A US travel association, a top Democrat and would-be travellers from Europe and Australia are bristling at the Trump administration's new plan to require Europeans and other visitors using the visa waiver programme to provide social media handles used over the past five years. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney speaks with Nadine Strossen, Professor of Constitutional at the New York Law School, and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
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00:04Would-be visitors, travel associations and civil liberties groups are expressing concern about the Trump administration's new proposal
00:11to require tourists to submit information about their social media, email accounts and extensive family history before being approved to enter the U.S.
00:22The change would affect visitors eligible for the visa waiver program, which allows people from 42 countries to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa.
00:33With more on the reaction to the plan, here's our Washington correspondent Fraser Jackson.
00:39The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has proposed a major expansion of the information required for an ESTA application,
00:46which is used by tourists from visa waiver program countries, i.e. countries where travelers can stay in the U.S. for up to 90 days without needing to apply for a visa.
00:55Well, for the last few years, there has been an option to include your social media handles,
00:59but under this proposed change, that would now become mandatory and people's profiles would have to be made public,
01:05meaning that officers could comb through up to five years of data that people have posted online.
01:11They're also going to be asking for phone numbers and email addresses used within the last five years,
01:16as well as names, dates and places of birth, residences and telephone numbers of immediate family members.
01:22Well, this process will also move away from the website for border protection and move on to a mobile app,
01:28which will enable features like passport chip verification, a mandatory live selfie check and also facial recognition.
01:35It's worth noting that these changes are already in effect for anyone looking to get an immigrant class visa to the U.S.
01:41or coming here on a work or study visa, but this marks a noted shift from the administration with regular tourists from typically allied nations now coming under increased scrutiny as well.
01:52The visa waiver program covers over 40 countries, including most European nations, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and other key U.S. allies.
02:02The administration says the goal of this is to enhance security, but experts worry it's likely to further chill tourism to the U.S.,
02:10which is already down this year, a decline which has cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars.
02:16A spokesperson from the U.S. Travel Association told me, quote,
02:19Screening must keep travellers and our nation safe, but it must also keep the United States competitive.
02:26If we fail to deliver an efficient, secure and modern vetting process, international visitors will choose other destinations.
02:34We are reviewing the proposed changes and working with the administration to ensure that we can safely and efficiently welcome millions of visitors for the World Cup and other major global events.
02:45Fraser Jackson reporting.
02:46Well, to discuss the potential implications of what for now remains a proposal, we're joined by Nadine Strasson,
02:52Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York Law School and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
03:00Nadine, thanks so much for being with us on the program.
03:03We're talking about an awful lot of information here.
03:06How exactly would this proposal work in practice and what specifically will be examined in these applications for entry to the U.S.?
03:16Thank you so much for discussing this important issue and giving me an opportunity to weigh in, Sharon.
03:25This will give enormous discretion to those who are administering the program.
03:32There are no specific criteria.
03:35There are only very vague terms that are associated with the program, national security, looking for people who will potentially supposedly pose a national security threat, but doing so only by looking at their expression.
03:52Now, presumably, if you look at how the Trump administration has administered similar programs in the past, they are looking for criticism of the United States, for criticism of Trump administration policies, for dissent.
04:08This is the lifeblood of free speech and of our democracy.
04:14Therefore, first, I hope that this proposal will not be approved, that there will be so much opposition from a constitutional perspective as well as from an economic perspective.
04:26But if it should go into effect, I am quite confident that it will be found unconstitutional as violating the First Amendment.
04:35To be clear, the First Amendment protects not only the right of speakers to convey information and ideas, but the right of listeners, including full-fledged American citizens on American soil, have a First Amendment right to engage in communications with those who are seeking to visit our country, first, via social media, and secondly, by their presence in our country.
05:04And you say that, you know, this kind of system is in place and has been in place for certain categories of visitors.
05:12You say that Chinese students, for example, students coming to the United States have already been targeted, but that's being challenged.
05:20So how far along is that challenge?
05:22And has that been ruled unconstitutional also?
05:26Yes.
05:27Yes.
05:27It started with Chinese students, and then more recently, it was extended to any visiting students or scholars from a large number of countries, which propelled a lawsuit that was brought on behalf of not only those seeking to enter the United States, but those of us seeking to welcome them.
