Homeland Security Plans To Collect Immigrants' Social Media Information (fortune.com)

The Department of Homeland Security plans to expand the files it collects on immigrants, as well as some citizens, by including more online data -- most notably search results and social media information -- about each individual. The plan is set out in the Federal Register, where the government publishes forthcoming regulations. A final version is set to go into effect on Oct. 18. Fortune reports: The plan, reported by BuzzFeed, is notable partly because it permits the government to amass information not only about recent immigrants, but also on green card holders and naturalized Americans as well. The proposal to collect social media data is set out in a part of the draft regulation that describes expanding the content of so-called "Alien Files," which serve as detailed profiles of individual immigrants, and are used by everyone from border agents to judges. Here is the relevant portion: "The Department of Homeland Security, therefore, is updating the [file process] to ... (5) expand the categories of records to include the following: country of nationality; country of residence; the USCIS Online Account Number; social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results."

Comments

Tried to slip that one by us

[PopeRatzo]

as well as some citizens

I like how they add that innocent little phrase. "...as well as some citizens".

If you're a naturalized citizen, you're as much of a citizen as the Founding Fathers. Don't let anyone tell you different. Unlike citizens that were born here, you've proven that you can actually pass a civics test. You belong here. You have all the rights of any American.

Re:Tried to slip that one by us

[Aighearach]

You misunderstood. Some citizens have an A-file, is what that means. There is no requirement in the Constitution for the government to throw out all records about you if you become a citizen.

What this does has nothing to do with that. It was already true that an immigrant has an A-file, where the records relating to their immigration are kept. And also that citizens who sponsor immigrants also have a file in the same system, as do translators and other professionals who work with immigrants during the process.

What this does is add "social medial handles" to the list of examples of types of alias, creates a place in the database for search results relating to social media. When somebody is asking to move here, why wouldn't that be part of their background check? Why wouldn't social media handles be a type of alias? They're not doing a background check on the US citizen who is sponsoring an immigrant, they're doing the checks on the immigrant. Why wouldn't there be checks? Why wouldn't the database have a slot for the data?

Re: Tried to slip that one by us

[ShanghaiBill]

You don't get to be President, just as one example.

You also cannot be Vice President, and that is the only other example.
There are no other differences. A naturalized citizen has all the other rights of a native born citizen.

Before people lose their minds again

[El Cubano]

Before people go losing their minds again about how Trump is a xenophobic racist, please have a look at this Slashdot article from 15 months ago:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/28/005202/us-customs-wants-to-know-travelers-social-media-account-names

You will note that it was during the Obama administration. I am not making a value judgment on the practice, I am just pointing out that the previous administration did or tried to do something substantially similar.

Re:Before people lose their minds again

[emag]

That didn't apply to naturalized citizens. This new one does. Naturalized citizens are now second class citizens.

Re:Before people lose their minds again

[deviated_prevert]

Before people go losing their minds again about how Trump is a xenophobic racist, please have a look at this Slashdot article from 15 months ago:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/28/005202/us-customs-wants-to-know-travelers-social-media-account-names

You will note that it was during the Obama administration. I am not making a value judgment on the practice, I am just pointing out that the previous administration did or tried to do something substantially similar.

The NSA seems to be a branch of government that does not answer to the executive office unless they fuck up. Same reason why several presidents tried to reign in the CIA and even before that the FBI under Hoover. This is the problem with civil servants who achieve too great a level of power independent of the executive branch and therefore can do shit behind the back of everybody. The CIA backing the crazy Cubans is one example of this level of independent action backfiring on presidents all the way back to when Kennedy took over from Eisanhoover and had to, somewhat reluctantly I might add, approve the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Which was a huge CIA intelligence screw up too say the least.

It took until Regan for the executive branch to realize that the level of drug financing of bad guys for guns and troops by the CIA was going to create huge PR problems in the future when the public found out the truth. So Regan reigned in the CIA to an extent, but he had a hell of a time doing it and never really succeeded.

The problems with the covert actions NSA/CIA are starting to show their ugly head, Obama had to keep tight lipped even when the idiots bugged Angela Merkel. Though it would be interesting to see what they got out of that little job. All and all it is a problem for any president even Lord Trump is going to have trouble with what they do behind his back perhaps even to him and his family if he tries to reign them in.

Re:Before people lose their minds again

[DarkOx]

A naturalized citizen is a person who was born to illegal immigrants.

Completely false! A naturalized is a legal immigrant who has become a citizen. Someone born here regardless of their citizenship parents is citizen and could be president.

Some citizens are less equal than others...

[emag]

The most disturbing part of this is that permanent residents and naturalized citizens are subject to these changes too. I can almost see how permanent residents should be subject to this. What I can't see is how naturalized citizens are. They've had to renounce their former citizenship and swear an oath to the United States...

