Along with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, the International Documentary Association and Doc Society are suing the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security because their international members are concerned that their political views will be used against them during the visa process.
The nonprofit groups surveyed over 100 international filmmakers and found that a significant majority said it would chill their speech online.
Oliver Rivers, managing director of Doc Society, described two distinct harms created by the Trump administrations policies on social media and visa applications. The other is on U.S.-based individuals and organizations like Doc Society and IDA that are wanting to engage with those non-U.S.
The situation is also challenging for those who use their real name online, Rivers added, and are left to question how their posts might read to the hostile bureaucratic eye of an American border official.
According to the complaint, one IDA member, who lives in the Midwest, said they reviewed three years of social media activity and deleted posts criticizing the current U.S.
Such self-censorship could play out on a massive scale, the groups fear; the State Department estimates that 14.7 million people each year will have to disclose their social media accounts. But at its heart, he said, the case was about bureaucratic intervention in freedom of speech and its being done in a particularly insidious way.
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