International Travel Guide for Basecamp employees
github.com
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[1] http://www.firstpost.com/india/aadhaar-mandatory-citizens-do...
now compare it with my wife in EU - 5 year residence permit for free, of course including work permit and also because she is taking care of our child she got free healthcare insurance
Entering the US was already a large hassle, but with Trump's travel bans, rumors of phone, laptop, and social media checks, we have decided to postpone our travel plans until the political/security climate improves.
Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.
Before you say that this is overreacting, hear me out: the US belongs to US citizens. If you want this president, fine. But some of his policies, such as denying climate change and undermining journalism is going te have a large influence on the rest of us.
Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/...
The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. So, ~72% of the eligible voters can be held accountable for him becoming president.
Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president.
Definitely, it is legitimate, even if we don't like the outcome ;).
This created a problem, as the get out the vote efforts from groups like unions and others were tepid as a result, and the GOP isn't stupid and courted these voters pretty heavily. The other thing is that the Democrats over-relied on minority voters as a key base, which didn't work out for a variety of reasons.
I think strategically they missed the fact the ethnic voting requires an ethnic candidate. They also missed that certain key platform positions alienate ethnic factions of their voting base. In the old days, the Irish-Catholic political machines didn't run aging teetotaler baptists as candidates for a good reason!
Basically, Mrs. Clinton ran a campaign that was divided, disorganized and poorly administered, which crippled her ability to make appropriate decisions. Trump's opportunism, marketing savvy, and tight team made his campaign agile and tightly focused on the objective. When the campaign had internal divisions, he purged the dissenters and moved on.
And honestly, having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, is a cornerstone of the electoral college.
Something closer to that might be enough. However, I don't think that the electoral college could be changed because the parties responsible for changing it would be decreasing their electorates influence in the government which might be unpopular with said electorate.
That's great and might seem scary to some, but nothing close to that has ever happened.
This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case. The President is not all powerful either, this should be a fully democratic election. Also, the electoral college was broken when states started alotting their votes in a winner take all manner.
Maybe this is the problem then? If you have less federal government control, and more state-level control then it wouldn't be as big of a deal if Trump is elected if you're a Californian. Likewise with a democratic candidate.
And the current setup actually works pretty well. You should get diminishing returns on popular vote in a republic. Otherwise you have some areas that dominate others instead of a balance. In other words, you don't punish people/states that are not highly populated. It may not have worked out for us this time around, but it's more fair. If you want a different system, then abolish the Republic and the States.
What is it with non-US citizens in this thread? Honestly, none of you seem to have a good understanding of US politics and are being very insulting.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inters...
Or they lived in some of those insane regions where only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours, or they couldn't get a tuesday off (sane countries allot a whole weekend for voting), or they couldn't afford to get sufficient id to satisfy their state's demands. (Yes, i know, mail-in voting is a thing, but i'm sure there are good reasons to keep people from using that as well.)
There's plenty of reasons otherwise eligible voters didn't vote beyond "didn't care" and many of them are "they were prevented from doing so by institutional problems".
Really, that's how it is in US? Any semi-decent country is responsible for creating comfortable conditions for anyone to vote.
Here in Poland there were 28k voting offices for 30 million of potential voters, so there's on average little more than 1k voters per office. It is almost impossible to be waiting in line for more than 5-10 minutes, even in the most crowded offices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/long-lines-at-min...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...
Elections are mostly regulated at the state and county level, which causes a lot of disparities in registration law and polling place funding. Invariably every election during the non-stop coverage, you'll see the pictures of the long lines wrapped around blocks in cities throughout the country, but especially in Republican controlled swing states. I think it's an utter failure of our society that we can't hold elections with fair and accessible voting methods.
'Democracy in America', by Alexis de Tocqueville is still about as valid today as when it was written. In that he describes this scene where townspeople literally shoot at a farmer to keep him away from the polls. Not all that different than the gun toting individuals who show up to polling places today to 'protect' the vote.
Feel free to replace with "No true Scotsman".
They made a choice to let Trump win, just to tell Hillary (and the Democratic Party) that they didn't like her!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-no...
Not voting is a form of expression as valid as any other.
You really don't have to accept a very bad candidate and by doing so you signal future candidates the availability of "free" votes.
Now, I admit that voting NULL is a stronger message, but is it really an option?
Fixing that would be great (most sensible solutions would probably also fix our massive gerrymandering problem at the same time) but is unlikely to happen any time soon.
It's guaranteed not to happen as long as you vote for the big two parties, making sure it doesn't is one of the things that gets bipartisan support.
While I agree a win for a third party likely end with the new party entrenching itself like one of the current two, that seems like the best way to get a new party devoted to fixing this to emerge.
Absolutely according to the rules in force in the USA. Other countries have different rules, and I don't think that there is some set of unique 'best rules' for this.
UK tomorrow many of us are voting for the mayors of 'combined authorities'. The voting paper has two columns for each candidate and you get to state a first preference and a second preference - they call it the supplimentary voting system
https://www.wmcaelects.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/
It will be 'interesting' to see how this one works in an election that noone especially wanted and that traditionally has a very low turnout - but at least we are trying different approaches.
