SOCIAL MEDIA VETTING

Two documentary groups this week challenged the Trump administration’s practice of vetting immigrants’ social media accounts when they apply for visas.

Doc Society and the International Documentary Association, the two nonprofits, teamed up to file a lawsuit against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.

The complaint argues that social media vetting has unfairly impacted their foreign collaborators and that filmmakers and activists in other countries are either censoring themselves on social media or declining to apply for visas they would have normally sought.

“We regularly work with filmmakers for whom the ability to maintain anonymity online can be a matter of life and death,” Jess Search, director of Doc Society, said in a statement.

“As an organization committed to filmmaker safety, we believe the registration requirement is deeply troubling and oppressive development, forcing filmmakers to choose between free online expression and their own security. The U.S. government should be championing freedom of expression, not taking actions which will inhibit it,” Search added.