U.S. government begins asking foreign travelers about social media
politico.com
politico.com
Edit: Link to the pertinent section of the form used by Thai immigration to ask for social media account information. [2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12974377
[2] http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/pre/1460977...
Or should I just forget about visiting these countries?
Also its Skype, Linkedin and Facebook if i remember right. I dont have those.
Self-censorship is amazing though, before the European refugee crisis, it seems Germans were polite or tolerant towards foreigners, because it's the social norm. Now in some cities, because they know their neighbors think the same about "those people", they've also realized they're free to express their negative views.
Since they'll probably say "Please kindly write down your HN username", hello to the nice immigration officer reading this!
This was really surprising to me a few years ago. (The first time I had left the US since I was a small child.) I had thought people were just complaining about long lines.
The Customs guy talked to me for >1 hour because I didn't make enough eye contact. And I'm an average looking white male who was coming back from a country that the US has a good relationship with...
My girlfriend is employed. So once they found that out, they had little concern and it became much more relaxed. My friend's girlfriend is not (student, finished undergrad and taking a bit of time off before starting a PhD program). They give her the third degree.
It doesn't help that it can be pretty arbitrary depending on which agent you get, too. Having a similar description to yours, customs agents have always let me walk through without difficulty. Except for one time coming back from Canada.
This was on the way back from Israel though, so I was very aware of how much easier re-entry into the US was than going to Israel.
But as a US citizen, I have no idea what visitors have to go through.
On the other hand, Israeli officials have been solidly professional when I visited. They can see my deadname too, as they have a data-sharing agreement with the USA.
I have several friends who are not US citizens, so I get to hear about how much it sucks from their perspective. There are differences depending on country of origin and visa type. My friends who are from "bad" immigration countries like India, China, and Russia have a hard time, but friends who are from more "trusted" countries tend to have it much easier. My friends who are on long term / work visas find it a huge pain to deal with renewal and keeping it updated (and sometimes my friends from "bad" countries get stuck outside the US for weeks during renewal, for no good reason), but the actual border crossings aren't too bad, as long as they have all their paperwork in order. I don't really know anyone who visits the US on a tourist visa or similar, so I don't know what that experience is like.
Regarding changes for non-citizens, despite my friends relating their experiences, I don't think I've seen _that_ much of a negative difference over the past few years. The onerous fingerprinting requirements are not new[1], and the idea of the anxiety-inducing chat with the immigration officer is even older and doesn't seem to have changed much post-9/11. The new social media stuff is of course ridiculous, especially if it morphs into a hard requirement (or worse, a soft one, where refusing to provide details habitually results in denied entry). Is there a timeline anywhere of changes to US entry practices in the last decade or two? It'd be interesting to see if there have been a lot of small, incremental, "unnoticeable" changes.
[1] And it seems many other countries have adopted fingerprinting requirements anyway; I was just in Japan and Taiwan, and both fingerprinted me. I believe Japan has been requiring fingerprints of visitors longer than the US has.
The internet in its current form is broken let's face it. It's way way too easy to anonymously attack others or to deceive others. Seemingly every day I read about some bank or company which was hacked or a radical terrorist who became radicalized online.
Right now everyone is running around online wearing black ski masks. You don't know me and I don't know you and we have very little (legal) means of verifying who the other person actually is. Maybe I live in Macedonia and get paid to post devil's advocate replies.
I would honestly be happier if we just had a national ID tied to our internet access. I sort of wonder if Internet 1 will have to break before we create a better implementation.
As a US citizen, this is truly offensive. It's as if you have no understanding of the government structure and history of The United States of America. We have 50 sovereign states, and this independence has allowed the state of New York to ban fracking and the state of Colorado to legalize cannabis. Not to mention that you just laid out what I would refer to as a police state.
I believe you should read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, and think more carefully about what you proposed.
What do you think a social security number is exactly? You seem to be confusing identification with independence.
I have read both papers thank you.
I didn't downvote your original post, but I will say that many of us don't share your view: we love freedom and aren't willing to so blithely trade it away.
