Tourists from Germany and other European countries may soon be required to disclose their social media activity from the past five years before entering the United States, according to an announcement by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The agency plans to tighten the rules for visa-free entry.
The plan is for the disclosure of profiles on services such as social networks to become a mandatory part of the ESTA application. As initially reported by tagesschau.de, an application without this information would be considered incomplete and could therefore be rejected. Until now, tourists could decide for themselves whether to share the relevant details. Social media activity has so far only been systematically checked for long-term visas.
But that’s not everything: According to the US authority’s proposal, additional data fields are set to be added to the ESTA application. These include phone numbers used in the past five years, email addresses from the past ten years, as well as IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos. Furthermore, biometric data such as facial features, DNA data, and fingerprints are to be collected. The proposal also envisions gathering information about family members. Travelers would be required to provide details including names, phone numbers, birthdates, birthplaces, and residences of their relatives.
According to tagesschau.de, privacy advocates and civil rights organizations in the US have raised concerns about an unlawful intrusion into privacy. They criticize the new plans, arguing that disclosing social media accounts often reveals personal information such as political views, social connections, or individual lifestyles, the tagesschau report states. The US authorities, for their part, justify the measures by claiming that only through such data can threats from terrorism, espionage, and other security risks be detected early.
Currently, the new regulations are not yet legally binding. They could gradually come into effect as early as February.