“In order to comply with the January 2025 Executive Order 14161 (Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats),” US Customs and Border Protection informed the public in a December 10 Federal Register entry, “CBP is adding social media as a mandatory data element for an ESTA application.”

ESTA — “Electronic System for Travel Authorization” — is used by tourists coming to the US for short stays from countries with which the US government has “visa-free” arrangements.

ESTA travelers will have to share five years of social media history with CBP snoops if they want to visit the Grand Canyon or catch Keanu Reeves’s turn as Estragon in Waiting for Godot on Broadway.

Travelers who have to request visas (students and workers, for example) have been required to set their social media profiles to “public” for “a comprehensive and thorough vetting” since June.

Even assuming a need or authority on the US government’s part to “vet” travelers — an assumption I reject — the idea’s kind of silly for two reasons.

First, how much does CBP really need to know, other than that a traveler isn’t toting a suitcase nuke or an aerosol can full of smallpox virus?

Second, how long will it take for bad actors start manufacturing — even retroactively — false social media histories, leaving them free to travel while adding yet another layer of useless inconvenience for everyone else?

Worse, from what one might think of as an “America First” point of view, how long before the “national security” state’s bureaucratic camel gets this same nose under the domestic tent?

Don’t tell me it can’t happen here. I’m not THAT old, and I’m old enough to remember when the process of boarding an airplane in the US was as simple as running your bag through an X-ray machine and showing a boarding pass.

These days, you have to show a Very Special Important Federally Approved ID Card (as late as the 1990s, “conservatives” opposed “national ID” schemes) and budget an extra hour or more for body scans (with, potentially, “enhanced” manual groping) just to get from New York to LA in a timely manner.

America’s already crawling with creepy wannabe cops demanding — Third Reich or Soviet Union style — that people “show their papers” as a condition of going just about anywhere or doing just about anything (including their jobs if the ICE gang happens to drop in on a workplace).

If you think they won’t eventually escalate to browsing through YOUR shared memes, photos of cats and memories with your significant others, etc., think again.

As a practical matter, all this snooping just gums up the works of everyone’s life so more government employees can collect more paychecks. It doesn’t protect “America” and it doesn’t protect you.

As a moral issue, let me phrase this as a question and answer:

Q: Who do they think they are?

A: They think they’re your masters.

We shouldn’t tolerate that attitude, or this nonsense. Neither at, nor within, the border.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“[T]here is no way on earth we should be going to war or trying to do regime change in Venezuela,” US Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) told The Hill on December 4. The US, says Smith, “should be out of the regime-change business.”

So,  did Smith still think that on December 9, when US military aircraft overflew the Gulf of Venezuela, and on December 10, when US troops — in a blatant act of piracy on the high seas — hijacked a Venezuelan oil tanker in the Caribbean?

On December 10, Smith, the ranking Democrat on the  House Armed Services Committee, came out in support of forking over nearly $1 trillion to the US regime-change machine.

“I do support this bill. This does not mean that I do not have concerns. I do,” Smith said as he speechified for, then voted in favor of,  the latest “National Defense Authorization Act.”

That money constitutes the entire revenue stream for the “regime-change business” Smith claims he wants to shut down.

It pays for the troops. It pays for the guns. It pays for the planes. It pays for the boats. It pays for the bombs.

In what universe do you shut down a business by shoveling money at it?

The most Congress could bring itself to do in terms of funding reductions over this matter was to insert a provision cutting US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s travel budget by 25% unless he turns over video of recent US military murders (of supposed narcotics traffickers) in the Caribbean.

Not that a 25% reduction would cut Hegseth’s actual travel — he’d just hitch a ride on Air Force One or with some general or admirable whose travel budget HASN’T been cut — but even if it would, that’s some pretty weak tea right there.

Spare me any pretend shock that the executive branch is “out of control” on foreign and military policy … when’s the last time it was UNDER control?

Congress hasn’t declared war since the early 1940s, but that hasn’t prevented presidents from waging wars large and small around the globe, at their sole discretion and without meaningful pushback from Congress or the courts.

Oh, there’s frequent performative chest-beating over war powers, and occasionally an instantly dismissed lawsuit from politicians in the current congressional minority, but never anything as convincing as a credible impeachment attempt … and never, ever, EVER an actual use of Congress’s most effectual power — the power of the purse — to put a stop to the nonsense.

Money talks, and Smith’s support for throwing outlandish amounts of money at the “regime-change business” loudly contradicts the words coming out of his mouth.

So long as Congress keeps paying presidents to wage wars, presidents will happily take that money, and enthusiastically deliver the goods.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On December 5, European Union regulators levied a $140 million fine on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) for —  according to Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy —  “deceiving users with blue check marks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers.”

Elon Musk, who owns 79% of X, responded succinctly (and, naturally, via X itself): “Bullsh*t.”

States in general, and the EU in particular, have a lot in common with the users of social media platforms: Both want to decide how those platforms get used.

States in general, and the EU in particular, also have a lot in common with the owners of social media platforms: Both want to make money on those platforms.

Those commonalities make for an alliance of convenience between users and owners versus states. Owners make their money by pleasing users; states make their money by demanding bribes … er, “fines” … from owners, often as punishment for refusing to cooperate in state censorship of user-created content.

States, unfortunately, enjoy quite a bit of control over users because “nations” are the states’ ranches and “citizens” are the states’ livestock. We’re there for them to herd around, shear some wool off of, and generally treat as they like. But that control isn’t total, as anyone who’s ever driven 56 miles per hour in a zone marked 55, and gotten away with it, knows.

States enjoy even more control over businesses because those business generally operate physical infrastructure that can be seized if Bossy doesn’t give down milk on demand.

But … Elon Musk is considered, on and off, the richest person in the world, and he hangs with quite a few other rich people. He’s also proven himself to have a keen eye for exploiting technological innovations and advantages for profit.

So why doesn’t he start his own country, with a state fashioned after his own liking, base his social media platform there, do business exclusively there, and tell the other states to go pound sand when they demand control and/or a piece of the financial action?

Step one: Buy an island in the Caribbean or the Pacific, under terms — that is, with a large one-time bribe –liberating that island from whatever state it’s currently affiliated with?

Step two: Name the new country “X.”

Step three: Fill it with servers and employees and get it nicely wired in to the global Internet.

Step four: Utilize decentralized, technology solutions (such as VPNs) and non-state financial instruments (such as cryptocurrency) to operate, and do business, entirely outside the jurisdictions (and the surveillance and seizure capabilities) of busybody states like the EU.

It probably wouldn’t be a “libertarian” state in many ways. Musk would presumably act as a (hopefully benevolent) dictator. But the tax base would be X itself. Its employees (including whatever security force he deemed necessary to protect X from invasion by Henna Virkkunen and her ilk) would be most, maybe all, of its “citizens.”

He could even lease out facilities, etc. to his other businesses — Tesla could build its cars there, SpaceX could launch its rockets from there, etc.

Based on current revenues, re-domiciling Musk’s businesses would give “the country of X” a Gross Domestic Product roughly equivalent to that of Luxembourg. But unlike Luxembourg, X wouldn’t answer to the EU’s Brussels bureaucracy.

Those of us not actually living in X would benefit to the extent that we could ignore (or at least avoid) the social media demands of the states we’re constantly pestered by.

You may say I’m a dreamer … but something like the above is coming sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY