” Dakhil told the officer. But the officer declined and said the images were his responsibility. “We found this on your cellphone,” the officer said.
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Frustrated but determined to know more, Dakhil asked for his records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request — which anyone can do — but had to pay hundreds of dollars for its processing.
One document said CBP denied Dakhil entry to the U.S. “due to the derogatory images found on his cellphone,”,” [...]
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guest · Sep 8, 2019

Homeland Security details social media collection from immigrants
September 8, 2019
https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/08...tails-social-media-collection-from-immigrant/

The Department of Homeland Security has explained how it will demand social media info from asylum from newcomers to the US beyond visa applicants. A notice in the Federal Register makes clear that officials will ask for social network data in seven forms that asylum seekers, immigrants, refugees and "inadmissable aliens" must fill to be allowed into the country, whether temporarily or permanently.

The AP said in June that Homeland Security was planning to expand its social media collection, but there haven't been details until now.
There are concerns that authorities might either make bad judgment calls or abuse the requirements to reject people based on thin pretexts.
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guest · Sep 27, 2019

US uses Google Translate to vet refugees
September 27, 2019
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49852308

A staff manual said pasting text into tools such as Google Translate and Bing was "the most efficient approach".

News site ProPublica said online tools often mistranslated sentences and misinterpreted nuance and slang.
But the USCIS told the news site that checking social media posts was a "common-sense measure".
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mirimir · Sep 28, 2019

Seriously, using Google Translate? Damn.

guest · Dec 5, 2019

Filmmakers Sue to Shield U.S. Visitors From Social Media Vetting
December 5, 2019
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/05/us-visa-social-media-screening/

A filmmaker working on a documentary that’s critical of U.S. policies. A writer who operates a pseudonymous Twitter account to evade an authoritarian regime in their home country. An activist who uses Facebook to organize protests at the U.S.-Mexico border.
These are the kinds of people who might not want U.S. immigration agents poring over their social media profiles before deciding whether they should be allowed into the country.

Yet that’s exactly what the State Department now requires as part of the Trump administration’s “extreme vetting” of millions of visa applicants.
Two U.S.-based documentary film organizations filed suit on Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C. to challenge the policy, arguing that it will have a chilling effect on the filmmakers they work with.

“They self-censor to avoid being associated with controversial ideas or sensitive topics,” the complaint states. The nonprofit groups surveyed over 100 international filmmakers and found that “a significant majority said it would chill their speech online.”
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guest · May 29, 2020

Twitter, Reddit challenge US rules forcing visa applicants to disclose their social media handles
May 29, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/29/twitter-reddit-visa-social-media-handles/

Twitter and Reddit have filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit challenging a U.S. government rule change compelling visa applicants to disclose their social media handles.

The lawsuit, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Brennan Center for Justice, and law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, seeks to undo both the State Department’s requirement that visa applicants must disclose their social media handles prior to obtaining a U.S. visa, as well as related rules over the retention and dissemination of those records.

Last year, the State Department began asking visa applicants for their current and former social media usernames, a move that affects millions non-citizens applying to travel to the United States each year.
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Twitter and Reddit, which collectively have more than 560 million users, said their users — many of which don’t use their real names on their platforms — are forced to “surrender their anonymity in order to travel to the United States,” which “violates the First Amendment rights to speak anonymously and associate privately.”

“Twitter and Reddit vigorously guard the right to speak anonymously for people on their platforms, and anonymous individuals correspondingly communicate on these platforms with the expectation that their identities will not be revealed without a specific showing of compelling need,” the brief said.
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guest · Jun 23, 2020

Privacy Issues of U.S. Collection of Social Media Information from Visa Applicants
June 22, 2020
https://www.workplaceprivacyreport....ocial-media-information-from-visa-applicants/

The Department of State (DOS) has been collecting (and maintaining) information on social media use from all visa applicants (immigrant and non-immigrant) since June 2019. The DOS’s collection and maintenance of this information is the subject of a lawsuit. Despite claims of being part of the vetting process, concerns about privacy and misuse of information remain. Our analysis of these issues here.
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