Mr Street said it was the start of a "new, urban Conservative agenda".
Overall, 26% of eligible voters chose a candidate with most people staying away from the polling stations on Thursday." [1]
So, the man has a majority of less than 2% in an election where just a tad over one quarter of those eligible actually voted. He is in charge of a unitary authority where most of the constituent authorities have Labour administrations.
What kind of mandate do you think this chap has?
Those are the rules for American democracy, which has many flaws, an inherent two party system being one of the major ones.
I have always wondered how hard it would be to switch to direct voting rather as opposed to the system with an electoral college. Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment. If so, was there ever a serious attempt to change this system?
The system was designed to avoid the concentration of power you desire.
And saying the US system "was designed to avoid the concentration of power" sounds like a sad joke from an European perspective (First-past-post-system, extreme presidential powers etc.)
They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years. Unfortunately, the code review team didn't remove the changes and tacked on their own during the process.
They started way sooner than that, the first major one was the Louisiana Purchase. Basically non-Washington presidents have been trying to expand their power.
When the constitution was first signed if votes had been distributed by population the Southern states would have essentially never had a voice, which was a non-starter for them. Considering that these states were also the economic power houses of the US, not including them was also a non-starter. The electoral college coupled with the 3/5ths compromise was the eventual solution to this problem.
In the end, the idea that low population area have more impact-per-voter comes from the need to keep people united and making sure that high population areas don't completely out vote the needs of the other areas. The obvious alternative is independence, so instead of one united states you would have several smaller countries based on common needs.
I like NZ's MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system, but there are others that work too. Anything that results in fewer, bigger districts electing multiple representatives should break the power of gerrymandering. And Proportional representation makes 3rd parties viable, which gives you more than a single forced political axis, and just might lift the level political discourse above the current 'My team, right or wrong'
The constitution simply says that each state gets to appoint its electors as it sees fit.
Wit that in mind, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [0] commits states that adopt it to appointing their electors in line with the national popular vote: e.g., in the 2016 election, had it been in force, every state that had adopted it would have chosen electors for Hillary, regardless of how the vote in that state fell.
So far, it has been adopted in principle by 10 states and the District of Columbia. However, it doesn't come into force until adopted by enough states to achieve an absolute majority in the electoral college; currently, it's 105 votes shy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
1.) The constitution can be changed 2.) The thing the changes the constitution is an amendment.
You're prescribing a lot of "this is how the US political system should work" without really (it seems) understanding it.
Speculation nonetheless though.
And vice versa on both counts for red states.
The who-voted-for-whom discussion in one of adjacent subthreads just sounds like airing dirty laundry in front of everybody - nobody cares, it just makes you look bad.
The gerrymandered system with even more party control is not the system that has been in place for anywhere near that amount of that time.
The parties in place dont have that kind of history either.
Our voting laws are different, even non-white men can vote now! (though they are disenfranchised as much as possible.)
Basically, the system is constantly in flux, ad yes, we get to complain about it all we want and change it (again.)
There are maybe two states that have large electoral college districts that could be impacted by it, but they are irrelevant in the larger picture.
But changing it requires changing the Constitution, which requires a supermajority of state legislatures—and the electoral college shifts power from citizens and the federal government to states.
This hack lowers the barrier, but not by enough, at least yet.
I can't really imagine someone in US butting any of brands you mentioned, Seat is pretty bad deal even in Europe
Admittedly, we haven't looked much at Korean models. That's mostly because my wife (I don't have a driver's license) had no experience and consequently no opinion about them.
At any rate, we ended up buying a Skoda ;). And I see Porsches here nearly every day :p.
That is demonstrably and absolutely false.
Most of this stuff is a reaction to that, and it still lingers.
As for Canadians in Trump era: 'Refusals of Canadians at American land crossings dropped 8.5 per cent between October and the end of February compared with the same five-month period a year earlier, according to U.S. government statistics. The total number of Canadian travellers denied entry also dropped: 6,875 out of 12,991,027 were refused entry, a refusal rate of 0.05 per cent. Between October 2015 and February 2016, 7,619 out of 13,173,100 Canadian travellers were denied entry to the U.S., a refusal rate of 0.06 per cent.'
http://www.macleans.ca/news/number-of-canadians-turned-away-...
Also, surprise! European nations often sell their municipal bonds (to fund local projects) to American companies. Using Ford specifically as an example, I know someone who works for a local municipality in Finland and travels to Detroit every so often to sell their muni bonds to the US auto companies.
TL;DR the global flow of capital is absurdly interconnected. Trying to "hurt" a nation by not buying their goods can just as easily hurt your own country.
Car manufacturing is also a rather tough business to be in today - definitely not the money hiding type, but rather the "we build a factory in <insert industrial town with unemployment here> if you give some sort of tax break for a couple of years".
