EFF to Department Homeland Security: No Social Media Surveillance of Immigrants

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EFF submitted comments to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subcomponent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), urging them to abandon a proposal to collect social media identifiers on forms for immigration benefits. This collection would mark yet a further expansion of the government’s efforts to subject immigrants to social media surveillance, invading their privacy and chilling their free speech and associational rights for fear of being denied key immigration benefits.

Specifically, the proposed rule would require applicants to disclose their social media identifiers on nine immigration forms, including applications for permanent residency and naturalization, impacting more than 3.5 million people annually. USCIS’s purported reason for this collection is to assist with identity verification, as well as vetting and national security screening, to comply with Executive Order 14161. USCIS separately announced that it would look for “antisemitic activity” on social media as grounds for denying immigration benefits, which appears to be related to the proposed rule, although not expressly included it.

Additionally, a day after the proposed rule was published, Axios reported that the State Department, the Department of Justice, and DHS confirmed a joint collaboration called “Catch and Revoke,” using AI tools to review student visa holders’ social media accounts for speech related to “pro-Hamas” sentiment or “antisemitic activity.”

If the proposed rule sounds familiar, it’s because this is not the first time the government has propose

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