"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (disputed)

Read the entry in the Federal Register. They are also collecting internet search results (not the queries, which is odd). In addition there is a constitutional prohibition on collecting arbitrary information on citizens (which the courts have extended to “US Persons”, basically citizens and green card holders)

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/09/18/2017-19...

"US Persons" includes everyone living in the US regardless of immigration status.

Turns out not to be the case, and in particular not the case for immigration and surveillance purposes. In these cases it's explicitly US citizens and green card holders (plus certain corporations).

See 22 U.S. Code § 6010: 'As used in this chapter, the term “United States person” means any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States, and any corporation, partnership, or other organization organized under the laws of the United States.' Title 22 is the foreign relations chapter

Thanks, you're right. Apparently there are several US Persons definitions!

>Maybe I'm being contrarian but how is this a big deal?

Ask a person in Argentina, Chile, Spain, and lots of other places besides.

>I'd expect the government to be collecting all public information for its citizens and those visiting the country - why not?

Because their social media lives are not its business -- citizens or not.

>Because their social media lives are not its business -- citizens or not.

This is a bit absurd. First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees your right to publish papers. But now you also want the right to prevent your publications from being read? The government has had a program collecting a vast majority of publications for a very long time i.e. the Library of Congress, so one might say the precedent has already been set.

Social media accounts have plenty of private messages going on. The Library of Congress doesn't store a copy of every citizen's mail.

If someone is communicating with known terrorist organizations or plotting a crime on social media, how is that not the governments business?

I'm not saying they should have unfettered access to everything (far from it!), but gathering and analyzing this type of information is the very definition of their business.

The real question is what levels of information gathering are going to allow without a warrant, and who do those laws apply to?

>If someone is communicating with known terrorist organizations or plotting a crime on social media, how is that not the governments business?

If someone is plotting a crime while having sex with their partner in their bedroom, how is that not the government's business?

See how it gets problematic?

Bad actors like that can communicate in 200000 ways. If governments want to target "known terrorist organizations" let them target them, and follow those people, monitor their houses, etc -- not monitor the general population in the off chance they see something.

>I'm not saying they should have unfettered access to everything (far from it!), but gathering and analyzing this type of information is the very definition of their business.

So, in 1980, before Facebook, they wouldn't be able to catch anyone?

How about they monitor actual suspects with good old police work and leave the BS?

> If someone is plotting a crime while having sex with their partner in their bedroom, how is that not the government's business?

That escalated quickly. So to you monitoring information posted to a third party is the same as listening in on you and your spouse while you're bumping uglies?

> See how it gets problematic?

No I don't as I reject your example outright. What goes on within the four walls of a person's bedroom has already been established as protected. In contrast, what gets sent out to a third party has been established as not protected.

> Bad actors like that can communicate in 200000 ways. If governments want to target "known terrorist organizations" let them target them, and follow those people, monitor their houses, etc -- not monitor the general population in the off chance they see something.

Sure and this is one of the many ways they can do it. Just because there are other options available doesn't mean they can't use this as an avenue.

> So, in 1980, before Facebook, they wouldn't be able to catch anyone?

I never said that nor implied it. I'm saying that social media posts are fair game and likely a valuable source of information for identified terrorists and potential terrorists.

> How about they monitor actual suspects with good old police work and leave the BS?

That's a false dichotomy. There's no reason you can't have modern data analysis of social media posts in addition to traditional police work. Technology is a force multiplier. Back in the day people would manually examine finger prints to find a match based on a categorization system. Now a computer does it nearly instantly.

the scary part is not the collection. it's the intention or end outcome of having that information. i.e. How likely are they to try to find something against you if you're tweeting against current admin. god knows what lists are created as a result of this.

and this can also easily lead to uncovering less public information about you. More data you have about a person easier it is to triangulate anonymized data about them.

This is the reason it's scary, it's not the collection in of itself. It's also sad because there are history textbooks, novels, movies and so much information about the past about why this sort of thing is dangerous and like idiots we all allow it to happen again and again even when freedom is the mantra of the constitution of the country. Who dare's to Tweet or write something that either is critical of the government or can be interpreted that way and risk being locked out? Critics and thoughts silenced by fear.

