US Visa applicants may have to handover Facebook, Twitter passwords
- Donald Trump orders ban on immigrants from seven Muslim majority nations.
- To further tighten security he wants travellers to handover their social media passwords.
- The move is to identify security threats.
FollowThis move would primarily be implemented for visitors from the seven majority Muslim nations that are facing travel ban including Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen. According to reports, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said it is looking for an additional security screening and obtaining passwords is believed to be the option.
He reportedly said that vetting people can be difficult, and so they want to know what websites people have access to or how they use Internet to get clue to if they are a malicious threat. And, in case, they don't want to share the credentials, then they must choose not to enter the country.
He believes those who really want to come to America will cooperate. However, no decision is yet been taken to implement this rule. This piece of news isn’t something new had started surfacing a month before the inauguration. It had irked many online activists has this would mean government could have access to people’s private lives.
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So, Trump has worked with the US Customs and Border Protection in order to track immigrants, foreign travellers using variety of data from law enforcement databases, and the information from social media accounts could only help make it easier. This could also put the data as risk from malicious minds. Will the US government keep the data safe and take responsibility for the misuse of data, if any?
While it claims that the process is to identify security threats, is it even legal to obtain someone's passwords? Unfortunately, countries like UK can jail people for refusing their passwords, while Canada is also pushing for such a rule. However, there is no denying that it will be a controversial policy.
Meanwhile, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Uber and other tech companies have now drafted a joint letter opposing the ban.
