Should Border Agents Scroll Through Foreigners’ Facebook Profiles?
A proposed change to a common U.S. customs form would allow the government to vet travelers’ social media accounts.
.. The form would ask some visitors to the U.S. to write down their social-media usernames so that agents can gather more information from their public profiles and timelines.
.. “We should have said, ‘We want your social media, both your private stuff and your public stuff,’” said Stephen Lynch, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, during a heated House committee hearing in December. “That’s entirely reasonable to ask people who are coming from countries that are known to sponsor terror.”
.. Hall was referring to an incident in 2012, when two tourists from the U.K. were refused entry to the U.S., apparently over a pair of misguided tweets. One of the travelers tweeted that he would “destroy America,” a phrase he later said was slang for his intention to party during his trip. He also tweeted that he would dig up Marilyn Monroe’s grave—this, he claimed, was a reference to Family Guy, a TV show. The travelers were turned back at the Los Angeles airport.
.. Most people’s social media presences aren’t entirely accurate reflections of themselves. Hall, for example, often tweets about satanic death-metal music—but no, he’s not a satanist. “I just find it fascinating, and I used to play in a heavy-metal band,” Hall told me. “If you read from that that I’m traveling someplace to commit some sort of ritual, you’d have a pretty bad insight into what I think is important.”
..Of those people, a whopping 28 percent had something in their profiles that raised a red flag. (And that’s among volunteers who already held security clearances.).. Of those people, a whopping 28 percent had something in their profiles that raised a red flag. (And that’s among volunteers who already held security clearances.).. Comments can only be mailed to CBP’s office in Washington, a restriction Hall says is rare. (Most proposals can be commented on electronically.)