Trump Demands Social Media, Forgets How He Got Elected
The proposed Trump-era policy, highlighted by Al Jazeera, demands visitors from 'visa waiver' countries hand over five years of social media history to enter the US. While framed as a counter-terrorism measure, it's a chilling expansion of digital surveillance. Remember when the FBI used social media posts to identify individuals participating in the January 6th Capitol riot (which Trump himself
incited)? The government already has these tools, and now they want to cast a wider net over anyone trying to enter the country. One might wonder if this digital dragnet would also scrutinize the social media histories of, say, politicians accused of incitement. The hypocrisy of demanding such intimate personal data from foreign travelers while the digital history of domestic figures who have
contributed to real security threats remains largely (and conveniently) unexamined by these same governmental agencies, is a special kind of American exceptionalism.