USCIS said the vetting of social media accounts is necessary for “the enhanced identity verification, vetting and national security screening.” Critics say it crushes free speech

Summary:

The Trump administration’s proposal to vet social media profiles of green card applicants already legally in the U.S. has been condemned in initial public feedback as an attack on free speech.

Visa applicants living abroad already have to share their social media handles with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but the proposal under President Donald Trump would expand the policy to those already legally in the country who are applying for permanent residency or seeking asylum.

USCIS said the vetting of social media accounts is necessary for “the enhanced identity verification, vetting and national security screening.”

The agency also said it was necessary to comply with Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.”

“In a review of information collected for admission and benefit decisions, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) identified the need to collect social media identifiers (‘handles’) and associated social media platform names from applicants to enable and help inform identity verification, national security and public safety screening, and vetting, and related inspections,” the agency announced on March 5.

President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed vetting the social media handles of immigrants already legally in the U.S. who are applying for green cards or permanent citizenship. The plan has been condemned as a ‘violation of the First Amendment.’

    • Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 days ago

      Make any account with any email address on any service that shares data with any data broker and use this account for about a week.

      They’ll have enough data on you to tie the activity to your actual name and physical devices by the end of the week, usually sooner.

      • shani66@ani.social
        1·
        2 days ago

        Not if you take steps to prevent that. You’d have to be seriously paranoid to be in the clear, but you can spoof a lot of identifying data and your general activity is almost certainly not enough to pin you down specifically.