"EFF previously urged DHS to abandon any such vetting program because social media surveillance invades privacy and violates the First Amendment by chilling speech and allowing the government to target and punish people for expressing views it doesn’t like."
Things you post online are literally the opposite of "private". They are public. If you're violating the terms of your visa and you post on twitter that you're doing so, you deserve to be deported. Note how they assert that the government must be deporting people based on their opinions without evidence. Might as well outlaw police being able to show a recording of someone admitting to a crime as evidence, because that would have a similar "chilling effect" on the speech of people who admit to their crimes in front of a camera.
Calling ICE reading stuff you post publicly online "spying" is doing a disservice to people who have a problem with all the actual spying the US does. The EFF is just angry the US doesn't have completely open borders and occasionally enforces immigration law. If this were investigating the social media accounts of <insert right wing cause here>, this article wouldn't exist.
It depends on how they are using this. If they are stopping so called racists and the other usual leftist slurs, it's bad. If they are stopping visa violators and pedos, it's good.
Sure, but how information is used is distinct from how it is gathered. A cop who sees you on the street shooting a guy should be able to arrest you, a cop who sees you on the street wearing a MAGA hat should not, but cops shouldn't be stopped from being able to see because of fear of the latter- the problem with a MAGA hat arrest is the reasoning behind the arrest, not that the cop wasn't blindfolded. And twitter posts are if anything MORE public than what you do walking down the street.
"EFF previously urged DHS to abandon any such vetting program because social media surveillance invades privacy and violates the First Amendment by chilling speech and allowing the government to target and punish people for expressing views it doesn’t like."
Things you post online are literally the opposite of "private". They are public. If you're violating the terms of your visa and you post on twitter that you're doing so, you deserve to be deported. Note how they assert that the government must be deporting people based on their opinions without evidence. Might as well outlaw police being able to show a recording of someone admitting to a crime as evidence, because that would have a similar "chilling effect" on the speech of people who admit to their crimes in front of a camera.
Calling ICE reading stuff you post publicly online "spying" is doing a disservice to people who have a problem with all the actual spying the US does. The EFF is just angry the US doesn't have completely open borders and occasionally enforces immigration law. If this were investigating the social media accounts of <insert right wing cause here>, this article wouldn't exist.
It depends on how they are using this. If they are stopping so called racists and the other usual leftist slurs, it's bad. If they are stopping visa violators and pedos, it's good.
Sure, but how information is used is distinct from how it is gathered. A cop who sees you on the street shooting a guy should be able to arrest you, a cop who sees you on the street wearing a MAGA hat should not, but cops shouldn't be stopped from being able to see because of fear of the latter- the problem with a MAGA hat arrest is the reasoning behind the arrest, not that the cop wasn't blindfolded. And twitter posts are if anything MORE public than what you do walking down the street.