Anonymous speech is the backbone of American freedom, and has been since the founding of the nation. Some of us are willing to have Civil War 2 before we let the government take that enshrined right away.
If you believe you are anonymous now, then I don't believe you have been paying attention to what the government has been able to do legally for the past 15 years.
I don't believe that this account is anonymous, but that's different than prohibiting any account from being anonymous. There are lots of relatively easy ways to be anonymous (in a city) against even state level actors (for the purposes of publishing; hiding that you exist as a person is harder). They're not free, but we're talking $50-200 in equipment, which nearly anyone could get ahold of.
I like to think I have a reasonable understanding of what the government is and isn't capable of doing, and Id point out that the last 15 years has also seen a transition from critics of surveillance speaking calmly about their concerns to filing lawsuits and hardening infrastructure against the government. The government hasn't been alone in ratcheting up their efforts, and it is indeed deeply disturbing that it seems we're on track for a showdown. Lots of people would be hurt if it came to Civil War 2: Cyberwar Boogaloo, yet how can we call ourselves Americans or patriots if we just throw away the core principles of the nation?
Other people have laid down their lives to defend that freedom, and it is our obligation now to defend it with the same passion.
Primarily, many rights are relaxed at the border (like search and seizure in Carol v United States) because the sovereign's interests and duties must be balanced with constitutional protections. If this case ever makes it to the Supreme Court i wouldn't be surprised if they rule that the government can require you to disclose all of your social media accounts if you're a non-citizen and any accounts where you do not have a reasonable expectation of anonymity if you are a citizen (I.e., they'd get your Facebook account and any account where you posted identifying details like a personal or work email but not your 4chan account).
Also, given that much of the revolutionary war propaganda and the federalist/anti-federalist papers were published under pseudonyms, Id argue anonymized political speech has been part of the American tradition since before there was a US government.
I agree that anonymity has been a key part of the US political tradition since before the formation of the Union but it's important that it is codified into law and the judicial branch is allowed to review it.
I agree, we're already not anonymous, hence your proposal is a waste of time and money.
And meanwhile there are a pile of states making it increasingly onerous to get id in order to limit voting.
Having a coherent strategy for id doesn't preclude banning fracking NY. It also doesn't imply that the government will require access to your social media accounts, or use tanks to investigate overdue parking tickets, both of which we seem to be running towards without a national ID...
It may start with ISIS alignment (but seriously, if that's what catches a would be terrorist, it's both a pathetic statement of our other law enforcement and that terrorist.) But where does "suspicion" end? Black Lives Matter had a terrorist attack in Dallas, if I tweeted I was near a protest, will that flag me? What if I tweeted that President Elect Trump was "unelectable" as Barack Obama had press conference?
I simply don't understand the outrage. It seems random and unconnected to reality. Your public social media whatever is public. Why wouldn't it be investigated just like anything else about you that can be gleaned?
There's also the flaw in the idea that these things are related. If I say on a social media account something critical of the government or an elected official, that doesn't actually make me (me, personally, that is; I'm not speaking in generalities) any more likely to commit a crime or be involved in terrorism. However, a generic, statistics-based approach to flagging things like that assumes it does.
It's also not clear about what's public and what's private. My Facebook account is locked down so only my friends can see anything I post. Some people make their Twitter and Instagram accounts private. While that's not the same sort of "private" as "only exists on my computer's hard drive", it's still certainly not public in the same way that a comment on a HN thread is. If I give an immigration official my FB username, does that mean they get to look at my posts through a backdoor given to them by FB, even though all my content there is marked friends-only? If so, then I have a problem with that as it violates my due process rights (it should require a specific warrant, with my name on it, for FB to hand over that data). If not, then providing my FB account to them is useless, as they won't be able to get anything from it anyway[1].
I get your "limited resources" argument, but, to be blunt, I just don't care. I am firmly of the opinion that less effective law enforcement is a perfectly acceptable consequence of greater personal privacy. Fewer people in the US are killed by terrorism than by falling off a piece of furniture, so I'm not particularly concerned with trying to optimize the search for terrorists at the expense of due process and privacy protections.
[1] Actually that's not entirely true, as my friend list is public. So they could theoretically flag me based on someone I "know" (using scare quotes because a FB "friendship" tells you virtually nothing about the relationship between two people), which is ridiculous.
This is an incredibly worth while read by Cory Doctrow that has only gotten more pertinent.
ahahahahahaha, it's so accurate it hurts.
It's totally constitutional because its information the corporation willingly handed over.
The power dynamic at US immigration is very unbalanced and they generally treat people terribly. If you "opt out" of providing this highly personal information they will no doubt send you to secondary where you will be required to provide it anyway.
It is just normalising an invasion of privacy, and by the very nature of it they're already hinting that they might enter those social media accounts and pull apart your life. They already read diaries and look through your files, and anything that they find they'll use against you no matter how vague or what context it is said (e.g. don't even think about making jokes in private, they will ignore context like their life depended on it).
Your choice when travelling to the US is:
- Provide real ones (and risk getting bounced for something taken out of context and your privacy invaded).
- Don't provide any (and risk getting bounced for looking suspicious).
- Provide fake ones (and risk getting bounced for not providing a thorough record).
They actually asked for feedback when this was first proposed and I wrote to them telling them why it was a bad idea. The problem is that they're asking American citizens for feedback about a proposal that doesn't impact them. I just happen to care because I am a green card holder who has family come in and know how terrible US immigration can be.
Immigration officer: "This bjelkeman-again account on Hacker News isn't your?"
Me: "No sir, it isn't"
Officer: "But it has your name."
Me: "Sorry, I don't know who that is. Somebody impersonating me perhaps?"
Officer: "Hand me your phone. An unlock it."
Me: "Here it is. But it is empty. I load it from a downloaded encrypted image when I arrive at my destination. The key is given to me when I have arrive. For company security reasons."
Officer: "You have to come with me."
It is going to be interesting.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-soci...
Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you, when one article is merely summarizing another, to submit the original instead.
The problem is that border security is going to over interpret normal text written by normal innocent people.
If terrorists are 1-in-ten million, and the probability that you say something that has any interpretation that could be construed as terroristic is anything greater than that, then the overwhelming majority of hits are false-positives.
I suspect that's a fraction of a percent. Are there any cites for higher numbers?
I couldn't find statistics, perhaps mainly because googling "facebook post frequency" or similar gives you 1000 SoMe SEO tips&tricks pages.
Any data that isn't obviously fake can help build their profile of you. The idea is that they can build on that profile when you do become a person-of-interest.
Aren't most people's friend lists on Facebook consisting of 80% "People I went to school / university / work with"? In which case government already knows? Once we gets to "connections pf connections", you're looking at a set of many thousand people with no real indication of how strong the connection is. E.g. some of my best IRL friends I haven't even added on Facebook, but I have several people as FB friends that I haven't spoken to in a literal decade.
How? A citizen's own government might conceivably know who you work with professionally via the tax agency, but a foreign government doesn't (not without specifically requesting such data on a case-by-case basis). For most people who use Facebook, their list of contacts will provide any big data analysing actor with a very nice outline of their life and interests, especially if you are the type of state actor that can coerce Facebook into cooperating.
Even if your own profile is clean and seemingly meaningless, mom will have you tagged as her son/daughter, and who you communicate with and when will quickly filter out the uninteresting friends.
I tend to be on the not bothered end of the spectrum[2] and I'm a bit wortied by the direction it's going in England with more stuff gathered, from more people, with less rigorous oversight.
[1] there are many different forces in England
[2] mostly because I saw regulation getting better. There are problems with RIPA, but it stoppwd some abuses.
What I am trying to say, i guess, is someone will make money out of this, manufacturing fake twitter profiles with real looking history.
Now, the thing is, though, it's hard, because at some point your "followers" and "followings" have to be real people that interact with you ideally.
It can label the checkbox "Make America Great Again".
This isn't about guys with bombs causing real harm.
This is about people with different political views than the current establishment doesn't want spreading their message.
