by MS. KATHRYN BROWN President/CEO
Published: 21st February, 2017.
Today, the Internet Society, along with 50 organizations and trade associations and nearly 90 individual experts who care deeply about an open, trusted Internet, expressed our deep concerns that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security may require individuals to disclose their social media account passwords as a condition of entry into the United States. Last week, the new U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security indicated that the U.S. government is considering such a policy as an MS. element of border screening.
MS. KATHRYN BROWN President/CEO
We signed onto this statement because we believe that this policy would gravely undermine Internet security and would represent an alarming intrusion on individuals’ rights of expression, opinion and privacy. We also worry that other nations may replicate this approach, leading to a cascading decline in Internet security for users across the globe.
The Internet Society is a global organization that is comprised of staff, chapters, members and volunteers around the world who all share a deep commitment to the ability of individuals to communicate freely and securely via the Internet. Coercive action by a government to demand user passwords is contrary to our values and creates unacceptable risks to our community’s ability to travel and communicate freely.
We remain committed to opposing policies such as this that would compromise global Internet security and place our community’s security and privacy in jeopardy.Please join us in showing your support by sharing this statement across social channels. Together, we can send a strong message that this proposed policy approach is not acceptable.
Click below for full text of the coalition’s statement
https://cdt.org/insight/no-to-dhs-social-media-password-requirement/
So the preceding was the official statement from the Internet Society,yet only very few of my Facebook friends’ seemed to be outraged by this perverted type of legislation. When I reposted this on my Facebook page yesterday. What you have to realise, that this measure is not only a concern for those applying for a USA visas.
For instance, the privacy of your communication to a friend or family of yours is also compromised.
Texting, email and messaging as well as the use of various social media platforms has become a way of life in this 21st century living. Digital technologies, like the worldwide Web and the Internet,;have radically transformed how we live, learn, do business and recreate and in some sense, the vulnerability that users already face is now being exacerbated by the notion that a law-abiding citizens should be confronted to such draconian and fascist action.
Compliments: https://www.pexels.com/search/information%20technology/
It behooves me to ask you, my friends to not be silent on this matter . If such a governmental policy is allowed to proceed unchallenged, this opens the way for other so called democratic governments to do likewise.This is the behavior of of a dictatorship such as obtains in North Korea, and one-party states like China. Where these regimes are afraid to let free-thinking exist.
Imagine that you are a businessman going to the states for a few days to a conference, or a family going to a wedding a musician going on a tour through the states, would you be happy to surrender your passport, er…sorry, password, to obtain a a visas to the states?The inevitable consequence of this policy should it go ahead, is a massive loss of economy both in and out of the USA many people will look for alternative ways to spend their money, not at the expense of their privacy.You know as well as I do, that when we perceive that a medium is private, that sensitive information, that is not the business of anyone except the person to whom it was intended, maybe communicated.
Having said this, I call on the giant, technology companies such as Google,
Microsoft, Yahoo, Samsung, Cisco, Badoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, etc
to use their enormous wealth to protect their customers’ from such blatant civic abuse.
I call on civil society to get behind the cause and echo this message loud and clear on all their social media platforms, and even beyond. There is a lot more at stake here than what is initially being proposed.
If you care about human rights and justice, you will act Now.
This is unconstitutional and an affront to our democratic values. Nay a crime against humanity.
Albert Williams Bsc (Hons) Comp & IT (Open), MBCS, is a postgraduate of the Open University working towards a MSc Technology Management by 2019
He is a member of the Internet society, The Chartered Institute for IT, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Radio Society of Great Britain, Author’s Licencing and Collection Agency, researchgate.net and Academia.edu
ALBERT WILLIAMS Reporting 
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