If you were happy to visit Obama's US, you will hardly find any difference in Trump's US.
I think there can also be a big shift in who is given a visa, without there being much visibility. Time will tell. That's not part of the entry procedure but is part of border policy more generally.
Everyone has a right to vote with their euros of course, but I am curious if a single traveler has avoided France because of their policies in French Guyana, the Magreb or Sub-Saharan Africa or avoided China, Turkey or most Middle East countries because of human rights records? How about avoiding Italy or Greece because of widespread corruption or the U.K. because of the Brexit vote.
Avoiding travel because of political disagreements would mean that people would only visit places that are exactly like they want. It's geopolitical inbreeding.
Just a point of fact: Trump isn't denying climate change, he's skeptical of the impact from human activity.
What an exciting new world we live in, in which, before we do any kind of business or trade with a company which has a presence in a foreign country, we must consider all of the policies of that country's current, democratically elected leader--and if we don't agree with them, we refuse to do any business with that company, thereby attempting to punish the citizens of that country for exercising their right to democratic self-rule. How dare they have a different opinion. We'll buy local instead. That'll teach 'em to disagree with us.
What a sad state of affairs our world will be in if we all stop doing business with those who don't agree with us on everything. We might as well organize ourselves into separate entities and only do business within them. That would be...something like nations, without trade, no? But then here we are trying to force these other nations to do what we want, thereby erasing the distinctions between them.
And that's the real goal here, isn't it? The world becomes smaller every day.
Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?
It's very interesting that you would compare it to voting, because that means we're talking about citizens of one country "voting" for the leader of another country--which would mean interfering with another country's elections. Are you sure you want to stick with that analogy? :)
This is in contrast with the traditional definition of "voting with your wallet," which refers to refusing to do business with companies you don't like.
> How is this a bad thing?
In a nutshell, it's bad because it further contributes to polarization and division. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, leading to ever more "us vs. them" thinking. Eventually it's what leads to wars. Isn't it fairly basic political theory that nations which are economically interdependent are less likely to go to war with each other? If we can't do business with anyone who has different political opinions than we do, that's a recipe for...well, war.
> Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?
You're comparing apples to oranges. This is not a question of a company mistreating its workers.
By the same token, I could ask you why you would punish the innocent workers who didn't vote for the candidate you dislike. By refusing to do business with them, you are hurting them, and it's not their fault the candidate got elected. Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, this is likely to drive them away, toward your political opponents, who can tell them, "See how nasty the other side is? They won't even trade with us anymore because they disagree with how we run our own country!"
That attitude is essentially a large part of why Trump got elected: the Democrats' constant condescension toward a large swath of the population alienated them. If you mistreat people, they aren't going to thank you for it, they're going to hate you for it.
Or, colloquially, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Sadly, as a foreigner, what I purchase is the most effective way to be heard. Besides, how successful is a business that blames potential customers for not buying their products? "We're gonna bomb them until they buy our cars dammit!"
I also disagree with you about why Trump was elected. I hear this condescension argument all the time but I think it's total BS. I suspect it's more about jobless (white) men and is a much harder (and real) problem to solve than simply being polite.
Corporate power is indeed an issue, but I feel like you are changing the subject here.
> Sadly, as a foreigner, what I purchase is the most effective way to be heard.
I don't think your theory is logically coherent here. If you desire to punish the corporations which you say have captured the U.S., then which candidate was elected President is irrelevant. More than that, although Trump is an entrepreneur and far wealthier than Clinton, he is also far more independent than Clinton, far less in the pocket of the mega corporations. On this concern you should favor Trump over Clinton.
> Besides, how successful is a business that blames potential customers for not buying their products? "We're gonna bomb them until they buy our cars dammit!"
Sorry, I don't understand your point here.
> I also disagree with you about why Trump was elected. I hear this condescension argument all the time but I think it's total BS. I suspect it's more about jobless (white) men and is a much harder (and real) problem to solve than simply being polite.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but as a non-foreigner, I think you are completely wrong. In fact, your "jobless (white) men" line is merely repeating the leftist media's racist, sexist propaganda. Note that it is, by definition, racist and sexist. It's inherently condescending, but here you are protesting that condescension had nothing to do with it.
It's disappointing that you seem to be uncritically accepting this belief. It doesn't even cohere with the data: Trump received many votes from non-whites, non-males, and the employed. The votes were split primarily along geographic lines! But don't let that stop you from blaming angry old white men for all the problems in the world. Obviously, if it weren't for them, everything would be great...
That is the kind of attitude that drives people apart, creates hostility, and eventually leads to war. In what world is that a good idea?
Can you imagine Americans refusing to buy BMWs because they don't like Angela Merkel?
And this is the fucking US here, it's not a backwater country the size of a town. When the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold.
People are right to pressure others as long as it's done on legal terms.
Climate Change is mostly about politics, just like the War on Poverty and War on Drugs. Yes it's real, just like people have real problems with poverty and drugs, but people starve and suffer in 2017 because of greed, which leads to politics, not because of resources. Climate Change will likely worsen the resource situation, but it's not actually the real problem with humanity. We need to get over our little egos and figure out how to get off this earth and keep exploring.
Strange, for someone who received Nobel Peace Prize. To be fair, he received it just for being black, nothing else (it was just after he won his first term, he hadn't even had time to accomplish anything of significance).
These were regular European citizens. Let's just say conferences will be help in Europe or Canada in the future...
These stories describe sexual assault graphically (to various degrees).
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110906/11065015824/tsa-a...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/woman-sues-borde...
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/201...
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/21/cbp-awards-us-citize...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cnns-angela-rye-was-subj...
Remember, he (or rather his GF) claimed the Houston TSA were routinely performing prison type cavity searches, i.e., strip, squat (and cough).
i don't see why people have problem with this, what would be point randomly search old (white) retired woman, what risk she present? pretty much same goes for Eastern Asians, etc.
if you have biggest odds finding terrorist between dark skinned Muslims, then you will search them the most, nothing random or racist about that, it's like saying i won't take umbrella outside when there is 90% chance of rain because there is 10%chance it will be sunny
http://time.com/3934980/right-wing-extremists-white-terroris...
https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/wha...
How would it look if we factored in the relative population?
> B-but you are more likely to be killed by white trucker driver falling asleep than a jihadist truck hijacker.
Misleading much?
In reality the KKK has killed more people than all jihadists combined. That is one group.
(bottom of the page)
So not quite 2x.
> Only in the past two years have there been more jihadist deaths. > In reality the KKK has killed more people than all jihadists combined. That is one group.
I am not familiar with the history of the KKK, but are they still a threat?
If you consider the recent incidents: Paris (how many times!?), Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Nice, do you really believe Right Wing groups poses a greater threat?
It is almost non existent.
While it's certainly unfair for a large innocent group, it still avoids extensive checks for the rest.
I've come to dislike flying for the humiliating and demeaning security theater I have to go through for it. No way I would risk going through that in the U.S., where it's presumably worse and where I'm not a citizen.
I can barely convince myself to go to family weddings if I have to pass through Schiphol for them. At least with Schiphol I don't have the risk of being detained (or marked a terrorist for having encrypted data/voicing anti-authoritarian opinions/having contact with Muslims, "no rights applicable"), and if I were anyway I could defend myself well as I'm a somewhat savvy citizen.
I already go through great lengths to fly via small German airports, where the security measurers aren't dehumanizing. Perhaps I'll visit the U.S. by boat sometime.
http://www.shannonairport.ie/gns/passengers/prepare/us-precl...
[1]: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/united-s...
In any case they're currently working out an agreement with Canada such that US agents on Canadian soil can still detain you in the same way they can in the US:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pre-clearance-border-canada-...
I'm sure they'll try to force the same agreement on other "trading partners."
Result for me: I will not travel to U.S. except for work. And when I do I will _only_ carry work devices and accounts. My employer can and will defend itself quit well.
I've been to Europe twice this past year and I don't think it's any different.
In Italy there was military everywhere in Rome and Florence. At every monument and Big site there were military with guns looking at everyone. Sometimes stopping people.
I've never been patted down and searched as bad as I was in Frankfurt. Security and questioning was on par with US customs.
Don't even get me started on Serbia.
I'm sure I'd be fine: I've been fine a dozen times before. That was before they decided that it was OK to demand passwords and so on. Maybe now it would be worse. Or maybe my skin colour lets me off the hook.
Regardless, I'd rather just not waste jet fuel on flying to a place that treats anyone this way.
Your phone/tablet/laptop is, for better or worse, a gateway to your entire life. It contains your photos, bank account credentials, messages between friends, messages between you and your wife, photos between you and your wife…
Random border thugs absolutely should not have the right to rummage through it in another room.
There are plenty of ways to do meetings remotely. There are plenty of places in the world you can travel to for work meetups that aren't the US.
Just don't travel there.
But yes, I just traveled from Shanghai back to my home in the US. The queues in China were much, much shorter than those in the American airports. PVG posted a "25 minutes or less" target for all travellers to get through security and immigration. And they hit it, even at peak travel times with huge volumes of people. At American airports if you arrive less than an hour before boarding they might not allow you in until you rebook on a later flight.
You could see it in the architecture of their systems: The American facilities have huge snaking queues designed for as much capacity as possible, which lead to obvious bottlenecks. And when you arrive at the front of the line, a gruff immigration officer in tactical gear doesn't look at the line except to say "No line jumping!" while they're taking 10 minutes on one individual. In China, there's just not enough distance in the line to allow a long delay to form, there's no single point bottlenecks to slow down the system, and helpful people direct you to the shortest lines.
https://nl.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/amsterdam/access...
*It used to be no electronics, but now you are apparently allowed to bring a mobile phone provided you turn off Bluetooth.
Contrast with for instance the Germany and France consulates a few blocks over (they're in a single building), where as far as I know no such rule exists.