I agree with the above comment, and have personally had the US border guards give me hell for both of the above because I enter from Canada (where I live).
Really, giving them such arbitrary power lets them abuse it for any reason they see fit. Whether it's valid or not is irrelevant as the power is there.
People have been denied entry based on their online activity years ago.
This directly criminalises speech and brazenly places a chilling effect on open and free discourse. This US security state has become so emboldened by citizen inaction and hand waving and ordinary americans must take control of their state. Please defend basic human rights and dignity.
Don't let the naive, statists and apologists come here and defend and seek to normalize this blatant authoritarianism.
As far as I know, the U.S. has denied entry to its critics, though I don't know how consistently they do that.
(To be absolutely clear: I don't think anyone should be discriminated against based on their religion or political beliefs.)
But seriously, this is all up to interpretation. You've got a social profile on the service called "hacker news" - you're already suspect in the eyes of many people.
And I like none of these options, especially not given that China and to some extent Russia massively try to take geopolitical influence over from the US.
On one hand, maybe cool that you can list GitHub to show you are a professional, on the other much larger hand this data collection is terrifying and could be used for so many bad policies.
In contrast to yourself, I'm most self-censored here. In a game or in person is where I feel like I can speak freely. Here, not so much.
That's way I never used pseudonyms, they are practically useless in hiding your real identity. Additionally they give you a false sense of anonymity.
Also, I have no intention of using this nickname to hide my identity. You can Google it to find everything you need to know about me.
It's kind of like pictures of naked me. I don't want it to be public but it's not that severe either.
Also, I think there would be a better solution: Just give travelers a form with one question.
Are you a terrorist?
[yes (default)] [no]The US isn't the first country to do this and it won't be the last. It's a sadly hypocritical state of affairs, but not surprising given the way things have gone recently. I travel all over the world, and I will adamantly refuse to give any information about myself which isn't contained already on my passport. The entire point of a passport is to provide the relevant information to determine whether or not to admit me across a border. If that is not sufficient, then I suppose you'll have to deport me and deal with any PR fallout for doing so (if any).
I agree that we should protest, but it won't help that middle eastern student who wants to go to a conference or the business person who wants to meet a potential trade partner. Both need to travel for their livelihood, and depending on their circumstances it could significantly affect their life at home based on the opportunities they can find abroad.
They might not have the luxury or the courage to simply walk away.
In the US we have a way to stop this: we have to be loud enough to be heard. That doesn't involve civil disobedience (no one would listen to spoiled US citizens) but we can complain to our politicians, we can protest, we can get into the media with it. Unfortunately, it's not a majority opinion and will likely be drowned out in favor of the current wave of xenophobia sweeping US politics. If you did this coming into the US, half the country would just say they were glad you didn't come.
At this point, civil disobedience on the issue is likely irresponsible.
That might be true if it were only the US doing this, as the US provides other measures to fight this type of ridiculousness. It's not /only/ the US that's doing this sort of thing, it's just that the US is now doing it too. Other countries have been doing the same thing for years, and it is something we should fight against worldwide. I see nothing irresponsible about civil disobedience given that this is a global issue of border agents requiring travelers to unlock phones, turn over passwords and social media accounts, etc.
I am fortunate to be traveling on a US passport, so as you point out the consequences for my refusal to cooperate are probably not as dire for me as it would be for someone from some other countries. Nonetheless, standing up for your basic principles and human rights is not a fight that is comfortable. I freely acknowledge that many people who disobey at the border could have life altering consequences for doing so, but it's also not acceptable for these sorts of questions to be asked. It's none of the government's business, frankly. Every individual has to make that choice for themselves.
No. Not even China or North Korea is doing this.
Most countries do hold high some principles like constitutional values or civilian rights. Only the US does not.
> I am fortunate to be traveling on a US passport...
Why is this fortunate? You are labelled part of a dark society with no constitutional protections for civilians, military order and generally an outlaw who likes to bully all others. This is not fortunate, esp. if you want to establish trade relationships with people from civilized countries.
