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Markay and McMorris Discuss Court Upholding Block on Trump's Travel Ban, Taking Social Media Passwords From Visa Applicants

February 10, 2017

Washington Free Beacon reporters Lachlan Markay and Bill McMorris appeared early Friday morning on Fox News' "Red Eye" to discuss the decision of a federal appeals court to block President Trump's travel ban and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly's comments on forcing visa applicants to turn over social media passwords.

Markay first commented on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling 3-0 against Trump's controversial executive order, which temporarily halts refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. over terrorism concerns.

"I think it's to be expected," Markay said. "It's the 9th Circuit, you know, they have a pretty lousy record when it comes to the Supreme Court overturning their decisions."

He then turned to the Trump administration potentially forcing visa applicants to hand over social media passwords to the government.

"You're talking about tens of thousands of pages of texts to people's mothers and nude pics and things that we are now going to be subjecting our civil servants to to try to find this needle in a hay stack of terrorist threats in a library of text messages," Markay said.

Host Tom Shillue then asked McMorris about the plausibility of Kelly's plans.

"It doesn't seem practical, Bill! They have trouble going through my luggage!" said McMorris, who was quick to address the issue of invasion of personal privacy.

"I mean, they are already looking at us naked, TSA, so its not like seeing your nudes on your phone is going to be that much more invasive," McMorris said. "They are already seeing you."