Anyway yeah, I had to collect my luggage and they then opened it up and rummaged through it. Asked why I wasn't taking a video game console despite ostensibly going to a video game convention. My response was of course that this would be quite impractical.
They then demanded access to my phone and read through my messages. They couldn't find anything other than my friend asking when my flight would arrive and a photo of him holding up a bottle of vodka (he was under 21). I think they just gave up at that point and let me through.
Fortunately I narrowly managed to make it to my connecting flight but it was such a stupid thing to have to go through.
Never been asked to show electronics. Never been to a special room. Most of the time they ask one or two questions, take my fingerprints, and welcome me to the country.
Now that my passport has a US address in it, even though I'm technically not a resident, they politely say "Welcome Back".
Last time I entered was on Monday. The lady was extremely polite, even smalltalked a bit while the computer was giving her trouble because my visa is in an old passport and my new passport is 7 days old. Guess she had to sync up the system.
Time from entering the queue to being in the country was 24 minutes. I ran a stopwatch.
That said, my visa process did involve checking my social accounts and internet activity because I explicitly listed it as an argument for why I qualify for an O-1.
Anecdata, I know. But that's my experience. I'm white and from eastern-ish europe.
No random searches here either, though, but I haven't been to the US for at least a year.
The time when I said "Oh just coming back from vacation" before the lady saw my visa ... well, she was much less nice about it.
A difference between 24 minutes and 1 hour is only slightly more than 2x, so it's not extremely significant in the grand scheme of things. Security lines on domestic flights can last longer than 24 minutes.
The first time was more difficult, because I said something (technically correct) about my documents that confused her (understandably) for a while, so she had to lookup some extra stuff. She also asked my wife a lot of questions, because she was under the (wrong) impression that her school was blacklisted. That was seriously incompetent IMO, but she apologized after her supervisor (or some other superior) explained things to her. She also marked that we needed to go through customs, which the first time I've had to do that in almost 10 entries. I chalked this as a negative experience because of the customs thing, we felt she did that just to inconvenience us in some way. I cannot link this in anyway to President Trump, however.
Both times, we were one of the first people to be off the plane's economy section, but the wait before we got to the counter was 1+ hour. SFO is ridiculous.
My worst experience came when entering during President Obama's tenure (but nothing to do with his policy) in 2016. The agent went through my entire 9-year old passport, asked me why I had visited country X in 20YY, why I lied to my visa officer back when I got a F1, etc (that I'd go back home after studies. I did not lie, I happened to get a job and the employer happened to want to apply for a H1. I did not even know back then that there was a real or fake "shortage" in tech workers).
Hopefully more anecdata helps. If you're on the fence about visiting the US as a tourist I hope you end up deciding to come!
I understand that it was not decided, that it's just a proposal (a terrible, stupid, terrible proposal — but just a proposal).
[ask] for someone to remove you from the Basecamp team for 1Password so you no longer have access to Basecamp logins and passwords.
Maybe we should temporarily suspend our employee's accounts too when they travel to the US.
i find it odd, i can understand it for my father that when some of his agricultural company partners has training, people from neighboring countries must travel there for hours to stay there for few hours and go back, but IT company in 2017?
reminds me of Huawei which is still organizing teleconferences (!) for trainings, because why not let people call across half planet in horrible quality instead of providing cheap full HD video stream work live chat, it's not like there are hundreds of us, max 100 people present
Meanwhile working for enterprise consulting companies, all of which have offshore teams, means remote work is a daily activity.
Funny enough some customers are exactly those companies that forbid home office to their own employees.
As I mentioned on my comment, instead of allowing their own employees to do remote work, they outsource the work to consulting companies that actually do support working remotely.
A) - Full HD video conferencing for ~ 100 people is not cheap. At all. Bandwidth costs alone would be huge. B) - For teams that work together remotely, it is very important for them to meet in person from time to time. Communication issues drop when you can put a face and personality to a name on IRC / email. (and no, this is not achieved via video calls)
as for putting face to name,I can't hardly imagine how this could be positive for concentration and work, I am more likely going to be neural and more efficient if I treat other party as robot than someone with face, because then you lose focus on work
Communication is still a lot better face to face, but video conferencing is getting a lot better (and I'm betting on that with my own startup attempt :) ).
I'd definitely schedule periodic face to face meetings for remote teams, but that doesn't mean remote cannot work.
Because there is still merit to sitting face to face with people sometimes. Not all the time, sure, but sometimes. Also, not everyone works the same as everyone else, and sometimes people need to interact differently. I work remote primarily, but still get value out of my onsite times, just a different value than when I'm sitting at home working on a computer. Even in IT, there is value in sitting with someone and looking them in the eye for a few minutes, or holding two markers to a whiteboard.
If you need to build in flexibility to work remote, add a one-time password system that has to be manually provide by a on-site staff. That way the decision to be compelled to provide authentication will rest on people not being interrogated in an airport.
