Kamran Arif, a name instantly recognisable to anyone in Pakistan’s human rights circles, was more than a colleague; he was a friend, a mentor, and a quiet force of clarity.

At his home, tucked between wall-sized shelves stacked with everything from constitutional theory to crime thrillers, sat a book I once borrowed, and then shamelessly failed to return. ‘May It Please the Court: The First Amendment’ is a collector’s gem, a gripping compilation of real Supreme Court cases and the arguments that once gave weight to America’s promise of free speech. It captures a time when the First Amendment still held meaning in the so-called land of the free, before it was gradually emptied by national security paranoia and rebranded as a talking point to defend corporate power and demagogic bluster.

The book revisits the fierce courtroom battles fought to defend free expression, and upholding the First Amendment, the constitutional safeguard that promises freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and the right to dissent without fear or favour — the very foundations of the ‘American dream’.

Down the slippery slope

I was reading the book again recently, and it felt grimly ironic to recall those legal battles now, at a time when the US — once the loudest champion of free speech — is sliding into a state of quiet authoritarianism. Students are arrested for protesting, ICE stalks immigrants through digital footprints, and speech that challenges power is flagged, monitored, and punished. The very rights once argued for so passionately before the Supreme Court are now, seemingly, selectively applied, if not openly discarded.

In yet another chapter of the post-Trump erosion of civil liberties, the US government has formalised what many feared would become the global template for ideological policing: social media vetting as a precondition for entry.

All F, M, and J visa applicants from Karachi and Lahore, including students, researchers, and exchange scholars, are now required to surrender every social media handle used over the past five years and strip away any privacy settings.

The US Consulates in Karachi and Lahore issued a special advisory for F, M, and J applicants, emphasising that mandatory disclosure of social media identifiers is now part of the core screening process. An Instagram post by the consulates reads: “Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States.

“Omitting social media information on your application could lead to visa denial and ineligibility for future US visas,” they warned.

In this latest avatar of surveillance rationalised as policy, online posts are treated like ideological contraband, combed through by consular officials for memes, captions, and hashtags that hint at dissent. It’s a quiet but chilling escalation, where political expression becomes a liability measured not by law, but by algorithms, suspicion, and the shifting whims of empire.

Tightening the screws

In the courtroom transcripts Kamran so cherished, lawyers once stood before the highest court defending the right to burn flags, mock presidents, and speak without fear. Today, those same freedoms, especially when exercised by immigrants or folks of colour, are surveilled, catalogued, and punished in silence. The First Amendment, once a shield against state overreach, now hangs limp in the theatre of selective liberties.

I feel this isn’t just a draconian border policy but a slow, deliberate erosion of the right to dissent and the right to be human online. The First Amendment, long considered the North Star of American civil liberties, seems to have been effectively shelved.

There is little ambiguity about where this began. The Trump administration’s obsession with digital spaces as ideological battlegrounds first gave rise to the idea that visa applicants should be screened for their online views. This idea, originally floated in 2017 as part of Trump’s larger anti-immigration fervour, was then institutionalised under the cloak of counterterrorism. In 2019, the State Department expanded the policy to cover over 15 million people annually. In 2025, the screws are being tightened. What was once a soft screening has now become an explicit demand: unlock your digital self or be denied entry.

According to a Reuters report citing an internal cable, US consular officers have been instructed to carry out “comprehensive and thorough vetting” of all student and exchange visitor applicants, with a specific mandate to identify individuals who “bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” The cable, dated June 18, was circulated to US missions worldwide just days before the policy was set to take effect.

The message is clear

Who defines hostility? What is considered a threat? Can criticism of American foreign policy constitute subversion? Could satire be seen as offensive, extremist material?

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had documented multiple cases during the previous Trump era in which Iranian students, despite holding valid US visas, were detained at airports and summarily deported under vague “national security” justifications, without explanation, legal recourse, or due process. Many had already cleared extensive vetting, only to be flagged at the last mile. This was also the period when visa forms were updated to demand applicants’ social media handles, turning online expression into a minefield of suspicion.

Recently, a Norwegian tourist was denied entry into the US after officials found a meme of Vice President JD Vance on his phone and questioned him about past drug use. Homeland Security cited his admission as grounds, though the incident raises concerns about digital content being used to screen travelers.

But let’s be honest, when even Elon Musk had to scrub his timeline and issue half-hearted apologies to keep the leader of the ‘free’ world calm, what chance does a 22-year-old student from Karachi stand? The message is clear: your digital footprint can follow you across borders, and in the land of filtered freedoms, speech is free only when it flatters power.

This policy fits squarely into the blueprint of what I have previously termed ‘The Outrage Machine’, a political-industrial complex where demagogues are at the helm and social media platforms function as their whips. In this architecture, disagreement is not dialogue; it is treason. If you question, mock, or contradict the orthodoxy online, you are no longer a user. You are the enemy.

This is textbook authoritarian logic, draped in the language of administrative procedure. And it is not being driven by data. A 2021 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found no credible evidence that social media screening has ever prevented a terror attack. On the contrary, it found significant racial and religious bias in how online content was interpreted and weaponised against applicants. The policy punishes not intent, but perception. And perception is deeply racialised.

Nowhere is this felt more acutely than in Pakistan. For young scholars and aspiring students, the US remains a coveted destination. But in 2025, that aspiration comes with a caveat: surrender your digital privacy.

And therein lies the quiet tragedy. The US, long a self-appointed champion of free speech and open society, is now importing the logic of surveillance states. It is hard to distinguish this from the digital authoritarianism practised in authoritarian societies where social media is routinely monitored for dissent. The difference is that the US does it while preaching democratic values.

Only the beginning

There is a strategic hypocrisy at play. The same government that warns against TikTok as a Chinese surveillance tool now demands access to the Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts of Pakistani students. The same administration that rails against digital censorship abroad is building a system to algorithmically screen beliefs at home.

Make no mistake: this policy will not remain confined to visa applicants. Surveillance logic never retreats. It expands. Already, we see private companies using AI to analyse employee social media. Governments across the West may be watching closely. What begins in Washington rarely stays there. What the US is doing in a bid to secure borders might just become a template for digital control.

Digital rights advocates have warned that policies like these do not merely violate privacy; they dismantle the foundation of the open internet. The right to express oneself without fear of retribution, to organise, to criticise power, all these freedoms are under siege when surveillance becomes a condition for movement. The right to privacy is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for liberty.

Universities in the US must not remain silent. If academic freedom is to mean anything, it must include the right of students to think, speak, and post without being labelled a threat. If US campuses become ideological checkpoints, then the moral foundation of their global prestige collapses. This is not a war on terror, but a war on the unfiltered self. The kind of policy that makes students choose between their voice and their future. It is morally indefensible.

To conclude, I can say with near certainty that after authoring this, my future US visa applications are headed straight for the shredder. Tragic, I know. But thankfully, I’m not the sort who lets bureaucratic paranoia ruin my day. That said, if you’re feeling bold enough to share this article on your timeline, just a heads-up, your dreams of sipping overpriced coffee in Brooklyn and posting a selfie from Times Square might suffer a similar fate.

Choose rebellion wisely.

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