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US To Seek Social Media Details From Certain Visa Applicants (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: The State Department wants to review social media, email addresses and phone numbers from some foreigners seeking U.S. visas, as part of the Trump administration's enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors. The department, in a notice published Thursday in the Federal Register, said it was seeking public comment on the requirement. But it also said it is requesting a temporary go-ahead from the White House budget office so the plan can take effect for 180 days, beginning May 18, regardless of those comments. The proposed requirements would apply to visa applicants identified for extra scrutiny, such as those who have traveled to areas controlled by terrorist organizations. The State Department said it estimates that the rules would affect about 0.5 percent of total U.S. visa applicants, or roughly 65,000 people. Affected applicants would have to provide their social media handles and platforms used during the previous five years, and divulge all phone numbers and email addresses used during that period. U.S. consular officials would not seek social media passwords, and would not try to breach any privacy controls on applicants' accounts, according to the department's notice.
I'm not a Visa applicant, so whatever! This doesn't affect me!
If you do decide to be a Visa applicant, I would recommend you not post "Kill the Infidels" on your FB page.
For superior health care, silly.
This is a good idea. People who use "social media" should not be allowed in the country.
Governments don't understand that social media can be easily forged to appear normal enough and puppet accounts are easy enough to manufacture. The equation of security awareness with user profiling is a foolhardy notion at best. The skilled will use this to their advantage while the unskilled may be inappropriately harmed by false positives.
True security awareness must be undetected by the masses and after continual thought on this subject, such awareness is as critical as it is dangerous. The body of data available online does not reveal anything through the noise and only works to eliminate unintelligent threats against any nation.
However, enough people are willing to fork over intimate details about who they are and what their beliefs are. And those who are but shadows in the social areas are more likely to also suffer the consequences of a false positive due to their care and caution against leaving a footprint.
What is an ideal citizen and who gets to decide that? What does it mean when opposing parties secure their power rather than secure true safety for a population?
We could face a total enslavement to AI eventually, even with cautious practices; these policies only help human beings to tighten our own collective noose.
Once a policy exists for one small demographic, in this case new immigrants, that policy can easily widen to 100% of all citizens. However, we should assume that even today, everything we say or do online is added to the international security blueprint. Very few get to decide how that information is used and most of them are sociopathic narcissists, because that appears to be one of the hallmark traits of many a politician.
What's better though, through knowing about this, is that we can identify a clear path through such adversity and find ways to protect citizens from such potential threats.
There are threats to sovereignty and safety and we can look carefully at protecting all people from injustice but only if we get a clear understanding about what injustice is, where it comes from and how it can be averted effectively.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.