05:51The lawsuit was brought by the American Association of University Professors.
05:56The reason why we are so enthusiastic about scholars and students from other countries is not only, hopefully, for their benefit, but also for our benefit, those of us in the United States, to learn from their ideas and their perspectives and have the opportunity to communicate with them.
06:13The only court that has ruled on this issue so far has sustained the First Amendment challenge, and I expect that that ruling should be affirmed if it is appealed.
06:24And what about things like GDPR rules here in Europe, the EU, for example, it has set in place protection agreements to ensure that EU citizens' personal data will remain protected, even if it's transferred outside the EU.
06:41So how is that going to play into this new procedure if it does, in fact, come into play?
06:46As a practical matter, I really don't know how it's going to be implemented, and one of the complaints I've heard about the proposed new regulations is that they have not complied with sufficient administrative procedures.
07:00So just at the logistical level, we really have not been given any of the highly important details about how it will operate and will it respect the privacy norms and rules of other countries.
07:14The violation of privacy, the massive violation that's involved in having to turn over five years of social media, as well as all the other information, will lead to enormous chilling of free speech that people who want to come to this country will be deterred from engaging in communications or expressing ideas that they fear might deprive them of the opportunity to visit this country.
07:44And that's going to have, obviously, an enormous impact, not only on them, not only on people in the United States, but even people back in Europe and other countries that they are no longer communicating with because of the violation of privacy and the associated violation of free speech.
08:01So also undermined is freedom of association.
08:05And it also comes as the U.S. prepares to host the World Cup next year, in a few months' time, along with Canada and Mexico.
08:13How do you think, how effective is this actually going to be at doing what it's setting out to do, which is presumably finding terrorists?
08:22That's an extremely good question.
08:24And there have been some pilot programs that have investigated the extent to which these earlier iterations of these restrictions on students, for example, have operated.
08:38And the consensus of the intelligence experts that have examined the pilot programs has been that they have been completely ineffective in weeding out actual threats to national security.
08:52There are many people who make statements that may be critical of the United States, of particular Trump policies, who pose absolutely no threat at all to national security.
09:03So this is the worst of both worlds.
09:06It is violating freedom for literally everybody in the world without improving national security.
09:13It's diverting resources from meaningful steps to actually look for indicia of threats, national security threats, not weeding out people on the basis of their unpopular ideas.
09:28And what does all of this tell us about who exactly is viewed as a potential threat in Trump's America?
09:34Or is this even actually really about security threats?
09:38You know, that's such a great question, Sharon.
09:41A couple of months ago, Trump issued a memorandum, something similar to an executive order on so-called domestic terrorism, which is not a legally recognized concept in the United States.
09:55And again, with very vague sweeping language, applying even to American citizens on American soil, basically was attacking, as a so-called domestic terrorist, anybody who said anything that could be deemed to be anti-American, unpatriotic, anti-capitalistic.
10:14My view is that that memorandum itself is anti-American.
10:20As one of our founders, one of the major authors of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, put it, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
10:32Well, Donald Trump may have a different opinion on that.
10:34I defend his right to express his opinion, but not to treat as a so-called domestic terrorist, somebody who has a very different view of liberty and justice for all.
10:45And how's all of this going down with the MAGA base, with Trump voters?
10:49Is the administration, do you think, going a little bit too far in terms of this immigration crackdown in their view, do you think?
10:56On this latest policy, it's been too recent for me to see the polling, but you're absolutely right, Sharon, in indicating that other polling has suggested that even Republicans, even MAGA supporters,
11:10although they were very upset by some of the Biden administration, lack of border security and chaos at the border, as was reported in a major New York Times story a couple of days ago,
11:23that they think Trump has gone too far and engaged in not only policies that are cruel, but that are also ineffective.
11:34And that gives me hope. In some ways, the more extreme the policies are, the more the pushback is going to be and therefore may well deter the president from actually implementing this proposed policy.
11:49Unfortunately, Nadine, we'll have to leave it there for now. We're out of time.
11:53Thank you for your analysis and for taking the time out to speak with us on the program this evening.
11:57That is Nadine Stronson, Professor of Constitutional Law and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
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