One of the White House’s most ardent arguments for its temporarily stayed travel ban is national security. Specifically, that without the “easy defense” such an immigration ban would grant American citizens, the country won’t be safe as it could be. The validity of this assertion remains to be seen, but despite the ban’s current legal predicament, Donald Trump and his staff are pressing on with similar items on their agenda. Like the possibility of requiring foreign visitors to hand over their social media passwords and pertinent web browser information before granting them entry.
News of the measure was lost in the subsequent media flurry surrounding nationwide airport protests, but Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly reignited interest on Tuesday when he mentioned the plan to Congress. “We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?” he said, adding: “If they don’t want to cooperate then you don’t come in.” Otherwise, noted Kelly, immigration and travel officials were handicapped by lax or nonexistent regulations:
“When someone says, ‘I’m from this town and this was my occupation,’ [officials] essentially have to take the word of the individual,” he said. “I frankly don’t think that’s enough, certainly President Trump doesn’t think that’s enough. So we’ve got to maybe add some additional layers.”
Per The Verge, the possibility of asking foreign visitors for their social media or computer passwords isn’t new to the Trump administration. A prior version of the plan was considered by Homeland Security under President Obama, per an internal memo MSNBC obtained in 2015.
Yet with the president’s controversial immigration ban, and numerous reports of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials asking detainees for this very information, Kelly’s mentioning the White House’s previously announced plans requires further scrutiny. For it sounds like this is something Trump really, really wants to pursue with more seriousness than his predecessor — despite the many documented investigative abilities possessed by the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.