美国国家公共电台 NPR Trump Administration Weighs Increased Scrutiny Of Refugees' Social Media

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

President Trump 1 is expected to issue a new executive order next week on refugees and other people coming to the U.S. from foreign countries. While we don't yet know the details of what the Trump administration's extreme vetting 2 will involve, one element that keeps coming up is social media. Here's what Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told NPR's Rachel Martin on MORNING EDITION earlier this month.

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JOHN KELLY: Someone comes in and says, I want to come to the United States. Then we ask them to give us a list of websites that they visit and the passwords to get on those websites to see what they're looking at. This is...

RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE 3: You would require that of anyone whose looking to immigrate 4 to the U.S.

KELLY: Well, we're considering that, yeah - social media to see what they tweet.

SHAPIRO: In fact, the government has already been looking at social media from some people applying to come to the U.S. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre is here to tell us more. Hi, Greg.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

SHAPIRO: When did this type of screening begin?

MYRE: So around the end of 2015, up until that point, very few Syrian refugees were coming to the U.S. And then over the last year or so, it was ramped 5 up to about a thousand a month. And so this is when the vetting on social media began. Now, we spoke 6 to Leon Rodriguez. Until last month, he was the head of Citizenship 7 and Immigration Services. And here's what he had to say about the program.

LEON RODRIGUEZ: Initially 8 we were focused on Syrian males who had some sort of flag in their application, and over time, we're expanding the universe of people whose social media we examine to include larger numbers of Syrian applicants 9 as well as Iraq applicants. And what we would look at would be Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

MYRE: So these accounts are mostly all in Arabic, so it was very time-consuming. He said it could take up to eight hours to go through one account, and they didn't really have the staffing to do it. But they've been hiring and training and have become more efficient.

SHAPIRO: What were they looking for when they went through these accounts?

MYRE: So we ask, something like just extreme religiosity, somebody who's very, very pious 10. And he said absolutely not. That would not be a flag. And we ask, what about a video, a gruesome ISIS video of a beheading, for example. And he said, yes, that would absolutely raise a flag, and they might - he would expect an agent to put a hold on it, and it might even lead to a rejection 11 of a refugee application.

SHAPIRO: Do we know whether the Trump administration in the first month has started doing anything differently?

MYRE: So Trump's executive order calls for a country-by-country review - not just the seven countries who we're familiar with but every country. So there could be all sorts of changes in the works or perhaps challenges and courts blocking them. And we heard John Kelly talk about possibly asking for passwords. And this is something they haven't been doing so far.

But I did speak with the Department of Homeland Security and asked them what have we seen that's different. The only new wrinkle so far seems to be - on an application form - is asking, what is your social media handle?

SHAPIRO: How effective is this form of screening?

MYRE: Don't really know yet. It's hard to say. Rodriguez said it's something they would like to - he would recommend that it be continued and even expanded until they can determine how effective it is. But so far, they just don't know. It's going to take a little more time.

SHAPIRO: If it becomes known over time that social media accounts are part of the screening, wouldn't people just go through and either delete things that might raise flags or create fake social media accounts?

MYRE: Absolutely. This is one of the things Rodriguez raised - is that if people know this is being looked at, it may have a chilling effect. They may not post. They may delete. They may create false accounts. And again, this big discussion we're having has all focused pretty much on refugees and some immigrants. We need to remember; this is a very small fraction of the overall number of people coming to the U.S. Refugees are quite literally 12 1 in a thousand. For every refugee who's coming to the United States, you have 999 other people who are not refugees.

SHAPIRO: Coming over on work visas or student visas or tourist visas, for example.

MYRE: Exactly, and so this would be an enormous lift, enormous manpower increase to be checking literally a thousand times as many people for their social media accounts. So it's probably going to have to be used in a very limited way even if they think it's pretty effective.

SHAPIRO: NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre. Thanks, Greg.

MYRE: Thanks, Ari.