Visiting students can't hide social media accounts from Uncle Sam anymore

Visa seekers are reportedly censoring their own posts to visit the land of the free

The US State Department last week said foreign nationals seeking to study in the US must make their social media profiles public, prompting some students to delete their social media posts.

"Every visa adjudication is a national security decision," the State Department said, adding that under the new guidance, the online presence of those seeking study and exchange visas will be scrutinized.

"To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to 'public,'" the State Department said.

F visas are for academic study, M visas are for vocational or other nonacademic programs, and J visas are for participating in educational and cultural exchange programs.

US lawmakers became interested in social media screening after the December 2, 2015, terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14 people. It was later learned that one of the assailants had voiced support for violence in a private social media post.

Under the Obama administration, officials proposed a program that allowed foreigners entering the US to volunteer their social media handles. Under the first Trump administration, the disclosure of social media handles became mandatory for nearly all visa applicants.

However, the requirement to make private social media accounts public is new. US officials have not disclosed how social media posts will be evaluated.

But according to Politico, which obtained a copy of the State Department cable outlining the plan, consular officials are directed to look for "any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States," and to note any "advocacy for, aid or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to US national security" and any "support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence."

The State Department on May 27 paused new student visa applications to consider social media vetting rules. Last week, it ordered the processing of student visa applications to resume, subject to the social media disclosure policy.

Visa applicants have already started wiping their social media clean, according to reports.

The Korea Herald this week said that South Korean students seeking to study in the US have turned to "digital undertaker" services to scrub their social media accounts of potentially controversial posts. And according to NDTV, Indian students planning to study in the US have been deleting their social media posts.

Ironically, the State Department on May 28 said it would deny visas to foreign officials deemed to have censored social media posts of American citizens.

Sophia Cope, senior staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Register in an email, "The US government is endorsing the violation of a fundamental principle of privacy hygiene by asking those seeking student or exchange visas to set their social media accounts to 'public' for the purpose of visa vetting. There are many valid reasons for people to have private social media accounts, where users decide to only engage and share personal information with trusted family and friends."

The US must end this dangerous practice

Cope said it's an outrage that the US might ascribe nefarious intent and penalize students for keeping their online posts private or for not being active on social media.

"Government social media surveillance invades privacy and chills freedom of speech, and it is prone to errors and misinterpretation without ever having been proven effective at assessing security threats," she said. "The US must end this dangerous practice."

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, expressed similar concern in a phone interview with The Register.

"The risk is that this State Department screen of foreign students' social media will screen out those who criticize government policy, as opposed to those who might be a danger to Americans," he said. "Criticism of government policy is an American pastime. There's nothing more patriotic."

Nojeim said we should not worry about allowing people with different political views into the country, noting that the screening criteria in the State Department cable could be interpreted to deny US entry to people who criticize President Trump.

Criticism of government policy is an American pastime. There's nothing more patriotic

"Imagine the reaction of students in the US and their parents if a foreign government said, 'You can't visit, your student cannot study here, unless you set your social media to public,'" said Nojeim. "People would be outraged, they'd insist our government intervene on their behalf with the foreign government. But that's exactly what our government is saying to foreign students."

Nojeim said he expects the public profile requirement to make foreign students less likely to come to the US and more likely to take their talent to other countries. "I'm also concerned that it seems like a backhanded way to discourage foreigners from criticizing US policy," Nojeim said.

According to NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, "international students studying at US colleges and universities contributed $43.8 billion and supported 378,175 jobs" in the 2023-24 academic year.

Nojeim cautioned that it's difficult to tell from social media commentary whether a person is dangerous or simply opinionated. It becomes more complicated when those comments are made in a multitude of foreign languages, he said. He expects the screening will involve automation and AI, with all the potential problems that come with that approach.

In 2017, the Office of the Inspector General for the US Department of Homeland Security published a report [PDF] about pilot tests within US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to automate social media screening. The report found that the ICE pilot test lacked metrics to judge whether it was effective, and the USCIS pilot showed that the tool being evaluated "was not a viable option for automated social media screening and that manual review was more effective at identifying accounts [linked to content that might affect immigration eligibility]." ®