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New Border Controls Don’t Add Up To “Extreme Vetting”

The State Department circulated a cable last week, outlining new guidelines concerning passport, security measures, and biographical information for visa applications from certain foreign countries. The Trump Administration has said these new measures are necessary to update the outdated security and identification processes of some foreign governments. However, some are associating the cable’s new restrictions with the administration’s ban on travel from six Muslim-majority countries, which is currently waiting for a Supreme Court decision on its legality. The Cipher Brief’s Bennett Seftel spoke with former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter about what the new guidelines mean, and how they might fit in with the travel ban and the Trump Administration’s larger counterterrorism strategy.

The Cipher Brief: How unusual is it to require traveler biometric and biographical data from all countries worldwide? How likely do you think it is that these countries will comply with this order?  

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