How do I know? I spent 18 years as a permanent resident in the US. I've spent the last 19 years and 11 months as a naturalized citizen. To my understanding, the only limit on naturalized vs natural born citizenship is that a naturalized citizen can't be President. (I'm OK with that, until the "Demolition Man"'s predicted Schwarzenegger Amendment happens.) Since becoming a "citizen" (I can no longer not quote it), I've voted in every election, I've gladly served jury duty, I've done everything expected of me. (Just living here, even before, I paid taxes and had an SSN... go figure)

This change makes naturalized citizens a de facto second class of citizen. The ironic part is that most of those nearly-20 years of being a "citizen", I've been a contractor to multiple US government agencies, including the DoD, NASA, and NIH. I've had Public Trust clearances, access to information most wouldn't, etc.

What I've learned in the past couple days is this...

Natural born citizens good, Naturalized citizens bad...

(apparently /. doesn't respect any type of overstrike... Imagine an overstrike on "Four legs" and "Two legs" on the above)

how the fuck did we get here?

[pablo_max]

I was, no doubt like many fellow /.'s a child of the 70's/80's. After hearing about the posted story a couple of days ago, I was trying to remember back to my youth.
Was America like when I was young? Was our government actively and openly doing things contrary to the interests of her people?
Perhaps I wear the rose colored glasses of those who look upon the past, but I don't recall that being he case.
Sure, we still had a ton of racist. Especially where I grew up in "the valley". But America, in general term, was something to look up to.
I had many pen pals from Europe as a child. Every one of them expressed the sentiment of wanting some day to go to America since so many wonderful things were happening there. Amazing technology, exciting movies and television shows, a government who protects smaller countries from bullies and all the rest of it.
One of the pen pals is living in America. He got a green card in the green card lottery. Clever guy. Got his doctorate in applied physics. He has been in the US, geez... 12 years now. During our last phone call, he mentioned he was starting to look for something back in Germany. Things, as he put it, are just not the same.

It makes me sad to think about the direction our country is headed. A government given to more and more excess, a population more and more introverted and xenophobic. The stead rise of populism and religious extremism.

Even on this forum, which should be normally "thinking people" you can see it. People willing to defend every insane thing the government does with "well Bush did it first" or Obama did it first". People who treat their political party like their favorite sports team or even like a religion. It's insane!
Do people truly believe that any party gives a single fuck about them? Because they don't. Both parties care about 1 thing. Power. Staying in power and expanding their power. Nothing else.

So tell me follow /.'s, how the fuck did we get here?

Re:how the fuck did we get here?

[coastwalker]

Personally I blame the ending of the cold war and the passage of time. Now America has no need to even pretend to the moral high ground and it can adopt behaviour such as mass surveilance which used to be thought to be tôtalitarian. Also most of the people who were alive to see the horror of fascism in Europe are gone now and we have a president who openly supports Nazis because they are part of his base. The world has indeed gone mad.

Re:how the fuck did we get here?

[istartedi]

Some things have changed, some haven't. The government was *always* abusing people both here and abroad. The Internet just makes it easier to hear about things, and easier to engage in different kinds of abuse. Tuskeegee experiment, MK ultra, CIA meddling overseas, FBI files on people, McCarthyism, eugenics, etc. All that stuff took place a long time ago in the America that people looked up to. It was easier to hide back then.

That said, it does seem like there's something more than simply the removal of rose-colored glasses at work here. We've seen a steady erosion of ethics, a tighter integration of lobbyists and government to the point where corruption is blatantly obvious, an exhaustion of the treasury by the military-industrial complex, and a lack of vision. We don't even have our own manned space vehicles now, although "we're working on it".

We need statesmen. We keep electing yes men.

It's not necessarily the end of our nation--we've actually had some really terrible corruption if you go back through history and read it. It may be part of a generational cycle. I definitely think we are going through an ugly phase now. I'm not sure how we pull out; but I know we can.

That's exactly the reason

[no-body]

why I don't use social media - I just don't like being snooped, scanned, evaluated and judged by some unknown mechanisms which, excuse me, reminds me a lot of totalitarian systems where secrete files are kept, people in your neighborhood block have something like a block-ward looking after your activities, everyone suspects somebody and suspects to be suspected.

We have been there (in other countries), done that (in other countries) and now - it's happening under the umbrella of a free country which more and more turns into a farce of the original idea.

Re: That's exactly the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, guy.

You just used a form of social media to post that you don't use social media. You evendid it from a logged-on account. Do you really think the operators of /. are paragons of integrity who will resist divulging identities if it is demanded of them? You seriously don't think this site is heavily monitored?

Don't fool yourself.

Re: Rule of Law

[easyTree]

I'm ok with the 'no foreigners in' rule if a 'no Americans out' rule is introduced :D
Makes sense really, if foreigners are so bad, the rest of the world should be pretty unappealing due to the high concentration of non-Americans.

First!

[houghi]

First they came for the immigrants, but I do not do anything, because I am not an immigrant.