Social Media, Big Data, and Privacy

#INTE5665

Maybe you have heard about or read articles describing how, in August 2019, the United States government denied entry to a Palestinian teenager from Lebanon, even though his visa was previously approved and he had received a scholarship to attend Harvard University. Allegedly, Customs and Border Control based their denial on his religion and political posts on social media by his friends. They canceled his visa and sent him back to Palestine. While Customs and Border Control admits he was “deemed inadmissible,” they would not confirm on what basis.

The U.S. government began asking for five years of social media details from all visa applicants and naturalized citizens in 2017. This information would give the government access to photos, locations, dates of birth, dates of milestones, and other personal data shared on social media.

During the Obama administration, providing the social media information was voluntary. In June 2019, it became mandatory. However, social media companies are gathering so much data on us, they cannot recall all the ways they surveil us. Knowing this, I wonder if there might come a time when the government stops asking and starts taking the social media data of applicants directly from those platforms.

You might think the social media companies would push against being forced to provide the government that data, and you might be correct. However, the government would not need to get it directly from the companies. Instead, they could get it from data brokers, where they could gather private data on an individual from all the social media companies in one fell swoop.

The onus falls on us to forever be cognizant of the information we share on social media, and diligent when attempting to clean up anything we choose to no longer share or have susceptible to theft. Options can include using privacy features provided by social media platforms, using throwaway emails and false personal information, and choosing to use photos of anything other than our face in our profiles.