* Canada routinely asks for phone unlocks or laptop passwords at the border and has tried and prosecuted one of their own citizens for refusing to give up the information. [1]
* As the currently top-rated poster in this article thread points out, the Thai government asks for social media information at the border. [2]
* It's common in many countries now to ask for access to laptops or phones. This includes Australia, Canada, and the UK as well as the United States obviously.
* The UK has detained reporters [4] and seizes laptops from reporters [5] simply because they were encrypted and refused to turn over passwords. They've prosecuted and jailed 3 people for refusing adamantly to turn over their passwords, including a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who was a UK citizen. [6]
* Australian Customs requires you to declare pornography at the border, and if you don't or any pornography is discovered which violates the draconian obscenity laws there you can be detained and deported, or criminally charged. [7]
These are all "Western" nations I'm picking on here, but my point is that this isn't some special feature of the "evil US imperialist pigs" as you seem to think. This is a widespread and growing issue all over the world, including in places which most people would consider traditionally to be bastions of human rights. This doesn't even begin to discuss China, or as you mentioned North Korea, or my own experiences traveling in the Middle East and North Africa.
I'm very proud to be American, because I live in a society where despite how far we've fallen, the basic philosophy our country is founded on is one which respects and defends human rights including the right to privacy. It may require a lot of time or something disastrous happening in order to return things to a semblance of reason, but I have a lot more hope for the future of the United States than I do for nations with long histories of being violently oppressive.
Please spread your Pro-NK/China propaganda elsewhere.
[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/alain-philippon-phone-password-case-p...
[2] http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/pre/1460977...
[3] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/smartphone-laptop-searches-know...
[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23782782
[5] https://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2013_02_25/Outrageous-...
[6] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/
[7] http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/05/australian-customs-officia...
Not that I approve of this policy. Maybe it's time to kill off my social media accounts.
Wouldn't stopping posting and shutting down your accounts be a considered a negative indicator? "What changed that made you want to hide? Don't you trust the government?" It might be better to set up something that just randomly shares the latest Beyonce news or something.
The new ESTA has those fields: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Linkedin, Youtube. No Twitter, no VKontakte.
To fill out those forms is optional, not mandatory.
China does a lot more , a lot worse, that is in no way "optional" for citizens or travelers alike
I am a Chinese citizen who has NOT been required to submit my social media accounts (US ones: GitHub, twitter, Facebook or Chinese ones: weibo, renren) to the Chinese immigration in the past. And to my best knowledge foreign travellers are also not required to do so. I can also imagine the story will blow up in every news media if they start doing so.
Also, when you apply for a travel visa in China, you have to tell the government exactly where you're travelling within China (e.g. x days in Beijing, x days in Shanghai), and who you're going to stay with (names, addresses). It's designed to prevent foreign journalists from digging up dirt, especially around election years (they increase the visa fee and make a double entry visa more awkward during these times, so journalists travelling between mainland China and places like Hong Kong will find it more difficult).
#2. Yes, they ask for that but they don't check. The AU, NZ, RU, UK and US authorities also routinely ask for a travel itinerary.
You will have produced at the very least one address you'd be staying for the first night in the country you just landed on. You might have been asked further plans at border control, especially if you are not white.
> started demanding
> the request is currently
> “optional.”
There's really nothing to explain: You quoted a contradiction. You then typed the non sequitur "law of excluded middle"; I take it we were supposed to infer that the quote is false because of excluded middle. However, the quote is false because it is a contradiction, not because of excluded middle.
I can alter the quote so it is false because of excluded middle: > did not demand > the request is currently not "optional"
(Feel free to send BTC to 1L941R7SdDRGrVhgckCLABWuabQrniZTtP.)
"Our analysis suggests that you do. You've been denied entry."
"Can you show me the details?"
"I'm sorry, we're not permitted to do that. The software just gives us an approve or deny response. Please move to the red line over there."
"I am speaking at a conference in two days!"
"I'm sorry sir. The decision cannot be reviewed, but you will be permitted to try again in two years."
"Two years?!"