Also, US is just an example here (because many conferences are held in the US), but also there are stories from the UK, for instance. From my point of view, the problem is that with social networks it is extremely easy to get access to your whole life – it is already pretty easy to identify person on the facebook, for instance (right now there is no way to prove that it is _exactly_ you, but I am pretty sure they will be soon). So, with restrictions on such monopoly media (and I've heard it is already harder to register on the Facebook), it is very easy to end up in a situation where we will get "human score" (similar to credit score, but in the digital world), which will be used in such situation.
And even the bigger problem is that it might be needed for a work, for a loan application, etc, so you wouldn't be able to do all this without it (or even "to apply for a visa your score should be higher than 3.0". My predictions are that governments will try to work more closely with popular platforms trying to emerge such (there were few stories than people were detained because of tweets) metrics, and to broad access not only from your phone, but from their device, just your user profile.
I was joined with my dad who recently retired and never has left the continent - his first long haul flight and first time to the US.
I feared and prepared for the worst and I even was debating about leaving my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air at home to avoid any searches.
It turned out to become the smoothest immigration ever: We stood at the curb waiting for the car rental bus within 45 minutes after we stepped out of the plane.
Short lines, smoothly working self-service kiosks, a friendly immigration officer, not one single intimidating or aggressive question.
Way to go!
I've never seen this one in the U.S. or anywhere else.
I think they are trained to be neutral or even aloof.
worst experiences were probably Austrian Nazi guys investigating repeatedly my wife's passport, while at other border with Hungary they let freely roam across Europe thousands of illegal immigrants
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/04/2...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/10/mu...
I'm used to being randomly selected for an additional search every time in the UK premiere flight. My colleague (another British Muslim) was also selected which we found quite amusing.
On the other side it wasn't bad, just answered truthfully, only snag was my colleague who accidentally had both a 10 year business visa and an ESTA at the same time who then had to go down to immigration to have it removed.
After immigration I was asked to speak to a customs officer and that was it, I continued on my journey.
Little more painful but not overly.
Personally I think this guide is a little extreme and I'm sure in the worst case it probably does apply.
The US targeting companies with large amounts of data, obtaining passwords to access all of Basecamp's data, either for industrial espionage or counter-terrorism.
That said, that's still too high a risk for business data.
A company composed of a lot of remote workers outside US that definitely goes out of their way to have their employees come into the US for their business meetings is a keeper.
On a side note, I am a bit confused on a questionnaire asked at the Customs:
Here to do work? Nope! Here on business, meeting with Basecamp.
Wouldn't this be under the discretion of the customs officer to determine whether business meeting qualifies as work? I suppose that being on a business meeting with your company still predisposes the fact that you are technically still paid on those days that you are meeting with your company?
Presumably Basecamp has set up business entities abroad.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2272/about-differ...
Internal business meetings did not require a work visa, while meetings with one of our clients did.
- Getting a visa was a painless process. I just applied and I got a business visa.
- Entering the States required me to show my passport. Nothing else. Nobody asked me why I was going there, nobody asked me to show my phone or laptop (I had both). There was no separation, pat downs etc.
I say this not because I think we should screen Chechens more thoroughly now, but because your original appeal to profiling at the border is provably ineffective and, frankly, ignorant.
The problem here is a possibility. The mere necessity to think about it, to possibly sweat in the line, to think about what have I erased or not, makes it bad. First of all, you are not treated with a dignity. Second of all, without precautions, you easily can be embarrassed (many people don't care and keep really private info, like messages or photos on their phone). And the last – there is a small, but a possibility that you'll fuck up a little, and you will be detained. It is a small chance, but it presents, and it is not a pleasant thought.
You know that thought experiment where you have scientists debating global warming, but to make it clear just how much consensus there is, instead of having 1 scientist against and 1 pro, you have 1 against and a whole crowd pro?
I run this thought experiment every time I enter the states. I can usually see around me many thousands of people in the airport, getting along just fine. I can imagine the many tens of thousands who go through those airports every day, and the probably millions all across the country who go through the airports without trouble.
These millions are what you should be stacking up against the dozens of anecdotes you get on the web.
(For what it's worth, I have had very easy experiences with immigration, with mostly people being very nice to me, but a few times someone was rude/mean to me. Nothing more than that.)
I know, chances are small, and I'll likely avoid all of this stuff, but I hate such unfair communication, and therefore I don't even want to try it. For me it is important, and I wouldn't trade my confidence even for a small chance.
I don't believe anyone is saying every single person coming into the US will get searched. We _know_ they are not. But searches _do_ happen and _are_ legal, and that alone justifies preparing for the eventuality.
My employer has always had rules about how to take care of data on your devices. They tell you to enable encryption and to never leave your company laptop alone and stuff like that. The vast majority of employees will never have their devices stolen, but the fact that some might is enough justification to make sure everyone does their best to protect their data. It's the same thing.
That you always had very easy experiences with immigration _is_ the anecdote here, because it does nothing to change the fact that _some_ people will get their devices searched (and data potentially copied) by Immigration agents.
Do border security understand how password managers work, or would I have to tell them how to access my own data?
