New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." (Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu; disputed.)

The more information given, the more likely there will be a false positive.

"You say you didn't visit the US but here's a picture of you in Vegas." "That's the Eiffel Tower. In Paris." "No, it's Las Vegas - I saw it last month. Entry rejected."

Good dog!

Your argument only makes sense, when you jump through the hoops, squint, and crucially - add in your bits to make it make sense.

The bit you added here was “99% of people from my country broke visa conditions”.

This is something that is added by you, to make it make sense. What you are unaware of, is that the current visa process already accounts for this. I know of people who had visas rejected, because freelancer with their own training business are counted as flight risks. They get rejected at the interview stage itself. And it seems that wait times for tourists visas are years long.

Now, you might be the kind of person, who by nature either tries to see the good in something, or takes a contrarian position. The question is, did you dive beneath the ice with knowledge of what arguments are too far?

I know you are being rhetorical and exaggerating. But being executed for writing something is something that has happened during political instability in my country and not a rhetorical risk. It really puts things into perspective.

no I don't consider US border officers to be a risk in my threat model. I'm more concerned about dying from what I post, whether by a junta or kidnapping thieves. I personally wouln't care much other than perhaps suing for a refund of the flight .

If I'm denied entry because of something I said, it's not the end of the world, I would at most sue for a flight refund.

I'm being jocular, yes. But don't let that hide the hard reality behind it.

The more information the government (or anyone else with power over you) has, the higher the chance of false positives and of confusing correlation with causation. It's not like they will have a crack team of auditors review everything.

If you are arrested and conveyed to a foreign torture jail because an AI scanning your social media posts hallucinated that you are an international gang member, then it's also not the end of the world.