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　トランプ米政権は、リベラル系の大学への締め付けを強化し、それに抗うなら助成金の取り消しなどの措置で圧力をかけている。　著名なエリートを輩出している名門ハーバード大への介入はその代表例だ。反ユダヤ主義的な活動やDEI（多様性、公平性、包摂性）の見直しを拒否した同大への助成金２２億ドル（約３１００億円）と６０００万ドル（約５６億円）相当の契約金の支払いを凍結した。さらにトランプはハーバード大が今後も「テロリストを支援するような『病的』な行動を押し進めるなら、免税資格措置を剥奪し..

The federal government is using social media surveillance to target student visa holders living in the United States for online speech the Trump administration disfavors. The administration has initiated this new program, called “Catch and Revoke,” in an effort to revoke visas, and it appears to be a cross-agency collaboration between the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Justice. It includes a dedicated task force and the use of AI and other data analytic tools to review the public social media accounts of tens of thousands of student visa holders. Though the full scope remains unclear, current reports indicate that the administration is surveilling for “pro-Hamas” sentiment, “antisemitic activity,” or even just “conduct that bears a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture.” At the time of publishing of this blog post, the federal government has already revoked over 1600 student visas for a variety of reasons.

This social media surveillance program is an alarming attack on freedom of speech and privacy—for both visa holders here in the United States and their American associates.

A Dangerous Erosion of Free Speech

While there is some nuance in the interplay between freedom of speech and immigration law, one principle is evident: foreign nationals who currently reside in the U.S.—including student visa holders—are protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court stated in Bridges v. Wixon (1945) that “[f]reedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”

First Amendment-Protected Political Speech

Revoking student visas based, in part, on what students have said publicly on social media is especially constitutionally problematic given that the Trump administration is targeting core First Amendment-protected political speech. As the Supreme Court stated in Mills v. Alabama (1966), a central purpose of the First Amendment is to “protect the free discussion of governmental affairs,” whether on political issues, public officials, or how the government should operate.

The administration is targeting non-citizen students for “pro-Hamas,” antisemitic, and even just pro-Palestinian speech. Yet what falls under these categories is vague and not clearly defined. For example, the administration detained a Georgetown University researcher due to social media posts that are critical of Israel, but do not express support for Hamas.

More importantly, even controversial or offensive speech falls within the protections of the First Amendment. There are several categories of speech that do not enjoy First Amendment protection, including true threats of violence, inciting imminent violence, and providing material support for terrorism. However, short of rising to that level, the student speech targeted by the administration is protected by the First Amendment. Worse still, the administration is broadly going after students who simply appear to be “social activists” or are engaged in speech that is generically “anti-American.”

Such an overbroad social media surveillance and visa revocation program—one that sweeps in wholly lawful speech—strikes at the heart of what the First Amendment was intended to protect against.

Chilling Effect

Social media surveillance motivated by the government’s desire to punish political speech will chill (and certainly has already chilled) student visa holders from speaking out online.

The Supreme Court stated in Lamont v. Postmaster General (1965) that a government policy that causes individuals “to feel some inhibition” in freely expressing themselves “is at war with the ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate and discussion that are contemplated by the First Amendment.” More recently, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor expressed in a concurring opinion that “[a]wareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms” guaranteed by the First Amendment.

In other words, student visa holders are more likely to engage in self-censorship and refrain from expressing dissenting or controversial political views when they know they're being surveilled. Or they may choose to disengage from social media entirely, to avoid the risk that even seemingly harmless posts will affect their visa status and their ability to continue their education in the United States.

Student visa holders may also limit whom they connect with on social media, particularly if they fear those connections will have political views the current administration doesn’t like. The administration has not expressly stated that it will limit its surveillance only to the social media posts of student visa holders, which means it may also look at posts made by those in the students’ networks. This, too, undermines the First Amendment. The freedom to associate and express political views as a group—“particularly controversial ones”—is a fundamental aspect of freedom of speech, as the Supreme Court stated in its landmark NAACP v. Alabama (1958) decision.

American Citizens Impacted

Because student visa holders’ social networks undoubtedly include U.S. citizens, those citizens may also be subject to social media scrutiny, and therefore will also be chilled from freely speaking or associating online. Government agents have previously held visa holders responsible for the activity of their social media connections. Knowing this, a U.S. citizen who has a non-citizen friend or family member in the U.S. on a student visa might hesitate to post criticisms of the government—even if fully protected by the First Amendment—fearing the posts could negatively impact their loved one. A general climate of government surveillance may also lead U.S. citizens to self-censor on social media, even without any foreign national friends or family.

