Look no farther than the Instagram video that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted of herself dancing down a Capitol Hill hallway: A new generation of younger, tech-savvy lawmakers is bringing a different social media playbook to Washington. But open government advocates are raising new concerns about how policymakers are using some of the more ephemeral features of social media — including “Stories” that expire after 24 hours on Instagram, Snap and even Facebook. Unlike traditional posts, these missives delete by default, which could leave no trace of political messages or policy stances. “There is public interest value in the preservation of those stories,” said Alex Howard, a government transparency advocate who previously served as deputy director of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation.
The Washington Post
When a Border Patrol agent is contemplating pulling someone over, they have a checklist of possible behaviors to look out for. They can determine “whether the vehicle or its load looks unusual in some way,” or “whether the passengers appeared dirty.” If those descriptions don’t apply, they can assess “whether the persons inside the vehicle avoid looking at the agent,” or conversely, “whether the persons inside the vehicle are paying undue attention to the agent’s presence.” And if those don’t apply, they can simply determine that the car is in an area nearby the border and pull it over on that basis alone. The Border Patrol’s authority doesn’t only apply to remote stretches of the border. Agents also deploy in cities, searching for people they believe to have illegally entered the country; board buses and ask passengers to prove they are in the country legally; and conscript civilians to assist them with law enforcement activities under threat of arrest. These details and others were revealed in more than 1,000 pages of previously unseen Customs and Border Protection training documents.
The Intercept
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