Yesterday the Trump Administration announced a proposed change in policy for travellers to the U.S. It applies to the powers of data collection by the Customs and Border Police (CBP).

The U.S. Government intends to force visitors to submit their digital history and DNA as the price of entry. With this much data AI tools will likely be deployed to unlock details of your life for border and immigration agencies.

More quotes:

The changes include:

All visitors must submit ‘their social media from the last 5 years’

ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) applications will include ‘high value data fields’, ‘when feasible’

  • ‘telephone numbers used in the last five years’
  • ‘email addresses used in the last ten years’
  • ‘family number telephone numbers (sic) used in the last five years’
  • biometrics – face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris
  • business telephone numbers used in the last five years
  • business email addresses used in the last ten years.

All these travellers will now have to use an app provided by CBP (‘CBP Home’) and an app for their ESTA application (‘ESTA Mobile App’). The ESTA website is being decommissioned.

The ‘CBP Home’ mobile app will be used by people to provide biometric proof of their departure, to ‘close the information gap’. The app will disclose the user’s location once they have left the U.S. and run a liveness detection on the selfie photo.

If approved, this policy would apply to all visitors who currently travel without a visa. For the estimated 14 million annual ESTA travellers, CBP thinks that this will take the average visitor 22 minutes to submit themselves and their family members.