A Threat to Digital Privacy

Social media surveillance, even of publicly available profiles and especially with automated tools, can invade personal privacy. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government’s collection and aggregation of publicly available personal information—particularly when enhanced by technology—can implicate privacy interests. The government can obtain personal information it otherwise would not have access to or that would usually be difficult to find across disparate locations.

Social media aggregates personal information in one place, including some of the most intimate details of our lives, such as our health information, likes and dislikes, political views and religious beliefs, and people with whom we associate. And automated tools can easily search for and help find this information. Even people who choose not to post much personal information on social media might still be exposed by comments and tags made by other users.

Constitutional Harms are Exacerbated by Automated Tools

The Trump administration is reportedly deploying artificial intelligence and other automated tools to assist in its review of student visa holders’ social media posts. While facts are still coming to light, any form of automation is likely to amplify speech and privacy harms to student visa holders.

By the government’s own assessment in another context—evaluating the admissibility of visa applicants (discussed below)—social media surveillance has not proven effective at assessing security threats.

Human review of public social media posts is itself prone to problems. Social media posts are highly context-specific, and government officials often have trouble differentiating between sarcasm, parody, and exaggeration from unlawful support for controversial causes. This leads to mistakes and misinterpretations. For example, in 2012 an Irish citizen was turned back at the border because DHS agents misinterpreted two of his Twitter posts: one, that he was going to “destroy America” – slang for partying – and two, that he was going to “dig up Marilyn Monroe’s grave” – a joke. These mistakes are even more likely when the posts are not in English or when they contain cultural references .

Human review augmented by automated tools is just as bad. Automated tools also have difficulty understanding the nuances of language, as well as the broader context in which a statement was made. These algorithms are also designed to replicate patterns in existing datasets, but if the data is biased, the technology simply reinforces those biases. As such, automated tools are similarly prone to mistakes and misinterpretations. Yet people often defer to automated outputs thinking they are correct or fair simply because a computer was used to produce them. And in some cases, decision-makers may even use these tools to justify or cover their own biases.

Most concerning would be if automated systems were permitted to make final visa revocation decisions without any human review. As EFF has repeatedly stated, automated tools should never get the final say on whether a person should be policed, arrested, denied freedom, or, in this case, stripped of a student visa and forcibly barred from completing their education.

Government Social Media Surveillance is Not New—and is Expanding

That the Trump administration is using social media surveillance on student visa holders residing in the United States is a disturbing apparent escalation of a longstanding trend.

EFF has long sounded the alarm on the civil liberty harms of government social media surveillance. In particular, since 2019, visa applicants have been required to disclose all social media accounts they have used in the last five years to the U.S. government. That policy is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, Doc Society v. Pompeo, in which EFF filed an amicus brief.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently upped the ante by ordering officials to deny visas to new or returning student applicants if their social media broadly demonstrates “a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles).” Notably, Rubio indicated this standard could also apply to current student visa holders. The State Department also announced it will review the social media of any visa applicant who has been to Gaza since 2007.

The Trump administration has also proposed dramatically expanding social media scrutiny by requiring non-citizens already legally residing in the U.S. to disclose social media accounts on a variety of forms related to immigration benefits, such as people seeking lawful permanent residency or naturalization. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of DHS, also announced it would look for “antisemitic activity” on social media to deny immigration benefits to individuals currently in the country.

Protecting Your Accounts

There are general steps you can take to better protect your social media accounts from surveillance. Understand, however, that the landscape is shifting rapidly and not all protections are foolproof. Law enforcement may be able to get a warrant for your private information and messages if a judge is convinced there is preliminary evidence supporting probable cause of criminal activity. And non-governmental individuals and groups have recently used other forms of technology like face recognition to identify and report student activists for potential deportation. You should conduct your own individualized risk assessment to determine what online activity is safe for you.

Still, it never hurts to better secure your online privacy. For your current social media accounts, consider locking them down:

• Make public accounts private and ensure only approved connections can see your content. Note that if your past public posts have already been copied and saved by an outside party, making your account private will not undo this. It will, however, better protect your future posts.
• Some platforms make certain information publicly viewable, even if you’ve made your account private. Other information may be public by default, but can be made private. Review each platform’s privacy settings to limit what information is shared publicly, including friend lists, contact information, and location information.
• You should also review your friends or followers list to ensure you know every person you’ve approved, especially when making a once-public account private.

If you create a new social media account:

• Query whether you want to attach your legal name to it. Many platforms allow you to have a pseudonymous account.
• When setting up the account, don’t provide more personal information than is necessary.

EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense guide provides additional information on protecting your social media accounts from a variety of actors. If you're not sure what information is publicly available about you on social networks or other sites, consider doing some research to see what, if anything, others would find.

By targeting international students for broad categories of online speech, this administration is fostering a climate of fear, making students anxious that a single post or errant “like” could cost them their U.S. visa or even lead to detention and deportation. This will, ultimately, stifle political debate and silence dissent–for non-citizens and citizens alike–undermining the open dialogue crucial to democracy.

4月24日も、ガザの難民が避難する学校と、食料を求めて殺到する群衆を空爆し、ネタニヤフ・イスラエル首相は、50人の民間人を殺しました。　しかし、イスラエル非難提案はアメリカの拒否権で、またもや葬りさられていくのです。　何が安保理の問題か？　　それは拒否権です。　誰もが、拒否権が悪用されていると言います。　拒否権とは、安保理15か国メンバーのうち。5か国常任理事国にだけ与えられた「ノー」と言える特権です。　世界を仕切っているのは米英露中仏・常任理事5か国です。　国連に加盟している国を除いた（193―5）188か国は、どの国も常任理事国になりたいのです。

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Treasury and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently reached an agreement allowing the IRS to share with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) taxpayer information of certain immigrants. The redacted 15-page memorandum of understanding (MOU) was exposed in a court case, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos v. Bessent, which seeks to prevent the IRS from unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer information for immigration enforcement purposes. Weaponizing government data vital to the functioning and funding of public goods and services by repurposing it for law enforcement and surveillance is an affront to a democratic society. In addition to the human rights abuses this data-sharing agreement empowers, this move threatens to erode trust in public institutions in ways that could bear consequences for decades. 

Specifically, the government justifies the MOU by citing Executive Order 14161, which was issued on January 20, 2025. The Executive Order directs the heads of several agencies, including DHS, to identify and remove individuals unlawfully present in the country. Making several leaps, the MOU states that DHS has identified “numerous” individuals who are unlawfully present and have final orders of removal, and that each of these individuals is “under criminal investigation” for violation of federal law—namely, “failure to depart” the country under 8 U.S.C. § 1253(a)(1). The MOU uses this basis for the IRS disclosing to ICE taxpayer information that is otherwise confidential under the tax code.  

In practice, this new data-sharing process works like this: ICE makes a request for an individual’s name and address, taxable periods for which the return information pertains, the federal criminal statute being investigated, and reasons why disclosure of this information is relevant to the criminal investigation. Once the IRS receives this request from ICE, the agency reviews it to determine whether it falls under an exception to the statutory authority requiring confidentiality and provides an explanation if the request cannot be processed. 

But there are two big reasons why this MOU fails to pass muster. 

First, as the NYU Tax Law Center identified:

“While the MOU references criminal investigations, DHS recently reportedly told IRS officials that ‘they would hope to use tax information to help deport as many as seven million people.’ That is far more people than the government could plausibly investigate, or who are plausibly subject to criminal immigration penalties, and suggests DHS’s actual reason for pursuing the tax data is to locate people for civil deportation, making any ‘criminal investigation’ a false pretext to get around the law.” 

Second, it’s unclear how the IRS would verify the accuracy of ICE’s requests. Recent events have demonstrated that ICE’s deportation mandate trumps all else—with ICE obfuscating, ignoring, or outright lying about how they conduct their operations and who they target. While ICE has fueled narratives about deporting “criminals” to a notorious El Salvador prison, reports have repeatedly shown that most of those deported had no criminal histories. ICE has even arrested U.S. citizens based on erroneous information and blatant racial profiling. But ICE’s lack of accuracy isn’t new—in fact, a recent settlement in the case Gonzalez v. ICE bars ICE from relying on its network of erroneous databases to issue detainer requests. In that case, EFF filed an amicus brief identifying the dizzying array of ICE’s interconnected databases, many of which were out of date and incomplete and yet were still relied upon to deprive people of their liberty. 

In the wake of the MOU’s signing, several top IRS officials have resigned. For decades, the agency expressed interest in only collecting tax revenue and promised to keep that information confidential. Undocumented immigrants were encouraged to file taxes, despite being unable to reap benefits like Social Security because of their status. Many did, often because any promise of a future pathway to legalizing their immigration status hinged on having fulfilled their tax obligations. Others did because as part of mixed-status families, they were able to claim certain tax benefits for their U.S. citizen children. The MOU weaponizes that trust and puts immigrants in an impossible situation—either fail to comply with tax law or risk facing deportation if their tax data ends up in ICE’s clutches. 

