US Customs and Border Protection Wants To Know Who You Are On Twitter (eff.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electronic Frontier Foundation: U.S. border control agents want to gather Facebook and Twitter identities from visitors from around the world. But this flawed plan would violate travelers' privacy, and would have a wide-ranging impact on freedom of expression -- all while doing little or nothing to protect Americans from terrorism. A proposal has been issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to collect social media handles from visitors to the United States from visa waiver countries. The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes the proposal and has commented on it individually and as part of a larger coalition. "CBP specifically seeks 'information associated with your online presence -- Provider/Platform -- Social media identifier' in order to provider DHS 'greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections' for 'vetting purposes,'" reports EFF. "In our comments, we argue that would-be terrorists are unlikely to disclose social media identifiers that reveal publicly available posts expressing support for terrorism." They say this plan "would unfairly violate the privacy of innocent travelers," would cause "innocent travelers" to "engage in self-censorship, cutting back on their online activity out of fear of being wrongly judged by the U.S. government," and would lead to a "slippery slope, where CBP would require U.S. citizens and residents returning home to disclose their social media handles, or subject both foreign visitors and U.S. persons to invasive device searches at ports of entry with the intent of easily accessing any and all cloud data."

Comments

Would they believe

[sirber]

that it's possible that someone doesn't have twitter and/or facebook?

Re:Would they believe

[arth1]

What are you trying to hide, citizen?

No more than what's constitutionally protected, employee of the citizens.

Why do people still go there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people still travel to the US? I haven't visited the country since they started treating visitors like criminals and I refuse any business travel towards the US. Sure, it may not always be avoidable for everyone, but if tourists simply stop coming, they will have to start treating their guests more normally at some point.

Re:Why do people still go there?

[Serif]

Exactly my thoughts. I just got sick and tired of being treated like a criminal every time I went through immigration. And guess what, there are lots of other places around the world which are happy to see tourists and make them feel welcome. Who'd have thought it?

Re:Why do people still go there?

[Anubis IV]

they will have to start treating their guests more normally at some point.

I think you underestimate our insular mentality and the degree to which we believe in American exceptionalism. Only 30% of us even have passports, despite the 2007 change that requires us to present them every time we re-enter the country, even if we just visited a neighboring nation. And regardless of whether it's true or not, I'd wager that most Americans would believe that the tourism taking place within or between states far outweighs the 80 million visitors that come to the US for tourist activities each year.

On the flipside, I think you also overestimate the typical person's level of care about any of this stuff. I've opted-out of going through the body scanners every single time I've gone through an airport since they were introduced, but in all of those trips, I have yet to see anyone else do the same. While you and I might view this suggestion as an abridgement of our rights and a gross invasion of privacy, most people won't give it a second thought, simply because they've already made their vacation plans and a question on a form about something minor like that isn't enough to put them off. I wish it wasn't so, but we both know that to be true.

The fact that international tourist visits to the US have grown in the last few years (only France receives more tourists, but we bring in nearly 4x as much tourism revenue as they do, and nearly 2x that of China, which is the next closest in terms of revenue) only provides evidence for the notion that these draconian measures haven't adversely impacted the industry.

Nobody RTFAed?

[Cajun Hell]

Who is the "they" doing the believing? EFF?

A lot of people, including the EFF, are mentioning Facebook and Twitter for some reason. Those sites are said to be fairly popular, so they might be good examples if you're trying to explain the issue to the mainstream.

But if you actually click through to the .gov site's proposal, they don't say anything specifically about those two sites. They say "social media identifier." The page's only mention of Facebook is that the page has a Facebook-sharing widget.

So: "social media identifier." For people who use Facebook, their facebook id would, indeed, happen to be something the government would be interested in. But if you don't use Facebook, then that's not what they're asking for. The presumption is that you socialize (to at least some degree) somehow. That may or may not be correct, but for 100.0% of the people who are reading this comment, it happens to be an accurate assumption.

One good answer to their question might be: what's your Slashdot identifier? Well, if you log in, then it's your login name. Using that combined with some really large logs (presumably where the https was broken) they can see all the pages you requestedwhich uses that cookie, and infer what kinds of things you're interested in. And Slashdot already helpfully shows your posts, so they'll know what you're often saying. And that will happen to work fairly well for you, sirber.

If you don't log in, then they might like to know your ISP accounts (home and mobile) so they can check logs to see your IP address at certain times, to either directly tie it to Slashdot activity, or indirectly through, say, Google Analytics cookies or something like that. At some point, this crosses the line into the impractical, but let's remember: if you don't login to Slashdot, then the value of whatever identifies you on Slashdot is significantly lessened, since you're probably not maintaining persistent communications anyway, so they're less likely to care. They'd ask you about some other site.

Other "site" presumes HTTP, though, and of course social media is far larger than just the web. Email might still possibly the biggest social media network of all, where your identifier would be your email address. IRC? Usenet? (Ok, we're sounding very old here. But maybe someone knows how to investigate old people.)

If there's really nothing, then you probably are somewhat unusual (no, not a "terrorist," just unusual), so they might need to talk to you instead of just read about you in the other room. The presumption isn't Facebook and Twitter: it's just something.

Something online. Maybe you spend all your time chatting people up in bars, in the real world, without a computer network. Then I suppose a photograph of your face is your social media identifier. No?

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So if you are posting with any handle other than "Anonymous Coward" you will need to provide that handle to your friendly neighborhood spy.

Or just not travel to countries that don't treat their visitors with respect and basic human decency.

There are many places I would love to visit in the world, far more than I ever will be able to in one lifetime I expect. Why would I voluntarily subject myself to the kind of culture we're talking about here, when I can be welcomed as both a tourist and a business person in so many other places?

Obviously some people have no choice, and I hope things work out OK for them, but this sort of policy seems absurdly counter-productive for people who do have a choice and do care about the way they are treated.