Argument: Social media vettingSocial Media Vetting of Visa Applicants Violates the First Amendment
Beginning in May, the State Department has required almost every applicant for a U.S. visa—more than fourteen million people each year—to register every social media handle they’ve used over the past five years on any of twenty platforms. “There is no evidence that the social media registration requirement serves the government’s professed goals” of “strengthen” the processes for “vetting applicants and confirming their identity,” Carrie DeCell and Harsha Panduranga write, adding: “The registration requirement chills the free speech of millions of prospective visitors to the United States, to their detriment and to ours,” they write.
Beginning in May, the State Department has required almost every applicant for a U.S. visa—more than fourteen million people each year—to register every social media handle they’ve used over the past five years on any of twenty platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Carrie DeCell and Harsha Panduranga write in Just Security that the information collected through the new registration requirement is then retained indefinitely, shared widely within the federal bureaucracy as well as with state and local governments, and, in some contexts, even disseminated to foreign governments. “The registration requirement chills the free speech of millions of prospective visitors to the United States, to their detriment and to ours,” they write.
Last Thursday, on behalf of two U.S.-based documentary film organizations, the Knight First Amendment Institute and the Brennan Center for Justice sued to stop this policy, arguing that it violates the First Amendment as well as the Administrative Procedure Act. The plaintiffs, Doc Society and the International Documentary Association (IDA), say they rely on social media to support and engage with filmmakers from around the world. They also host events in the United States to connect those filmmakers with funders, advocates, and other partners. The two organizations argued that the registration requirement impedes these efforts by chilling foreign filmmakers’ online expression and by discouraging them from traveling to the United States to attend Doc Society’s and IDA’s events here.
DeCell and Panduranga write:
The registration requirement dramatically deters visa applicants from speaking freely and associating with others online. The plaintiffs’ members and partners use social media to discuss an array of social and political issues, including corruption, human rights atrocities, women’s rights, climate change, racial injustice, and the global impact of U.S. policy. Now they must consider whether this kind of speech will lead U.S. officials to subject their visa applications to additional scrutiny, delay the processing of those applications, or deny the applications altogether. Because of the registration requirement, some Doc Society and IDA members and partners have stopped posting on social media, left online groups, stopped interacting with certain friends online, or deleted their social media posts or accounts completely.
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There is no evidence that the social media registration requirement serves the government’s professed goals. Despite the State Department’s bare assertion that collecting social media information will “strengthen” the processes for “vetting applicants and confirming their identity,” the government has failed—in numerous attempts—to show that social media screening is even effective as a visa-vetting or national security tool. For example, internal reviews of certain Department of Homeland Security (DHS) social media screening pilot programs found that “the information in the accounts did not yield clear, articulable links to national security concerns.”
DeCell and Panduranga conclude: “The registration requirement is misguided and inconsistent with core American values. The State Department should abandon it and leave the modern public square free for all of us.”
