Government to spy on immigrants' social media posts

Common Dreams - Freedom of speech advocates are calling a new Department of Homeland SecurNew postity rule "chilling," as the department will begin collecting social media communications and data of all immigrants.

The rule, added last week to the Privacy Act of 1974, would allow the DHS to gather "social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results" of people with immigration files, as well as "publicly available information from the internet."

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement on the new rule on Tuesday.

"This Privacy Act notice makes clear that the government intends to retain the social media information of people who have immigrated to this country, singling out a huge group of people to maintain files on what they say," said Faiz Shakir, national political director of the ACLU. "This would undoubtedly have a chilling effect on the free speech that's expressed every day on social media. This collect-it-all approach is ineffective to protect national security and is one more example of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda."