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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> Who is having trouble getting a Visa exactly? Just curious, trying to separate fact from hysteria

Anyone, even US citizens, who does not want ICE/CBP snooping on his/her IT equipment, cellphones or social media accounts.

Certainly I (born German/Croatian, living in Germany) might be able to land myself a nice shiny job in the US IT industry but no way I'm ever crossing your border as long as such outrageous privacy violations are legal.

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That's a good point, you should definitely stay out of the US. ...For privacy

Are these practices unusual?

Randomly grabbing people at border entry and dumping their whole device contents? Or demanding their Facebook passwords? Yes, this is unusual.

But, I have to admit, Germany is planning something similar in even more sinister form: our government plans to buy forensic imagers for all immigration officers... to mirror and scan phones of applying refugees, to determine if they really come from where they claim. Of course, you won't get much resistance from refugees, much less from the general public... but who knows, in two years this "test balloon" can easily be extended to every immigrant.

If you are making your choice of employment based on outrage stories in the media, you are making a big mistake. Of course, some of the stories we read are outrageous. But you should also take into account that literally millions of people cross the border of the US every year (US accepts a million a year only as immigrants, and vastly more as visitors), and vast majority of them have no trouble beyond maybe being asked a couple of questions. Minority of them do have problems, and these problems are a shame, and need to be fixed. But denying yourself opportunities out of fear of a tiny probability you may be unlucky to experience those problems is like never living one's home because accidents happen outside.

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