Is this the only news outlet with this story? How credible is this publication? Before I get worked up about this story, I'd like to know it's not bullshit.
However I think it's likely that they misconstructed the story (not on purpose but because they made some bad assumptions). Pretty likely that this is yet another "routine check sniffing through social media etc. after the person acted suspicious in some way" ... which in itself is noteworthy but pretty different.
Not unlikely that the sources reported the story a tad wrong.
I don't agree on the credibility part. In my opinion they quite often write sensational judgemental stories, at least on local topics.
Also they rarely indicate their sources. Same with this article. No source, nothing.
If a viral story (though there's no direct mention of Prism, the NSA etc, the 'related articles' are all about this and it's clear that it's the same topic) was their aim: Mission accomplished. Not only the massive traffic from HN, but also more than 3 times as many Facebook shares for this article as the next-most-shared-one.
There are some critical comments on the site, which are blocked and removed quickly by the moderators (have seen this a couple of times now).
WAZ is a mainstream newspaper with wide circulation in western Germany. It has better reputation than a tabloid, worse than a top tier newspaper like NYT or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In the past we've had verified incidents of people being refused entry because of things posted on for instance public Twitter feeds.
So we know that the monitoring of social media, collating that with the identity of incoming travelers and passing that on to officials at the border is an existing practice. We also know that once monitoring starts for one purpose, it rapidly expands to other use case. This pattern repeats itself around the world.
The only part open to debate is the suggestion of monitoring private Facebook communication.
So you're suggesting that everything published about the nature of US surveillance until this very day, including the recent PRISM-related publications, is all "utterly implausible"?
Because everything else I read in that article is perfectly consistent with what we already know as fact, and therefor completely plausible, albeit suspiciously thin on concrete facts.
The only part open to debate is the suggestion of monitoring private Facebook communication.
No, part open to debate is whether they'd risk getting the project discovered by giving a bunch of border officers (probably without any clearance) the tools for accessing, printing out and showing to travelers their private Facebook messages, when they could have:
1. Not use it for visa clearance.
2. Use data-mining to create no-entry-lists without exposing the source.
3. Have secure facilities (rooms in some building, not necessarily Top-Secret hideouts) where the PM investigation would happen, to avoid leaks like officers showing evidence to regular civilians.
So we know that the monitoring of social media, collating that with the identity of incoming travelers and passing that on to officials at the border is an existing practice.
By the NSA, for national security reasons. Not for visa fraud.
Don't get me wrong, it's possible. But if NSA data was being used to monitor au pair activity and provided to border control agents it would be a step beyond what we currently know.
However I think it's likely that they misconstructed the story (not on purpose but because they made some bad assumptions). Pretty likely that this is yet another "routine check sniffing through social media etc. after the person acted suspicious in some way" ... which in itself is noteworthy but pretty different.
Not unlikely that the sources reported the story a tad wrong.