The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is considering a mandatory social-media screening for all foreign travellers, including Britons, before they are allowed into the country.
The policy, disclosed in a notice published Tuesday in the US Federal Register, would significantly expand existing entry requirements by compelling tourists to surrender five years’ worth of social-media handles, email addresses, telephone numbers, and even detailed information about close family members.
Currently, visitors from the UK and other Visa Waiver Programme countries can stay in the US for up to 90 days without a visa, needing only a $40 (£30) Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). But the new measures would radically change that process.
According to CBP, the additional screening would be “mandatory” for every traveller, whether arriving on a visa or an ESTA.
Sky News reports that as part of the overhaul, CBP wants to require applicants to upload a selfie, while also expanding biometric collection during the online application process.
This would include face scans, fingerprints, iris data, and potentially DNA, a level of intrusion previously limited to in-person checks at US ports of entry.
The proposed rules are now open for a 60-day public consultation period.
Although the US government frames the proposal as a security measure, reports have multiplied since Donald Trump returned to office of travellers being denied entry over personal device checks and online content.
In one widely reported case, a French scientist was turned away in March after border officers claimed to have found messages on his phone “reflecting hatred toward Trump” that could be described as terrorism.
Rights groups say such incidents highlight the dangers of allowing frontline officers broad discretion to interpret online expression as a national-security threat.
The move comes despite President Trump’s repeated promises to restore freedom of speech online and crack down on what he calls federal censorship. Yet his administration has been locked in repeated free-speech controversies since his return to the White House.
In September, ABC briefly suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after he criticised attempts to politicise the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
Trump publicly suggested that networks unsupportive of him should have their broadcasting licences revoked.
Kimmel’s show was reinstated within a week following an uproar from viewers and celebrities.
The administration is also battling Harvard University in a high-profile legal dispute.
The Ivy League school sued the government after $2.6bn (£1.9bn) in federal research funding was frozen, accusing the Trump administration of attempting “unprecedented and improper” political control over campus affairs.
Meanwhile, Harvard’s lawsuit accused the government of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a list of 10 demands from a federal antisemitism task force, which included sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions.
However, a judge ruled in September that the Trump administration’s freeze of billions in research funding to Harvard was unconstitutional and retaliatory.
The Trump administration has vowed to appeal, leaving the clash between the Ivy League institution and the White House burning fiercely.
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