The US State Department is using AI tools to review the social media of foreign nationals, targeting those who may express support for Hamas, raising concerns over free speech and privacy.
The US State Department, under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is launching a new AI-powered initiative called “Catch and Revoke” in an effort to revoke visas of foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas, the American website Axios reported on Friday.
The AI tools would review “tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts,” in what Axios described as “a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government’s policing of foreign nationals’ conduct and speech.”
According to Axios, “officials plan to examine internal databases to see whether any visa holders were arrested but allowed to stay in the country during the Biden administration.”
The State Department is also reportedly investigating news reports related to anti-Israel demonstrations and lawsuits by Jewish students.
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The report highlighted that, since October 2023, federal officials have already “examined 100,000 people in the Student Exchange Visitor System (…) to see if any visas had been revoked because the student (had) been arrested or suspended from school.”
Rubio had already expressed his intention to cancel visas of pro-Palestinian students in the aftermath of the October 7 attack.
“We see people marching at our universities and in the streets of our country… calling for Intifada, celebrating what Hamas has done… Those people need to go,” he said on October 15, 2023 during an interview with Fox News.
The move is part of a broader political stance, with the Trump administration also echoing similar rhetoric.
In a January 30 fact sheet, Trump’s White House warned, “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice. We will find you, and we will deport you.”
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Additionally, an executive order issued on January 20 targets visa holders and foreigners who “threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology.”
The program has raised concerns among free speech advocates, with rights groups warning that this could infringe on constitutional rights.
Axios cited Abed Ayoub, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, as saying that “this is a First Amendment and freedom of speech issue and the administration will overplay its hand.”
Sarah McLaughlin, a scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told the Reuters news agency that “AI tools cannot be relied on to parse the nuances of expression about complex and contested matters like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
As a dual citizen of the US and Israel, I am consistently frustrated by my disagreement with the actions of both governments. This reminds me of the First and Second Red Scare, where the US attempted to deport foreign nationals who supported peaceful communist movements. This is because American citizens have greater freedom of speech than visa holders. The actions during both Red Scares failed to deport most of those targeted, and I hope this fails as well. None the less, I don’t support Hamas’s use of hostage-taking and indiscriminate killing of Israelis, and find it hard to understand why anyone would support that.
But yet, you don’t seem to have a problem at all with the over 15,000 Palestinian hostages (so many of them savagely beaten, raped, sodomized, and tortured on a daily basis) that are being held by the genocidal Zionist occupation army. You don’t seem to have a problem at all with Israel’s Holocaust against the Palestinian civilians of Gaza (over 17,000 Palestinian children have been killed over there, since October of 2023).
Can we say, INVASION OF PRIVACY?
F#ck ” Israel ” and ANYONE who supports them. And to hell with anyone in my US government who supports infanticide, depopulation of Palestine, forced relocation, Apartheid.
From the river to the sea, ” Israel ” can go f#ck off!