Be careful what you say on social media, part 2
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for The Torment Nexus that was titled "Be careful what you post on social media, they are listening," which was triggered in part by the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a former student at Columbia University who took part in pro-Palestine demonstrations on the campus. Khalil was taken by agents of ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security — and told that his visa was revoked. When they were told that Khalil had a green card, making him a legal resident of the US, the agents said that this was being revoked as well, something that typically requires a ruling from an immigration court judge. Since I wrote that, Khalil has been in a detention facility in Louisiana. His attorney said this week that his case will be heard by Friday, and a judge will determine whether he can legally be deported or must be released. The judge ordered the government to provide all the evidence against Khalil by end of day Wednesday. To quote my previous post:
The notice given to Khalil after he was detained said that he could be deported because “the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” What is this based on? No evidence was provided at the time. Did he throw any bombs? No. Did he shoot someone? No. Did he advocate violence against Jews? Not as far as we know. But isn’t participating in a peaceful protest protected by the First Amendment? It certainly used to be. But Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, has said that Khalil's detention is “not about free speech,” and that "no one has a right to a green card.” The President said on X that ICE "detained a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas student," and that this would be what he called "the first arrest of many to come.”
This is a followup to that earlier post. I mentioned previously that according to multiple reports, the government is planning to use AI to monitor social media and then use posts as evidence of potentially un-American conduct, as part of what Marco Rubio has called a "Catch and Revoke" plan, but that is only the tip of a very large and growing iceberg when it comes to government surveillance. As 404 Media has reported, an ICE contractor known as ShadowDragon (nerds love names like that) has the ability to monitor more than 200 social media and other sites, including Bluesky, OnlyFans, Instagram, etc. It's not clear whether this tool was used to identify Khalil or any others who have been detained — a list that includes Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Öztürk, Columbia PhD student Ranjani Srinivasan, and Yunseo Chung, who came to the US when she was seven. But 404 notes that the company claims it can monitor protests, and says it found protests in Washington DC during a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu.
ICE has been scanning social media for some time when approving visas. Since at least 2017, the agency has been using an AI-powered tool called Giant Oak to scan social media posts for content deemed "derogatory" to the US. Screenshots show that analysts can search the system for identifiers such as name, address, email address, and country of citizenship, and the software will provide a “ranking” from zero to 100 based on the criteria provided. The service said that potentially derogatory social media can be reviewed within the interface, and then analysts can click on a specific person and review images collected from social media or elsewhere, as well as reviewing their “social graph,” potentially showing who the system believes they are connected to. Other users include Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department, the Air Force, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
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Faceprints and sentiment analysis
Another tool that Homeland Security has been using for several years at least is an AI-powered monitoring tool known as Babel X, which can in some cases link a person's social media posts to their Social Security number and location data when used to screen travelers, returning US citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum at the border, according to a document obtained by Motherboard. The system lets a user input a piece of information about a target — their name, email address, or telephone number — and get a raft of data in return, including IP addresses, their employment history, and any unique advertising identifiers that might be associated with their mobile phone. The company says it scans publicly available information in more than 200 languages across the public, “dark,” and “deep” webs, and that it can perform “sentiment analysis” on any of the social media or other posts that it finds in a search.
404 Media said that it got a look at one of the databases that ICE uses to identify and deport or rendition people, and it allows the government to "search for and filter people by hundreds of different, highly specific categories" including resident status and entry status (refugee, border crossing card, nonimmigrant alien refused admission, temporary protective status alien, etc) as well as physical characteristics (e.g. scars, marks, tattoos), criminal affiliation, location data (including license plate reader data), race, social security number, place of employment, driver’s license status, and many more. ICE agents can set up a “Person Lookout Query” that sends email notifications if a person triggers the parameters of a search query. The database was reportedly created by Palantir, the surveillance company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel.
