- The US government wants to check your social media posts at the border
- That could impact your data privacy and free speech rights
- Privacy advocates are opposing the move
Tourists visiting the US could soon be subjected to more intense checks than usual, with new proposed rules including in-depth social media screening and other similarly draconian measures.
The rule change has been proposed by the US’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. If the plans go ahead, every person visiting the country will have their social media posts from the last five years checked before entry.
As well as that, it will be “mandatory” to hand over your email addresses and phone numbers from the last five years, as well as the names, addresses, numbers and birth dates of your family members. You’ll also need to provide a photograph of yourself, plus biometric data including your fingerprints, iris scans and even DNA.
That could be a significant headache for travelers and could potentially result lengthy queues and delays when trying to enter the US, depending on how it’s implemented. Tech privacy rights have become an increasing concern for users in recent years, with sales of the best VPN apps over the past 12 months hitting new heights as governments around the world seek to collect ever more information on citizens.
Instead of being a place to connect with friends and watch cat memes, many people will likely be concerned that social media is turning into a place of surveillance – and the CBP’s move isn’t doing anything to allay those fears.
A controversial idea
Privacy advocates are naturally concerned about the new proposals, but President Donald Trump doesn’t seem too worried about the potential impacts on tourists or on US tourism.
According to the BBC, Trump said: “We just want people to come over here, and safe. We want safety. We want security. We want to make sure we’re not letting the wrong people come enter our country.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that works to protect digital privacy rights, naturally has other views, as reported by the New York Times. It said that the CBP’s proposal would “exacerbate civil liberties harms”.
The group added that such a move “has not proven effective at finding terrorists and other bad guys. But it has chilled the free speech and invaded the privacy of innocent travelers, along with that of their American family, friends and colleagues.”
The proposed rules would also, in theory, be trivial to bypass. If a person is concerned about falling foul of the restrictions, they’d simply need to delete their social media posts from the last five years and clear their email inbox. There are even digital footprint services that can do this for you.
It also wouldn’t be surprising to see many people creating secondary social media profiles with no post history and then providing those to administration officials. The CBP says its proposal will be subject to 60 days of public consultation. Anyone concerned about what it might lead to can make their thoughts known by emailing ‘[email protected]’.
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