With immigration a major concern which helped decide at least the election for the electors’ ballot, vetting those entering the country or sponsoring entryis on the minds of many Americans who fear that the wrong people are entering. But if you ask government officials to do something, you have to know that they will take the ball and run. In the case of “vetting” — running background checks to make sure travelers, potential immigrants and their sponsors aren’t terrorists or criminals — you end up with a surveillance system that targets those entering the country and, inevitably, their Americans. friends and contacts.

Turning fear into a surveillance program

“Despite rebranding a federal program that monitors the social media activities of immigrants and foreign visitors to a more benign name, the government has agreed to spend more than $100 million to continue monitoring people’s online activities.” rEPORTS Aaron Mackey of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The problem began early in the first Trump administration, when the incoming president responded to immigration concerns by building on previous border policies with calls for “extreme vetting.”

“To protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not tolerate attitudes hostile to this country and its founding principles,” President Trump said in a statement on January 27, 2017. executive order demanding a tougher screening process. “The United States cannot and should not admit those who do not uphold the Constitution or those who would put violent ideologies above American law.”

Security is a legitimate concern. But like David J. Bier of the Cato Institute he pointed out in 2018, even under the most generous assumptions (for federal officials), “only 13 people—2 percent of the 531 people convicted of terrorism offenses or killed while committing a crime since 9/11—entered because of a post-9/11 security check failure.”

The program quickly became more than a request for documents from the countries of origin of migrants and visitors; the US government wanted access to people’s online lives, especially their social media accounts, to continuously monitor their statements and opinions. Private contractors wishing to participate in the program were expect to “analyze and apply techniques for exploiting publicly available information such as mass media, blogs, public hearings, conferences, academic websites, social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedln, radio, television , press, geospatial sources, websites, and specialized publications”. Monitoring soon applied to millions of people logging in legal (those crossing the border without documents are another matter and a bigger hassle).

Same snooping, new name

When Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, Mackey notes, he kept the program in place. The biggest change is that the program was renamed the Visa Lifecycle Vetting Initiative (VLVI) at some point.

“We are disappointed that the Biden administration has decided to double down on this Trump-era policy of mass surveillance of visa applicants’ social media,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. he commented in 2022.

“Social media verification programs like VLVI are insidious in nature because an individual’s data can be retained indefinitely, shared widely across multiple federal agencies, and even disclosed to foreign governments,” ADVISED David Strom of Avast, an online security company.

The Knight First Amendment Institute assisted two associations of documentary filmmakers who sued to end the program. The plaintiffs feared that government officials were looking through correspondence with colleagues visiting abroad and scrutinizing the views expressed in their communications and their work (arguments are scheduled for December) — and perhaps sharing the results with partner agencies in other countries.

“Regardless of the name used, the DHS program raises significant free speech and First Amendment concerns because it freezes the speech of those seeking to enter the United States and allows officials to target and punish them for expressing views that do not like,” adds EFF. Mackey.

EF also sued to get an inside look at how online monitoring is done.

Spying on travelers means spying on you

Given that communication is rarely a solitary activity, the monitoring of migrants and foreign travelers inevitably involves the surveillance of Americans. This is often COVER of surveillance efforts ostensibly directed at foreign nationals in which their American counterparts have an equal or greater interest.

Section 702 authorizationfor example, it should be directed to “persons outside the United States.” Frequently, however, “the government also acquires a substantial amount of communications of US individuals,” the federal Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) ADVISED in a 2023 report. Such spying on Americans “should not be understood as occurring infrequently or as an insignificant part of the Section 702 program,” the report added.

This is the case with border security agencies as much as with the FBI and other agencies called out for abusing Section 702. Three years ago, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was found to be conducting detailed background checks on critics, activists and others in search of private information. The agents “routinely used the country’s most sensitive databases to obtain the travel records and financial and personal information of journalists, government officials, members of Congress and their staff, NGO workers and others.” conformable to Jana Winter by Yahoo! News.

There’s no reason to believe that yet another surveillance program run by people who have repeatedly abused their power isn’t following the same path as everything that came before. The awareness that Big Brother aims for depends not only on migrants and travellers, but also on their friends and contacts in this country.

“Knowing that the government will regularly scrutinize online statements to make admission or deportation decisions will undoubtedly put pressure on both visa applicants and grantees — and the people they communicate with — to censor themselves online,” the Center said for Democracy and Technology. objection to the program.

Border security is not going away as a concern for very many Americans. But it should come as no surprise that government officials are eager to turn public fears into blank checks for expanding their own intrusive power.

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