"Please move to the red line, sir."
I'm an American who has never left the country and probably never will apart from a planned cruise next year, and this scares the shit out of me. It's definitely a chilling effect, which I believe is the point. The US is about to become the very thing it ridicules North Korea for: isolationist, nationalist, and possibly fascist (the last based on Trump's picks for a racist filled far-right cabinet to go along with the Republican-controlled congress and his stated desire to have an all-Republican Supreme Court).
These are dark days ahead.
There's a very tiny leap to connect that to the already publicly available information, which likely already has a few thin threads connecting you.
I would suggest that you shouldn't let it intimidate you from traveling if you are lucky enough to be able to. The government will do what it will do regardless. If it assuages your fears slightly, all through the Ukraine crisis and the standoffs with turkey and with the U.S. over Syria, I traveled to and from Russia. One time I was held for extended questioning, but it was mostly corroborating my story I think.
The more paranoid side of me says this is to try to discourage people from travel and spending money outside the U.S., so the best "up yours, Uncle Sam" to me seems to be travel as much as possible. And while rogue or borish border guards do happen, most of my experiences with border guards are employees who wish they were doing absolutely anything else and just process as they're required.
It is a scary precedent happening, but nothing they're doing is new, it's just ou in the open now. So do as you would, but I'd not give them the satisfaction of me not traveling.
My fear isn't in leaving the country, it's that they might find the slightest reason to not let me back in. Granted, I'm probably not even on the radar; I'm a boring person who isn't politically active and I don't hold any extreme views (that I'm aware of). However, I usually vote Libertarian, I'm nearly 40 years old and have never had a passport, and I have never drank alcohol, smoked, or taken illegal drugs my whole life.
I just wonder if I fit the profile of some sort of Leftist-Straightedge punk that would be stopped and questioned every time I'm near the border. I've read horror stories of journalists and other heavily scrutinized types who, despite being law abiding US citizens, were detained for days or even weeks at the border in the so called "Constitution-free zones".
Then again, I'm probably worried over absolutely nothing. My wife has traveled outside the US several times in her adult life with zero issues; we mostly hold the same views, mostly vote the same way, and she abstains from alcohol/drugs/tobacco as I do.
You called the entire new cabinet of the incoming President "racist" in your first comment. Minor, yes, but would you be surprised to be painted with such a "liberal" brush? That's the scary thing about your Internet activity being monitored.
slightest reason to not let me back in
I have been flying from and to the US about once a year in the past quarter of a century. It used to be that crossing the US border was tedious, long lines and all that (especially in airports like JFK) but otherwise efficient and professional. In recent years it changed, at least in my perception, to the effect that I feel the US border is less pleasant than the Russian border. At least as a citizen of both countries I am unlikely to not be able to enter either (exit is another matter).
DHS is a mess.
It may not make sense for you if you do not often travel internationally, but as someone whose family is living abroad, it's one big timesaver.
edit: grammar.
I did wonder if someone else with Trump's own history of tweets would put them on some sort of low-level watchlist. More nukes, more retribution, etc. That's more divisive than anything I typically say!
I have traveled overseas, but I can imagine why someone in the US wouldn't be interested.
Overseas air travel outside of 1st class is a terrible experience. If one had even a touch of claustrophobia it'd be true torture. Conditions are even worse in coach on domestic flights (if you're not under average height, at least for a guy, your knees will be jammed into the seat in front of you the whole flight) though at least those are usually short(er)—but if you don't live on the nearest coast to your destination and near one of a handful of overseas hub airports you'll get a taste of that on top of the international flight. Hooray. You could fly 1st class but that's way more expensive.
Americans tend not to have much leave. The cost-per-day of a trip involving an overseas flight is much higher if you go for 9 days versus, say, 20, and a higher percentage of the trip is lost to recovering from the flight and the time change. That makes it less appealing.
All of that said, it's not that I'm not interested in traveling, it's just that it's not feasible right now, and I fear that once it becomes so, the US will be so isolationist that it will be much more difficult to enter and leave.
