I knew it! Because I don’t do social media I must be anti-American!

https://pogowasright.org/us-state-dept-says-silence-or-anonymity-on-social-media-is-suspicious/

US State Dept. says silence or anonymity on social media is suspicious

It’s 2025, and we’re still dealing with that “If you have nothing to hide…” mentality and excuse to violate privacy. From Papers, Please! on May 30:

A cable yesterday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, first reported by  Nahal Toosi and Eric Bazail-Eimil of Politico, directs US embassies and consulates to “conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.”

The cable implies that the main although not the exclusive focus of this special scrutiny of each Harvard-associated visa applicant’s “online presence” will be the content of their social media accounts.

In the cable, Rubio told US consular officers who decide whether to grant or deny visa applications that “the lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘private’ or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness and call into question the applicant’s credibility.” In such cases, consular officers are instructed to:

Inform the applicant that his case is subject to review of his online presence, request that the applicant set all of his social media accounts to “public,” and remind him that limited access to or visibility of social media activity could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity. Consular officers must then refer the cases to the Fraud Prevention Unit (FPU).

Read more at Papers, Please!

(Related)

https://pogowasright.org/how-the-fbi-sought-a-warrant-to-search-instagram-of-columbia-student-protesters/

How the FBI Sought a Warrant to Search Instagram of Columbia Student Protesters

Shawn Musgrave reports:

Newly unsealed records provide new details about the Trump administration’s failed effort this spring to obtain a search warrant for an Instagram account run by student protesters at Columbia University.

The FBI and federal prosecutors sought a sweeping warrant, the records show, that would have identified the people who ran the account along with every user who had interacted with it since January 2024.

Between March 15 and April 14, the FBI and the Department of Justice filed multiple search warrant applications and appeared numerous times before two different judges in Manhattan federal court as part of an investigation into Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD, a student group. A magistrate judge denied the application three times in March, a decision which a district court judge later affirmed in April.

Read more at The Intercept.