Showerthought: If I delete my password manager from my phone, maybe the password manager should perform geolocation and detect if the application is trying to be installed at an airport (possibly indicating installation against my will). That's a very nuanced situation.
[0]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/evil_maid_att...
1. Lying to them falls under "fraudulent access to the USA" and the penalty is permanent exclusion, no Visa will help you, you have no right to appeal.
2. You cannot discuss or appeal anything, there isn't a discussion that you are a part of in which you get to explain your side or proffer an excuse... your actions already did your talking.
Don't lie to border control, don't give BS excuses. Either you're willing to give them access or you shouldn't have boarded the plane. "I can't because I don't remember" is not a right to enter the USA... you do not have that right, the right is granted by them.
*excluding US citizens, who are also affected by these practices.
It isn't about you individually, it's about big numbers, statistics. It's just an additional tool in their arsenal. Similar to why doctors perform standard exams even when you come in and complain about something where that particular exam seems ridiculously wrong. The procedures are not invented new each time for every person, they are based on what works "statistically". On that level they found that in (some low) x percent of cases having such a signature helps, so they include that question. And occasionally they even catch someone gullible to, or who can't manage their emotions, but that's just an additional bonus and not even the main reason for the question(s).
Sure they didn't seem very friendly but it wasn't a big of a hassle. I didn't bring my laptop though because I don't want it searched.
It seems like you run on luck mostly. You only need to give up passwords and such if you are unlucky.
Very comforting, isn't it? Especially when this is said about a legal process.
First I thought I would bring my computer with pirated movies on it but when I read up online I decided not to bring a computer at all.
People in the thread seems to think I am defending the process which I am not. I just state that people seem to hype the evilness of the border control.
I also prefer travel without much electronics, since it's easy to get it lost or stolen. But it's not always an option - if you're traveling for business, you have to take the computer, and also everybody has a smartphone these days.
> I just state that people seem to hype the evilness of the border control.
Maybe to you it seems like a hype. But I was born in totalitarian country, and while it was pretty benign for ordinary people (I was a child), it's not something that I want to live through regardless.
Asking about trip details or looking if I don't have weapons and so on is fine for a visit.
But looking at my social media accounts (although I have almost none) and data on my devices - these are totalitarian practices. I understand that you don't feel that way, because you perhaps never experienced totality, but please you should also understand that many people feel differently (like the guy with the top comment).
Trust me, I am against searching peoples computers and private lives as much as anyone but I still think it's a bit blown out of proportion.
1. Don't you think that to decide not to take electronic devices in 21st century for travel is a reaction that is out of proportions? It's pretty drastic measure, if you ask me.
2. How are the foreigners to change U.S. government's mind, if not by "blowing it out of proportions"? What other recourse is there?
Maybe for U.S. citizens, and especially those that have to do with the tourism or international business or academia, yeah, it sucks that it's "blown out of proportions". But see - they are the citizens, they can pressure their government to take strong stance on the issue and forbid these practices as totalitarian (and obviously useless - no combination of bits on my phone or computer is by itself going to harm anyone).
I'd say the opposition is fuelled by (a) an aversion to be in a situation where you have basically no rights, as opposed to the uniformed goons on the other side, (b) the fear that such policies are used to target others, such as journalists, thus having an impact on me even without being applied to me, and (c) solidarity with people who may be at a higher risk for reasons such as their ethnicity, political opinion etc.
There are other ways these policies have a chilling effect without being applied wholesale. I have, on previous flights, chosen the halal food option just for kicks (and gotten bewildered looks when I chose a red wine for dinner). I wouldn't do so flying to the US these days. That may seem inconsequential, but I can easily see someone not sharing that anti-war article on Twitter these days, at which point the possible consequences have become quite real.
How on earth does that make it OK?
Hence the need for documents such as this guide, because companies don't want to risk sensitive business information to luck.
Why would I value my personal data any less than my work data?
So what this rally means is: "Don't Travel With Any Data".
And knowing that they only need to plug an infected USB device into your PC/phone/tablet to infect the latter irrevocably, the situation can now be summed up as:
"Don't Travel With Any Data Or Any Hardware".
Now what does that say about the sate of a country?
Telling people to work travel and then telling them to not bring work data seems like you should have told them not to travel at all?
If you're traveling for work, and your company can't guarantee your safe and reasonably comfortable travel to that destination in a work capacity -- they should recommend you not go.
I will rather have terrorist occasionally killing few people (still nothing compared to drunken weekend drivers or cancer, but those are apparently not worth attention) than sacrificing my privacy.
EDIT: at least until after this presidency.
It's always been a problem. It's just that now main stream media focus more on these issues to force the anti-trump agenda. (I'm not a huge fan of Trump btw.)
This madness didn't begin with him and it won't end with him either.
Don't get me wrong, Trump is an utter catastrophe. But this was coming either way.
The writing was on the wall after Apple vs the FBI showdown in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting.
The intelligence apparatus will not tolerate lack of access.