This MOU is also sure to have a financial impact. In 2023, it was estimated that undocumented immigrants contributed $66 billion in federal and payroll taxes alone. Experts anticipate that due to the data-sharing agreement, fewer undocumented immigrants will file taxes, resulting in over $313 billion in lost tax revenue over 10 years. 

This move by the federal government not only betrays taxpayers and erodes vital trust in necessary civic institutions—it also reminds us of how little we have learned from U.S. history. After all, it was a piece of legislation passed in a time of emergency, the Second War Powers Act, that included the provision that allowed once-protected census data to assist in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. As the White House wrote in a report on big data in 2014, “At its core, public-sector use of big data heightens concerns about the balance of power between government and the individual. Once information about citizens is compiled for a defined purpose, the temptation to use it for other purposes can be considerable.” Rather than heeding this caution, this data-sharing agreement seeks to exploit it. This is yet another attempt by the current administration to sweep up and disclose large amounts of sensitive and confidential data. Courts must put a stop to these efforts to destroy data privacy, especially for vulnerable groups.

　ちょうど80年前、太平洋戦争終結の1945年８月15日、日本の降伏で無法地帯となった朝鮮半島に思いをはせてみる。米軍が入った北緯38度線の南は早期に落ち着き、在留邦人は帰還の途につけた。問題は北だ。　日ソ中立条約を破棄してソ連軍が侵攻し、南北間を封鎖。残された約25万人の在留邦人を待ち受けたのは、国際法無視のソ連兵による暴力、略奪、そして陵辱だった。食料はない。故郷に帰れる見込みもない。何万人もが飢えと疫病コレラに倒れた。　この生き地獄に手を差し伸べた男がいた。進駐したソ連..

It has now been nearly two months since UK Prime Minister Starmer spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, yet there has been no tangible progress in the case of Alaa Abd El Fattah, the British-Egyptian writer, activist, and technologist who remains imprisoned in Egypt.

In yet another blow to his family and supporters, who have been tirelessly advocating for his release, we’ve now learned that Alaa has fallen ill while on a sustained hunger strike protesting his incarceration. Alaa’s sentence was due to end last September.

Alaa’s mother, Laila Soueif, initiated a hunger strike beginning on his intended release date to amplify demands for her son’s release. Soueif, too, is facing deteriorating health, having to shift from a full hunger strike to a partial strike allowing for 300 liquid calories a day after being hospitalized in London, and following Starmer’s subsequent call with el-Sisi. Risking serious complications, today  marks the 208th day of her hunger strike in protest at her son’s continued imprisonment in Egypt. Calling for her son’s freedom, Soueif has warned that she will resume a full hunger strike if progress is not made soon on Alaa’s case.

As of April 24, Alaa is on Day 55 of a hunger strike that he began on 1 March. He is surviving on a strict ration of herbal tea, black coffee, and rehydration salts, and is now being treated in Wadi El-Natrun prison for severe stomach pains. In a letter to his family on April 20, Alaa described worsening conditions and side effects from medications administered by prison doctors: “the truth is the inflammation is getting worse … all these medicines are making me dizzy and yesterday my vision was hazy and I saw distant objects double.”

Responding to Alaa’ illness in prison, Alaa’s sister Sanaa Seif stated in a press release: “We are all so exhausted. My mum and my brother are literally putting their bodies on the line, just to give Alaa the freedom he deserves. Their health is so precarious, I’m always afraid that we are on the verge of a tragedy. We need Keir Starmer to do all he can to bring Alaa home to us.”

Alaa’s case has galvanized support from across the UK political spectrum, with more than 50 parliamentarians urging immediate action. Prime Minister Starmer has publicly committed to pressing for Alaa’s release, but these words must now be matched by action. As Alaa’s health deteriorates, and his family’s ordeal drags on, the need for decisive intervention has never been more urgent. The time to secure Alaa’s freedom—and prevent further tragedy—is now.

EFF continues to work with the campaign to free Alaa: his case is a critical test of digital rights, free expression, and international justice. 

Schneider Electricが提供する複数の製品には、複数の脆弱性が存在します。

ALBEDO Telecomが提供するNet.Time - PTP/NTP clockには、不適切なセッション期限の脆弱性が存在します。

Vestelが提供するAC Chargerには、認可されていない相手への機微なシステム情報の漏えいの脆弱性が存在します。

Niceが提供するLinear eMerge E3には、OSコマンドインジェクションの脆弱性が存在します。

Johnson Controlsが提供するICUには、スタックベースのバッファオーバーフローの脆弱性が存在します。