PRIORITIES: Secret Policy Kept Social Media Out of Visa Vetting. “Fearing a civil liberties backlash and ‘bad public relations’ for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.”
Cohen, who left DHS in June 2014, said he and other U.S. officials had pressed for the policy change that year but it was opposed by top officials with the DHS Office of Civil Liberties and the Office of Privacy.
‘Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement,’ said Cohen.
A former senior counter-terrorism official said that it was shocking that DHS had not leveraged the power of social media.
‘They felt looking at public postings [of foreign U.S. visa applicants] was an invasion of their privacy,’ the official said.
‘The arguments being made were, and are still, in bad faith,’ the official added.