New US visa requires applicants for social media handles from the last 5 years | Hacker News Reader

New US visa requires applicants for social media handles from the last 5 years

thehill.com

71 pointsesistgut57 comments

Previous discussion of Reuters story linked from this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14465534 (84 points, 50 comments)

>The new questions are reportedly voluntary, but the form says that failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of an individual visa application.

What I suspect will happen is that if you are European with typical European name, probably no delay if you don't report. If you are from a Muslim country, visa is denied.

This kind of thing is typical for autocratic governments. You make lots of rules and regulations that are typically not enforced. Their sole purpose is to cause difficulties for people rulers don't like. "We just follow the regulations."

If you are European you're probably part of the visa waiver program anyway.

I am an European, and am not part of the program (I have a passport issued by Polish government.)

You still have to apply for visa waiver tho through ESTA so they can still deny you.

It is on the non-visa ESTA (the visa you have when you are pretending you don't have a visa).

As someone who has to travel to the USA for business I welcome all this activity - it is so much more enjoyable to have the seat next to you empty when you fly. I do wonder how long the airlines can continue to fly on half load.

Does this affect the process for all visas? Including tourism?

Yes. It's part of ESTA. I did not fill my social media accounts in - because I don't have any - when made an application, and to my surprise it was approved. Still a question of whether I get to enter the US next week, though.

It's part of ESTA.

Travelers from many countries require a visa to visit the United States for any purpose.

Travelers from 38 countries can visit the United States for a variety of purposes (including tourism and business) without a visa, under the Visa Waiver Program.

ESTA -- Electronic System for Travel Authorization -- is part of the Visa Waiver Program, and is an online form to help determine eligibility for visa-free travel. Using ESTA to determine eligibility in advance is required for arrival by air or sea.

The linked article is concerned with visa applications. Travelers using ESTA/Visa Waiver Program are not applying for visas. So what is described in the linked article is not something that applies to ESTA, and ESTA questionnaires are not what are being described here. While ESTA may use similar questions, this is not the same as a visa application.

Also, if you click through to the actual linked article or its Reuters source, you'll find that the HN headline is incredibly misleading. The headline implies that all visa applicants will be required to provide this information, but the articles say the information is voluntary and describe it by saying "consular officials can" request the information at their discretion.

It's currently optional. I've no idea why anyone would voluntarily hand over that information

When you're presenting yourself to garner the favor of an agent, there is no such thing as optional.

You do have a HN account though.

What's listed within ESTA at the moment?

HN is not one of the sites listed. Although, you could select 'other', but I did not consider HN social media. Maybe my definition of 'social media' is a lot narrower than the US government's. I mean, does being a member of a classic bulletin board count?

Which social media are listed outside of FB, Twitter, and IG? Can't seem to find this. The article mentions it includes email. Is this included?

I renewed my ESTA back in February, then they had a section with social media accounts but it explicitly said that filling that section out was voluntary.

when I did esta 2 weeks ago social media hadnt been mentioned

No its there. Filled it in 3-4 weeks ago and there was already a field for it back then. Was marked as optional though

What makes you think most people wouldn't voluntarily give over the social media accounts? It's really only people on HN that cares about that kind of privacy.

If anything, you'll get stuck with the annoying people who are proud of their social media accounts.

Travel to the US is down.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-01/donald-trump-slump-cou...

And it's going to plunge envenimé more, foreign student enrollment is down 40%, and a lot of students are staying in the US until they finish their studies and definitely leave.

That's true, but that happened before these new requirements were instituted. Indeed, I wonder if rhetoric from administration and the campaign before election had more to do with it than these requirements.

Not that I approve of them, mind you.

Social media companies need to fight this. If they don't and it becomes widespread all my SM accounts will be deleted and I'm sure I won't be the only one. I'm not wasting time having two accounts or taking chances lying. I'm just going to delete the accounts. Global travel + my privacy is more important to me.

I don't like it but honestly, how would social media companies fight it?

A good donation to EFF for a freedom campaign would go a long way at coordinating the fight. And boost their image.

The US destined travel is down since October and the trend downwards is consistent. Square who should have fairly up-to-date stats recently published their stats: https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/coming-to-america-52831...

At one point these trends will be impacting main street but by then it will be too late.

It already has in NYC. Look up hotel room rates tonight for Manhattan, they're in the $150s even for full service hotels. In my experience, for a sunny summer Saturday night in Manhattan, a lot of hotels used to have minimum 2 night stay restrictions, and only Sat nights would be $300+ per night. There were tons of more rooms built, but still, demand was not expected to drop this quickly this much.

how do you know the low rates are not the result of competition from Airbnb ?

I work in the space, and while I can't conclusively state that it isn't, industry reports indicated a downturn in demand or increase in supply mostly towards the end of last year (via reduced occupancy percentages and average daily rate). Airbnb has been around for a while in NYC, and if anything, per news reports, I would expect their listings to actually be fewer or holding steady based on the local governments restrictions. Even if it was increased supply, there seems to be a more sudden drop in average daily rate in the past 6 to 9 months than before.

people who stay in $300+ rooms dont stay in airbnb just because its available.

airbnb rooms of comparable luxury are rarely cheaper than hotels.