It didn't happen. Both went 180 degree immediately after the election.
For the reality check: The big airports in the South and North are well known as extremely racist and strict with their "work vs business" checks for decades. What's new are the unconstitutional passport rules from the outgoing Obama administration. The constitution doesn't apply at the border and not to foreigners.
Hence all the new travel warnings in this year.
I have been to the US multiple times with a B1-Business Visa and didn't do any of this stuff. I just showed up and the customs officer asked a bunch of questions about my purpose of visit and that's about it. I didn't need any invitation letter or hotel bookings, etc.
Hotel bookings and a LOT of other documentation is required when applying for a tourist / business visa for Europe or UK, but traveling to the US has always been fairly straightforward (except that you need to make two visits the US embassy or consulate twice for the visa formalities).
At all times, I had my company laptop with all the data + source code.
Is this something that has recently begun?
It's not paranoia. Welcome to 2017.
Edit: It's not like they're scanning every cell phone that enters the country... but they reserve the right to.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-custom...
https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs-bord...
If it's what it sounds like, the CBP agent unlocking and inspecting the phone may have been breaking the law themselves.
Examples:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/11/30...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/a-nas...
The posturing and denial may continue for now but it is only a matter of time before the edifice of pretension falls on the weight of its own contradictions.
The soft power and moral credibility is gone. No one can take any US position on human rights seriously. What's left is force and brazen hypocrisy as we become more brazen building totalitarian infrastructure, go about destroying entire countries and putting millions of lives in disarray to pursue 'strategic objectives' or to put it simply make more money.
Internally it seems citizens don't care about privacy, spying, human rights or the destruction of other countries as long as the money is flowing. It keeps on becoming more and more egregious as more boundaries are crossed yet there is no citizen response. If there is a value system its certainly not visible. The government can do whatever it wants.
In the end we seem to have succeeded in building a commercial hub, not a country. Humanity and all that makes it wonderful beyond the practicality of making money will rest elsewhere.
Edit: s/TSA/CBP.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...
or raw content here: https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_content
If that is advice you have to give to your employees, either stop working for the US army in war zones or hold meetings in a free country.
Seriously.
We applied online for the visa thing. It took under 5 minutes. Then at the airport we queued up at immigration for around 10 minutes. We showed our passport and answered one question about purpose of visit, and they waved us though.
This is the experience of 99.9% of those who visit.
Seems unlikely. The two times I visited the US last year the immigration queue at JFK was a multi-hour wait.
i find it absolutely reasonable to avoid traveling to a place when there's an even bigger chance of being treated like garbage.
I applied for (and was granted) an U.S. visitor (B-1) visa last month, it was very expensive, I had to fill out a form that took significantly more than 5 minutes (several hours because I had to contact family members for details), and I had to schedule an in-person interview where they (very politely) cross checked most of what I wrote in the visa form, and were very detailed in the questions.
That's why the article says "If your country does not participate in the Visa Waiver Program or you are not eligible for an ESTA, you'll need to apply for a B-1 business visitor visa… the long way."
"We'll work with you through this process. Start early, as soon as we have dates for a meetup or conference. Visa appointments and processing can take weeks to months."
That directly contradicts your claim (and matches my experience).
I still haven't flown to the U.S., but those in my family who have, experienced multi-hour delays (my mother lost her flight in Boston only last month due to 2 hours in the immigration queue), most of my family members have been set aside for in-depth questioning at least once, etc.
I do know some Europeans have a very different experience (those under ESTA), but I'm not certain your saying "the experience of 99.9% of those who visit" is correct.
You might notice that none of the highly populated countries (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico) are in this list:
Border Guard was very angry at me for some reason, very cold, didn't smile. Quite curt with his responses. Which was strange because he was laughing and joking with the couple before me in the queue.
He took particular umbrage with the fact that I'd ticked "Business" on my customs form, as I wasn't sure what else to tick - I was attending the conference on behalf of my employer who had paid for my trip.
>Here to do work? Nope! Here on business, meeting with Basecamp
I never understood this. What's the difference? In both instances, money is being earned.
Basically, I'm required to not work on anything not related to whatever the purpose of my visit is. For example, if I have a meeting with Team A then I'm not legally allowed to work on anything unrelated to meeting with Team A.
I'm on a business trip to meet with Team A. I'm not in Canada to do my normal work.
(I genuinely, honestly don't)
I found this very mean. Hopefully it changed in a positive way.
SIP is a instant-response team.
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/orgchart.md...
This is the first time in my life I am embarrassed to be an American.
By default iphones and macs are encrypted when you completely power them down, so the right way (assuming you have a good password) is to shut down your computers at the airport and only turn them back on when you've passed the border.
Nothing interesting here tech-wise, effectively just a checklist of files to manually delete or encrypt. I'm not a lawyer, but to me this seems like just plugging holes until someone puts up the money and time to rule the whole thing unconstitutional.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/what-could-happe...
So powering off your device, putting out the battery or encrypting it is all forbidden.