US Department of Homeland Security to track all immigrants’ social media accounts
By
Jake Dean
29 September 2017
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quietly announced this week that it will begin collecting social media information and search results from all immigrants’ social media accounts and internet searches, including popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The policy expansion will take effect on October 18th, the same day President Donald Trump’s indefinite travel ban is slated to go into full effect.
The DHS’s invasive surveillance and data gathering operation will cover all immigrants, including green card holders and naturalized citizens. This represents a gross violation of the First and Fourth Amendments which guarantee the right to free speech and protect against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The policy was made public last week in the Federal Register and first reported by BuzzFeed News. It provides detailed guidance on what information DHS agents are allowed to gather, including “social media handle, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results.”
Any past political speeches or posts, many of which may have been made under pseudonyms that were intended to maintain privacy out of fear of backlash, will now be collected and used to judge eligibility for citizenship. A journalist that published an article about war crimes or other controversial subjects under a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation will now have to disclose that information. Intimate details of immigrants’ personal lives will be sifted and scrutinized by government agents.
It is not known to what extent the DHS will have access to “search results”—if the agency has direct access to popular search engine sites such as Google…