US immigration enforcement used an AI-powered tool to scan social media posts "derogatory" to the US | "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts"

L4sBot · 8 months ago

US immigration enforcement used an AI-powered tool to scan social media posts "derogatory" to the US | "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts"

@Adalast · 8 months ago

The issue I see is less a 4th amendment than a 1st. Any “derogatory” language has long since been upheld as protected, so any action they took based on the information would 100% be illegal. Yes, the CIA/NSA has actually stated that they love social media because we are all just surveilling ourselves for them. That is them, not ICE. ICE has no business tracking people’s social media.

@kromem · edit-2 8 months ago

Technically until they have successfully immigrated there’s limited first amendment rights.

As the supreme court has found over and over, given there is no inherent legal right to enter the country, there is no infringement of rights to discriminate who can and can’t enter based on political speech. For prior cases if you are interested, see:

Exclusion of a British anarchist was at issue in Turner v. Williams (1904).
Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952) concerned deportation of communists.
Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) examined denial of a travel visa to a Marxist.

So while ethically you may feel it’s an infringement of the principles of the first amendment, it is not currently seen that way legally and hasn’t for a long while.