Here's a fun story from my experience with the US' immigration system's black box:
I'm a citizen of a country that gets ESTA. I have reapplied for that thing a few times as I travel to the US about once a year for conferences. Every time I enter the US, the border agent does a double take at my passport and asks me what my birth-date is. Turns out, in the black box of the US immigration system there's a number switched in my birth date, it's correct in the ESTA paperwork and passport. I may have messed up in my first ESTA application - my country may have transmitted the wrong data when the US requested it for the first time (my country and the US use a different date scheme, it's not MM/DD/YY).
Every single time the border agent says they put in a request to fix it (who do I even ask to have this minor thing fixed?), but I know the next border agent will ask again, the requests go nowhere.
So keep in mind that every 'minor' thing the US saves about you will be set in stone, even if that minor thing is wrong. I can only see bad things to come the more US immigration collects, they seem to have no direct way to correct false information, even internally.
I was constantly put into secondary inspection when i was on F1, and they were quoting that my visa from 4 years ago (j1) was inactive/expired. Well, of course it expired, it was a different visa.
I put in a TRIP/Redress request, got contacted by them, and provided them some paperwork (passport, visa scans etc). It took 2-3 months of waiting, but at the end it got resolved.
Now, they never send me to secondary inspection, except that first time after I got the greencard (but had to enter using EAD since the greencard was literally in my mailbox in the US).
tl;dr; if you care about it, try putting a dhs request, it may be well worth it. It saved me hours at the border.
Again, thanks!
Now you can't see the Grand Canyon, interview at Space X, see Hamilton live, or meet up with your old college pal. Sucks.
Better off refusing to provide them and risk simply being denied than actually mislead and getting a ban.
If you have a Twitter account and you provide that information (your Twitter handle), what practical difference does it make? Twitter posts are public by default. Anybody can see your Twitter posts; you don't even have to be a follower, so I don't quite see what difference it makes to tell the US government the name of your Twitter account.
Can somebody point out the error(s) in my thinking?
Plus Twitter is just one social media platform. Reddit, 4Chan, Facebook, Hacker News, and so on are also considered social media. And once this becomes mandatory you risk getting in trouble for neglecting to provide some or all. Plus once they're tied to your real life identity they can use that information indefinitely.
As an aside, I find it ironic all the people posting from anonymous accounts "why is this a big deal?" Why do you have anonymous accounts if you feel that way? Hugely hypocritical.
So, you find yourself stranded in an airport because some acquaintance you haven't talked to since high school made an anti-American comment (typoed "top" as "tpp" next to an expletive) and shared it with their facebook friends. This will clearly have a chilling effect on freedom of speech (and Trump says he wants to add some border test to make sure you have "American values" shudder). Anyway, your business trip is cancelled, so you can't do your job moving forward and have no recourse.
The fact that they are looking at this stuff for foreign travelers is already way outside historical standards for acceptable government behavior. In all likelihood, they will/are running similar tests against US citizens for things like the terrorist watch list (and they want to expand the implications of being on that list, taking away more constitutional rights without trial, or any sort of due process).
Immigration officials have already demanded that people enter their phone's passcode so that they can access its contents, I don't see why social media accounts would be any different.
Ultimately, many countries that were once zero-risk considerations for entry are becoming riskier. The world is changing, people are migrating away from war in the middle east and other places and the US governments policy is to deny people deemed risky entry. Other countries require visas to deal with this sort of thing. US citizens of Pakistani origin need to jump through hoops to get an Indian visa, for example. That's far more intrusive and harmful.
It's intrusive, but why should your virtual identity be different than your physical identity?
With good reason, after the 26/11 Mumbai attack, which had the extensive involvement of an US citizen of Pakistani origin[1].
You can find extremists in any nation/religion, and it doesn't make much sense to make life hard for _everyone else_.
Ironically, having a coarse filter that sorts people based on nationality/religion as one of the first level filters actually makes life easier for everyone else. The other option is to profile everyone and pass these profiles through an extremely fine filter - which is what the SM profile information in the article seems to be targeted for.
