After the Department of Homeland Security ’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Servicesreversed a policyprohibiting officers from create fake social media profiles to monitor people entering and leaving the country last week — something that would amount to a middle fingerbreadth charge directly at many tech business firm ’ term of service — Facebook has warned that the feds are n’t above their half - assed linguistic rule , theAssociated Press reportedon Tuesday .
“ Law enforcement authorities , like everyone else , are required to employ their real figure on Facebook and we make this policy clear , ” Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Pollack told the AP . “ work fake accounts is not allowed , and we will playact on any violating accounts . ”
presumptively , this also applies to Facebook subsidiary Instagram . Twitter , one of the only other societal web with major market ploughshare in the U.S. , confirmed to the AP last week that it is against their rule “ to employ fake personae and to use Twitter data for persistent surveillance of individuals ” and that it was “ looking forward ” to see whether USCIS ’s proposal was “ consistent ” with its policies . ( No news on whether Pinterest or Reddit have weighed in . )
DHS police accompanying Amalija Knavs, the mother of first lady Melania Trump, as she arrived at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building in New York in May 2018.Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)
Per the AP , DHS claimed that the founding of bogus profile is somehow necessary to supervise applicants for citizenship or a visa — a courteous small synergy with the Trump government ’s policy of requiring well-nigh all visa applicants to pass on over data on theirsocial media and email addresses . However , DHS stopped curtly of stating they would allow officers to pull a fast one on monitor individuals into providing non - public information to imitation account :
Homeland Security excuse the variety to the AP in a statement Friday , stating that fake accounts would make it easier for agent look back visa , green card and citizenship diligence to explore for fraud or security system threats . The department did n’t provide commentary when inquire Tuesday .
… Such a review of social media would be conducted by officers in [ UCIS ’s ] Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate on cases swag as requiring more investigation . The privateness assessment notes that officers can only brush up in public available social media available to all users on the weapons platform — they can not “ acquaintance ” or “ follow ” an individual — and must undergo annual training .
“ Incorporating reviews of publically available information on social media platforms in our threat espial workplace is a common sense criterion to tone up our vetting procedure and vigilance in safeguarding our legal immigration organization from those [ who ] would seek to tap and abuse it , ” a USCIS spokespersontold the Vergein a statement .
Of course , many things are technically against Facebook policy ( such aswhite supremacyandinciting genocide ) without Facebook ever really doing much of anything against it ( like white supremacyandinciting genocide ) . So federal officers wishing to create fake societal sensitive account for the purpose of spying on visa applier and immigrant , watch out : You ’ve been put on supposed notice . Just like all those foreign politics that havedefinitely been kicked off there .
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