If you’re not American and are visiting the United States soon you may need to provide more than a visa in your passport, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeking the power to allow U.S. Customs officials to ask foreign visitors to provide their Facebook and Twitter account names.

Under the proposal, Customs and Border Patrol would ask for the information with an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), a visa waiver application, and Form I-94W, the form that non-U.S. citizens fill out when entering and leaving the country; the question itself would read “Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier.”

The Department claims that the data will increase their abilities to scan travelers, writing in the proposal that “collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyse and investigate the case.”

What the agency didn’t say was how long it will keep the data for, while also not explaining what social media activity they would deem nefarious and what type of material might prevent a person traveling to the United States.

Optional

Where the proposal then takes a turn to the outright weird, DHS then says that the request for data would be optional, writing that:

It will be an optional data field to request social media identifiers to be used for vetting purposes, as well as applicant contact information. Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.

While there may be an argument that data such as this could be useful in vetting who visits the United States, it’s highly unlikely someone undertaking nefarious activities would be doing these activities in public on open Facebook and Twitter accounts, and subverting the process would simply require either not taking the option of providing the information, or setting up separate social accounts that don’t containing any untoward content.

The proposal is currently open for discussion with the DHS inviting comments from the public and other federal agencies.

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