US Homeland Security Will Start Collecting Social Media Info on All Immigrants | Hacker News Reader

US Homeland Security Will Start Collecting Social Media Info on All Immigrants

gizmodo.com

50 pointsliteracy10113 comments

Discussed previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15337961

Direct FederalRegister link:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19...

It looks like it covers naturalized US citizens. What if I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. Will that be flagged and I'll be put on a black list. "Looks like you don't have enough of superficial social relationships online and don't trade short 140 character sarcastic remarks with anyone that we can see. That is highly unusual, can you explain yourself, sir".

My instinct would be to say "Oh but I have a prolific Dark Web relationship network. That's where all my hacker friends are hanging out", but I should know better never to make jokes like that.

Wonder if they'll collect wechat accounts?

Wait, so as a naturalized American I could be denied entry to my own country for refusing to turn over my social media passwords?

I don't think they can deny entry (but do check the source for that), but I think it means they just made it explicit that they might dig into the "social" accounts and ask questions.

They (the government) probably already monitor and record stuff like that, but now are exposing it directly by asking related questions, say "You bought a pressure cooker, and a ball bearings last month, saw it on your Amazon account. What are you planning on doing with those".

(I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. God help you if you're a naturalized citizen in America today.)

AIUI, no, CBP cannot deny American citizens entry. They can confiscate your phone (and probably never have to return it) or arrest you, but either way they also need to let you in.

(Though if you're brown, and in certain areas, that arrest can pretty quickly turn into a summary deportation hearing where you have to prove your citizenship without access to lawyer or paperwork. In theory everyone involved would be in deep shit for an incident like that, but in practice they get presidential pardons.)

Also, this article isn't about CBP policy.

Does this mean that I can be asked, at the border, for my social media information? What happens if I refuse to provide or lie about having it?

I am far more worried that they are targeting immigrants than I am that they are collecting social media info.

Isn't this the same discussion from recently?

What discussion?

You might be thinking of the debate over whether CBP can search your cloud data (vs. only the data present on your phone) at a border crossing.

This is in the same vein thematically but substantially different both legally and technically. It applies to immigrants whether or not they are crossing borders, and it builds a permanent database of what they've found. Whether this is illegal or not depends on the nature of "what they've found" - it sounds like they're "just" going to be buying up the same data sources advertisers use, which is probably legal. (But terrifying.)

1984 is officially here.

Great. Does that mean we can dispense with the tedious pseudointellectual references to it now?

And Brave New World?

And "First they came for the Socialists..."

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