Because airbnb has been around and haven't done anything recently that would cause such a dip.

Why is everybody blaming this on the current administration?

from June 2016:

Agency Information Collection Activities: Arrival and Departure Record (Forms I-94 and I-94W) and Electronic System for Travel Authorization [1]

Comments were accepted up until August 22, 2016 on the proposed changes.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/06/23/2016-14...

Why is everybody blaming this on the current administration?

That doesn't seem to be especially true (so far here people are mostly discussing the details of the implementation).

In any case, the current administration is responsible for choosing to continue existing policies. That doesn't make the current administration solely responsible for the trajectory of US immigration policy, but it shares the power to change things with Congress and so will of course be a focus of criticism.

I think it is a confluence of factors, and the continued strength of the USD compared to other currencies could certainly be playing a role in it, however, it's also true that the current federal government does not portray an inviting image to foreigners, especially of a certain demographic.

What is really worrying though is the normalization of privacy devaluation. Soon the uk will follow suite and then others. And sooner than later we ll be "back" to 1984

"Consular officials can now request all prior passport numbers, five years of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers from applicants, as well as addresses, employment and travel history stretching back 15 years"

Heck, I don't even keep records of my old passport numbers and much less travel history stretching back 15 years. As I travel weekly or bi-weekly, the list is not easily remembered or reconstructed. Does travel include ferry, boat, car or bike rides or is it just air travel?

Everyone in the world should enable Google location history tracking, just in case they want to travel to the USA in the future.

Is the US trying to be the most immigrant unfreindly place to discourage new immigrants and there by reduce immigration?

I don't use Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc, but ordinary people seldom believe it ("come on, you are a programmer, how come you don't use web?!") and often assume I don't want to share my profile with them. I'm afraid the gov agencies will take the same approach and automatically assume the absence of the social media as an attempt to hide something. Luckily in this case, though, I hope not to have to visit USA anytime soon.

Hmm, this is worrying. Certainly makes it less appealing to move to the US any time soon.

Though I also wonder whether you can avoid this by simply having two accounts, one with a fake name and details that the controversial stuff goes on and one with your real name that's mostly squeaky clean. How much do they research this stuff?

The problem then is that you've made a knowily declared false information which itself is a crime a could reasonably be used to investigate further. If you wish to visit the US these are the rules you have to accept. Personally I've decided to not attend conferences in the US or visit for the foreseeable future.

For me it is the accumulation of all these annoyances together, not each individually, which makes a trip to the US now really unappealing. Long queues for passports on arrival, long queues at the security, laptop & tablet ban (some planes are still using VCR based flight entertainment, and most movies suck), this attitude that airports, airlines and law enforcement have of ending each interaction with their customers with a threat. Now this. Some people actually like to spend their holidays in some boot camp where they will be shouted at and get their ass kicked. I myself don't enjoy that.

This isn't really a new problem though.

I haven't been to the US for a long time but whenever I did in the past I had to make a false declaration on the visa form, as did anyone else with strong crypto software on their laptop.

Lying on these forms is what they WANT you to do.

That way they can have a pretext for nabbing you whenever convenient.

I'm pretty sure they don't want you to lie. Arresting you and deporting you would be expensive and doesn't seem like much of a gain over just rejecting you at the border.

The relevant part is "whenever convenient". Of course they don't want to arrest and deport too many people, but with this kind of things they can easily find you at fault "whenever convenient".

> How much do they research this stuff?

It probably depends on how subjectively "suspicious" you seem, which is to say, how non-white you sound or look.

Something tells me actual threats Like Jeremy Christian probably won't be given a second glance.

You might be able to but it's probably not a good idea unless you really have bad stuff on the other account. Lying to border patrol is a great way to be detained or even rejected at the border.

This was already "optional" information requested in the ESTA application since at least last year, so what's changed since? That it states more explicit that a failure to enter the information could prevent you from getting approved?

Is it just me or does the headline fail to parse? "requires applicants for..."???

Another example of bullshit from governments. Last time I said something, someone told me to slow my roll.

People's freedom is being eroded an inch at a time! (Or ~2.5 cm if you prefer the metric system).

Thank god. They don't want my HN account.

Especially our HN accounts where we say the NSA/TSA/FBI are threats to our safety (depending on context) and we use false names with burner phone-based authentication on Facebook. Honest question, I still wonder what is so bad that I'm now using the same protections as criminals, apart from hiding that I don't want to be tracked.

As if they don't know already? Check out Canadian immigration papers as well - same thing.

No mention of them requiring a password as well though.

I wonder what happens when I don't remember -- I deleted my facebook account over a year ago, and legitimately don't remember my handle. All I can say is that my usual username (hobarrera) was taken.

Does this impact citizens from visa waiver countries?

Yeah they need to fill in the ESTA forms which asks for social media. Last time I saw the form it was marked as optional though - unsure whether that part changed

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