US State Dept. says silence or anonymity on social media is suspicious

It’s 2025, and we’re still dealing with that “If you have nothing to hide…” mentality and excuse to violate privacy. From Papers, Please! on May 30:

A cable yesterday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, first reported by Nahal Toosi and Eric Bazail-Eimil of Politico, directs US embassies and consulates to “conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.”

The cable implies that the main although not the exclusive focus of this special scrutiny of each Harvard-associated visa applicant’s “online presence” will be the content of their social media accounts.

In the cable, Rubio told US consular officers who decide whether to grant or deny visa applications that “the lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘private’ or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness and call into question the applicant’s credibility.” In such cases, consular officers are instructed to:

Inform the applicant that his case is subject to review of his online presence, request that the applicant set all of his social media accounts to “public,” and remind him that limited access to or visibility of social media activity could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity. Consular officers must then refer the cases to the Fraud Prevention Unit (FPU).