Sunday Times Dec. 13 2015
Front Page:
Nations Approve Landmark Climate Deal
Well done people. Not perfect of course, but extremely good news for anyone in favor of future humans and other life forms.
1-to-5:
- This-Is-My-Life: 5
- Global Awareness: 5
- Inspiring: 5
- Useful: 5
Visa Screening Missed Attacker’s Zealotry on Social Media
1-to-5:
- This-Is-My-Life: 5
- Global Awareness: 4
- Inspirational: 1
- Useful: 5
The real eye-opening revelation in the story: contrary to the headline’s insinuation that the visa screening process that San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik cleared includes a review of the applicant’s social media accounts, in fact it does not. Why on earth not?
It is impossible to conduct an exhaustive investigation and scour the social media accounts of each of them, law enforcement officials say.
Say what? This is the raison d’etre of That whole Big Data thing. Thousands of marketers around the world, my company included, spend their days scouring the social media accounts of a lot more than the “tens of millions” of people who apply for U.S. visas annually. Not possible, my eye.
Here’s another are-you-kidding-me paragraph:
…a debate is underway at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services…over whether officers conducting interviews should be allowed to routinely use material gathered from social media for interviews where they assess whether foreigners are credible or pose any security risk. With that issue unresolved, the agency has not regularly been using social media reference, federal officials said.
Let that sink in for a moment. After years of the NSA using ATT as a vacuum cleaner to hoover up American citizens’ call data, there’s a debate over whether it’s okay to look at the public social media posts of foreign nationals applying for visas?