So, choose your poison. Do you want everyone to be intensively profiled at the cost of privacy, or do you want to be filtered using broad parameters such as religion and nationality?
As coming from somewhat chaotic part of the world to have some peaceful life, the hoops I had to jump through (visas, immigration, airport checks, constant secondary inspections etc), it really bothers me. Mind you, I am a white male with very good educational background in my own country, and in the US. Hard to imagine what it is like for some other people who may not be as lucky as I am.
Either way, as much as I dislike US immigration and so on, I cannot complain. This country provides me the opportunities that I have been working for, and I am grateful.
Seems to me that this step is probably the first of several by the US immigration to get this data and justify the move away from broad profiling (which they've taken flak for), towards the need for more intense profiling (which they're also taking flak for).
The only danger to visa-free travel is from governments. Visa-free travel is a thing that exists naturally and gets taken away. The only requirement for visa-free travel to continue is for governments to not become increasingly paranoid and authoritarian.
> It's intrusive, but why should your virtual identity be different than your physical identity?
Why should they be the same? I'm honestly kind of confused with this question. "Why shouldn't the government lock travelers in a room and torture them for information?" Because it's unpleasant and the costs outweigh the benefits.
Additionally, it's trivial to fake a social media presence or deny having one. These Orwellian measures don't actually accomplish anything productive.
That's a false equivalence.
My question is: Why does your online activity deserve special protections that activity offline does not?
If you get a DUI you'll be denied entry to Canada. Why is Orwellian to do the same on the basis of a video you post on Facebook showing you driving drunk?
should Robert Downey JR be denied entry because he destroyed new york while fighting aliens?
You have it backwards. This is far more invasion than anything they ask for offline.
Your social media profiles (particularly private ones) may contain private conversations you have with friends, colleagues, and love interests. To use an offline analogy, it is like the US government asking you to tape record private conversations you have with friends at home, and then give them the recordings to gain access to the US.
Would you support the US Government asking people to tape record private conversations? Then why is it ok when it is on a technological platform? Why is voice more protected than text? Do you feel like people going to Disneyland should give up all privacy to do so?
Said the person posting from an anonymous account. Why is this online identity not tied to your physical one? What is your name/street address/mother's maiden name/email addresses? I don't really want the answer, I just want to point out the hypocrisy.
Plus there's no evidence that these measures make the US safer, least of all because a "bad guy" will be ready with fake clean accounts. It will only catch low level naughtiness and most of that will be false positives anyway (e.g. you made a joke ten years ago that is going to be misinterpreted on purpose).
Ultimately this kind of behaviour at the US's borders only harms tourism/business. Why would I go to a US trade conference when I could go to China or Europe instead and get treated far better? Why would I start a business in the US when nobody wants to travel there?
But Americans will just sit in their little bubble and continue to trade other people's privacy for minor and impossible to prove increases in security. America has become a snivelly coward of a country.
There's a lot of outrage and knee-jerk outrage and down-voting, but nobody has meaningfully answered the question I posed. People who have committed lone-wolf terrorist attacks have voluntarily and publicly posted their intention to do so on social media. It's a thing. Why is that irrelevant to a customs official?
If you try to enter Canada as a US Citizen with a 20 year old DUI conviction, you'll be barred for entry without a visa-like process. Why is that acceptable?
Another thing it implies is that police are so shitty -- or their superiors so in cahoots with the entitities that do the murdering for that matter -- that they absolutely need to have the self-incriminating stuff someone might spout in public or they can't do their job. Have they given up on catching dangerous people who, uhm, might not do any of that, ever? If someone posts on Facebook that they're going to do a bombing, they might repeat it to the people they ask for directions there, so why fret about those of all people?
Maybe, just maybe, because it's not about catching the worst criminals in the least intrusive way possible, but using those crimes as a stepping stones to get to the innocent? Dress it up however you want it, at the end of the day this is the bottom line for over a decade. If it was about catching mass murderers someone would have arrested people like Bush and Blair by now, so that's kind of a clue to anyone seriously interested in the subject matter :P