Mother Jones magazine, meanwhile, recently published a feature report on a AI-based facial-recognition software company called Clearview, whose controversial founder, Hoan Ton-That, has ties to a number of far-right personalities such as Curtis Yarvin, who has described democracy as a "malignant form of government." The company's software uses a massive biometric database that contains billions of images scraped from the internet and social media, creating a “faceprint” for every individual. According to Mother Jones, agents from ICE and other governmnt entities can run photos through the database and if there is a match it will display matching images and links to the websites where they appeared, as well as any profile information including religious or political affiliation, family and friends, romantic partners, sexuality, etc. All of this can be done without a warrant or even probable cause, and there is no national law that prevents it (although some states have privacy legislation that theoretically makes this illegal).
Ton-That's pitch to the US government, including ICE, was that facial recognition could compare images of migrants crossing the border to mugshots to see if the arrivals had been previously arrested in the US. But his pitch also reportedly included a proposal to screen any arrival for “sentiment about the USA,” including social-media posts saying things like "I hate Trump," or expressing “affinity for far-left groups.” Clearview got funding from Peter Thiel near the end of Trump's first term as president, and signed up hundreds of law enforcement clients around the country, who have used it to track and identify activists and protesters. ICE is reportedly one of the company's biggest governmnt clients, and Mother Jones says that many local and state law enforcement agencies now rely on Clearview as a tool in everyday policing. The FBI is also a major customer, and the deputy director of the agency, Dan Bongino, is right-wing influencer who routinely shares conspiracy theories about the left and the Democratic party.
Your citizenship won't save you
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas from international students, many of whom engaged in pro-Palestine demonstrations, although it's unclear how the government found them or made these determinations. In Rumeysa Öztürk's case, her alleged offense appears to be writing an opinion piece for a student newspaper in favor of Palestinians. She was detained by masked agents in plainclothes as she walked to meet friends for dinner. Ranjani Srinivasan, a 37-year-old architect, came to the US from India on a Fulbright scholarship in 2016 and became a PhD candidate in 2020, and began teaching as an adjunct professor at New York University last fall. ICE agents knocked at her door on March 7 and she was accused by the Department of Homeland Security of being a terrorist sympathizer and told her visa was being revoked. She chose to leave the country.
"This is what happens in a dictatorship, and these are test cases," Eric Lee told NPR. Lee is a lawyer who represents Momodou Taal, a Cornell University PhD student whose visa was revoked. "If the government can get away with doing this to these students, it can do it to everybody in this country. Your citizenship won't save you. Your views will be next." Taal sued the government on the grounds of free speech this year, and after the case was filed, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered him to turn himself in for deportation. He recently issued a public statement on X sharing that he had left the country, saying he had no faith that his case would be heard impartially in the US.
It's not just students who are facing detention and/or deportation. Óscar Arias Sánchez, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Costa Rica, had his visa revoked and was told it was because of his ties to China. "I have to imagine that my criticism of President Trump might have played a role," he told NPR. "The president has a personality that is not open to criticism or disagreements." Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and Georgetown scholar whose research focuses on peacebuilding in the Middle East, was arrested in his Virginia home in mid-March after his J-1 educational visa was revoked. A Homeland Security spokesperson said Khan Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” He is being held in Texas.
Raymond, a lawful permanent resident from Hong Kong who asked NPR not to use his full name in case it impacts his immigration status, said he worries that political opinions he has shared online might be used against him when returning to the US. He's not a student, but told NPR he has started scrubbing his social media and is considering hiding his Instagram app before an upcoming trip abroad for a wedding. For the first time since he has been in the US, he said he thinks about what he says and does publicly. Some regular visitors to the US for business have said that they are either planning to or are already using "burner phones" that have their data wiped and are connected to dummy social-media accounts, in case US border guards search their phones — although some lawyers say that this could backfire since it could make border agents suspicious.
I'm sure there are many more surveillance tools and techniques being used by Homeland Security, ICE, border agents, the FBI, and other agencies than I have outlined here. But it has become clear that anything you say anywhere, online or offline, any protests you attend, any sympathies you express — no matter how innocuous you might think they are (as children's YouTube host Ms. Rachel no doubt thought hers were) — they can and will be used as evidence to detain you, revoke your visa if you have one, deny you one if you are applying, prevent you from visiting the US, and in some cases cause you to be spirited away to a prison somewhere for days or even months, without any redress. It's a sad statement, I know, but that doesn't make it any less true.
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