'Censorship pure and simple': critics hit out at Trump plan to vet visitors'

theguardian.com

9 points·chrisjj··8 comments

Honestly, this feels like classic over-engineering: collecting five years of people’s social media just to let them visit the country. I can’t imagine the false positives this will create — old jokes, memes, politics… all suddenly "security signals."

If the goal is real safety, is this actually the data that helps? Or just an easy way to scare off normal visitors?

Neither. The goal is to scare people off of criticizing the US in the first place. If you're not going to absolutely and irrevocably boycott the US, then you're going to think twice before posting anything negative.

We don't even have to ever actually implement it. We just have to threaten to. Even if we did implement it, it would probably only be used rarely, because it's a huge effort and will turn up nothing useful, but the chilling effect is immediate and universal.

> I can’t imagine the false positives this will create

But is that much of a problem to the operator? He's sure to use a whitelist.

Other countries are available.

Well yes there's a lot less interest in going to the US now.

True title: ‘Censorship pure and simple’: critics hit out at Trump plan to vet visitors’ social media

Interesting to see the criticsm excludes any of the DNA requirement.

Bored of tariffs, Trump decides to crash the tourism industry, next.

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