Nail hit right on the head. As an old-timer who's been through a lot this wont stop me, younger people who think they have more to lose and not the experience to deal with it - possibly.

To me, the big deal is the extension of this profiling to naturalized citizens. The extension of the divide between the citizen classes based on an arbitrary factor, as a matter of national policy, is a negative development.

Do you really think that they will simply look at your public Facebook page? Tell me if I’m wrong but I think they can already do that without changing the law.

It's a big deal because it's almost impossible to use this information in a way that won't have a huge cost to

1) the people visiting the US and

2) the US public (via tax support for enforcement which is driven by this policy)

Wolfram Alpha says that 322 people visit the US in a year.

Let's assume the technologists in charge of this (who are really no different than any other corporate engineer - capable, but fairly disinterested in their work and apathetic/unaffected by the results) manage to make the process 99.9999% effective in screening out the innocent, and 100% effective in screening terrorists who enter the US.

Well, that world-class accuracy gives you 99.9999 * 322 million => 322 people a year who are caught in the dragnet (and in all likelihood, it will be multiples of this number; likely thousands of individuals).

So now we are interrogating, investigating, and suspecting 322 innocent people in order to catch the... oh, wait; there really haven't been any terrorist attacks like 9/11 since... 9/11.

The Boston Bombers were home-grown. Anti-abortion extremists, religious fundamentalists, bullied schoolchildren, and paranoid schizophrenics have all tried or been accused of trying to wage terrorism on the US, but there's not a single event[1] that it looks like this policy could have prevented. But we're investigating 322 individuals (and their families, friends, and close contacts) in order to do it.

And at what cost? We will never know, because those numbers are classified due to their sensitive nature.

In the end, none of this matters: the government was never interested in terror prevention in the first place. They just needed a new bogey man to replace drugs, the Russians, whatever as a reason to ignore the constitution.

The war on terrorism is a farce.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...

* edit: added the parenthetical note on numbers, multiples of estimate

This. The most deadly terrorist group to hit the USA was the KKK, with over 3000 black Americans lynched and also over 1000 white Americans killed. Plus countless lives ruined, terrorised, and affected.

These were Americans killing Americans, and similar to the pattern we've seen throughout the 1900s and into the 2000s, it is most likely that future terrorists will also be home grown.

As to this system, was there anything to be gained by keeping these out of the USA, for a tweet?: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312

{Off-topic: Because the KKK were (mainly) killing black people and their supporters in Southern states, 'we' don't really think of them as terrorists, nor the people that still push their agenda today as terrorist sympathisers.}

> The most deadly terrorist group to hit the USA was the KKK, with over 3000 black Americans lynched

Not to take away from the terror of the KKK, but 9/11 was more deadly - "The attacks caused the deaths of 2,996 people and the injuries of more than 6,000 others" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks).

9,000+ killed or wounded on a single day, massive economic impact, and a Global War on Terror that is still going on today.

Don't get me wrong, 9/11 was certainly a devastating horror and the impacts were huge - I was just pointing out that the larger number of deaths (consensus is that around 3400 black people and 1400 white people were killed by the KKK or other racist groups that were part of a wave of anti black terror [correcting myself to my comment above that it was all attributable to the KKK]: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2013/nov/27/... ) and on the whole the conspirators were American born terrorists with a single goal in mind. This lynchings took place over many many years, but the affect on the black population would have been massive and the social and economic effects can still be felt today. Thankfully the western world doesn't see anything like this today.

I would absolutely assume that they will look to collect browsing data.

Give us all your passwords please. You have nothing to hide anyway.

Not a fan of the fourth amendment?

Googling someone is not an unreasonable search or seizure.

If that's all they were doing, there would be no need for a law.

What law are you referring to?

I don't know why you are being downvoted because I think you're right. They filed a proposal to modify some database.

I'm not sure why they don't just apply it across the board to all travelers because it seems like adding conditions just increases complexity with no benefit.

Does it cover immigrants who are not US citizens?

It covers everyone on US soil, including unauthorized immigrants.