情報通信行政・郵政行政審議会　電気通信事業部会　電気通信番号委員会（第12回）開催案内

モバイル接続料費用配賦ワーキンググループ（第4回）

Despite rebranding a federal program that surveils the social media activities of immigrants and foreign visitors to a more benign name, the government agreed to spend more than $100 million to continue monitoring people’s online activities, records disclosed to EFF show.

Thousands of pages of government procurement records and related correspondence show that the Department of Homeland Security and its component Immigrations and Customs Enforcement largely continued an effort, originally called extreme vetting, to try to determine whether immigrants posed any threat by monitoring their social media and internet presence. The only real change appeared to be rebranding the program to be known as the Visa Lifecycle Vetting Initiative.

The government disclosed the records to EFF after we filed suit in 2022 to learn what had become of a program proposed by President Donald Trump. The program continued under President Joseph Biden. Regardless of the name used, DHS’s program raises significant free expression and First Amendment concerns because it chills the speech of those seeking to enter the United States and allows officials to target and punish them for expressing views they don’t like.

Yet that appears to be a major purpose of the program, the released documents show. For example, the terms of the contracting request specify that the government sought a system that could:

analyze and apply techniques to exploit publicly available information, such as media, blogs, public hearings, conferences, academic websites, social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedln, radio, television, press, geospatial sources, internet sites, and specialized publications with intent to extract pertinent information regarding individuals.

That document and another one make explicit that one purpose of the surveillance and analysis is to identify “derogatory information” about Visa applicants and other visitors. The vague phrase is broad enough to potentially capture any online expression that is critical of the U.S. government or its actions.

EFF has called on DHS to abandon its online social media surveillance program because it threatens to unfairly label individuals as a threat or otherwise discriminate against them on the basis of their speech. This could include denying people access to the United States for speaking their mind online. It’s also why EFF has supported a legal challenge to a State Department practice requiring people applying for a Visa to register their social media accounts with the government.

The documents released in EFF’s lawsuit also include a telling passage about the controversial program and the government’s efforts to sanitize it. In an email discussing the lawsuit against the State Department’s social media moniker collection program, an ICE official describes the government’s need to rebrand the program, “from what ICE originally referred to as the Extreme Vetting Initiative.”

The official wrote:

On or around July 2017 at an industry day event, ICE sought input from the private sector on the use of artificial intelligence to assist in visa applicant vetting. In the months that followed there was significant pushback from a variety channels, including Congress. As a result, on or around May 2018, ICE modified its strategy and rebranded the concept as the Visa Lifecycle Vetting Project.

Other documents detail the specifics of the contract and bidding process that resulted in DHS awarding $101,155,431.20 to SRA International, Inc., a government contractor that uses a different name after merging with another contractor. The company is owned by General Dynamics.

The documents also detail an unsuccessful effort by a competitor to overturn DHS’s decision to award the contract to SRA, though much of the content of that dispute is redacted.

All of the documents released to EFF are available on DocumentCloud.

　10月1日に就任した石破茂新首相は、沖縄にとって、また我が名護市にとっても悪夢を蘇らせる人物だ。　自民党幹事長時代の2013年、辺野古新基地建設に反対していた自民党県連及び県選出・出身国会議員らを屈服・承認させた。石破氏の後ろで、彼らが首をうなだれて連座する姿を見せつけられた屈辱を県民は「平成の琉球処分」と呼び、決して忘れない。　また、翌2014年の名護市長選挙では、一貫して新基地建設に反対してきた稲嶺進市長（当時）に対し、基地を容認する候補が勝てば500億円の名護振興基金..

The APC network is organising and participating in key internet governance spaces in the coming weeks, including regional and global Internet Governance Forums (IGFs) and the African School on…

The APC network is organising and participating in key internet governance spaces in the coming weeks, including regional and global Internet Governance Forums (IGFs) and the African School on…

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