The Trump Administration Wants to Snoop on Disabled Americans
The White House and the Social Security Administration have a new scheme to pore over disabled Americans’ social media accounts
If you apply for disability insurance under the Social Security Administration, you might want to stay off Instagram.
The Trump White House and the Social Security Administration (SSA) have a new scheme to expand the federal government’s ability to snoop on the social media accounts of disabled Americans. The plan, which appears in this year’s SSA budget proposal (and was first reported on by the New York Times), hinges on the government’s ability to scoop up pictures and posts that might reveal whether someone is faking a disability. The budget also calls for cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — not the first such proposal under the Trump administration. The new program is designed to solve a problem — widespread disability fraud — that experts say does not exist. In fact, there is no evidence of such large-scale malfeasance. Trying to adjudicate disability by monitoring social media will be, at best, an exercise in bias confirmation and, at worst, will represent a major expansion of the surveillance state, focused on some of America’s most vulnerable citizens.
