When reading about the latest actions of the US government, it is easy to think ‘Oh well, they voted for it, it is their problem to solve’.
That is true, but US activities have consequences for us all. Some reverberate in the wider defence sphere (threats about Greenland or NATO) or in economics (tariffs on goods), neither of which specifically touches lawyers as lawyers. But our profession and justice system are potentially affected by other measures.
Last November, the US government, through its Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department, issued a proposal to increase the reporting requirements for Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) applications – the visa-free system which covers UK citizens in order to travel more easily to US. The proposal suggested applicants should disclose five years of social media information.
This followed one of the president’s executive orders from earlier in the year which directed the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes CBP, to ‘ensure that all [foreign-born individuals] seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.’
Under this proposal, it was not only information on applicants’ social media activity over the past five years that would have to be disclosed, but also additional information ‘when feasible’, including email addresses used in the past 10 years; telephone numbers used in the past five years; IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos; and biometrics, including facial, fingerprint, DNA and iris data.
A consultation on this extremely broad measure was open until February 9, 2026. Since then, nothing further has happened. Of course, the World Cup is about to start, and foreign tourism to the US is declining. So the latest news is that the proposal may be softened, and the details will be announced only after the summer travel season is over.
Yet lawyers should keep an eye on it. If implemented as outlined, there will be a significant risk to lawyer-client confidentiality for those lawyers travelling to the US, given the broad scope of the request, which extends to business telephone numbers used over the past five years and professional email addresses used over the past ten. Information of this kind goes to the heart of lawyer-client confidentiality, and raises ethical issues when handed over to a government.
A second measure which needs to be watched warily is the US government’s use of sanctions against individuals. I have written before about US sanctions against judges and prosecutors associated with decisions of a court based outside US jurisdiction – the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The last time I wrote around a year ago, only five people had been sanctioned: the chief prosecutor and four judges. The total who are now sanctioned has risen to nine judges and two prosecutors in all, plus (in this context) Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
US sanctions are a devastating blow against any individual because of our collective dependence on US tech and financial services. It deprives an individual not only of entry to the US for them and their family members, but also access to payment services, financial transactions, access to accounts, use of platforms and consumption of content, collection of fees and advances, insurance, guarantees and sureties, mailing services, lease-purchase, bookings, transport, etc. Effectively the sanctioned person can survive in the modern world only with great difficulty.
What would happen to the lawyers and judges in a case if the UK Supreme Court were to make a decision of which the US government did not approve, for instance enforcing an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netenyahu, or a similar action which cut across US interests? If sanctions can be imposed on the International Criminal Court, why not on another court outside the US, including our own?
And that ties in to my third warning. Our government, our senior judges, are urging on our adoption of technology that is not under our control. Use AI or fall behind, we are warned, in the same terms as the people selling the technology to us, as if our government and senior judiciary have the same interests as the tech bros who are selling it to us.
The question is whether President Trump is a one-off, whom we just have to wait out, or whether something fundamental has changed in our international relationships, which will be replicated by future US administrations. I ask because one day it will be too late: our legal system will be so dependent on technology outside UK control that those who do control it will be able to decide whether to switch it off, through sanctions or other measures. That would be a disaster.
I don’t understand why there are not more voices warning of this possible impending disaster, in our stampede to digitalise and adopt AI regardless of consequences.
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
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