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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

I hope at least Western Europe reciprocates quickly (targeting American visitors). Comparably annoying American citizens may be the best method to stop this madness.

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That would simply adjust the definition of "normal", since everybody's doing it. For example, it's now "normal" that liquids are banned in airports (except, of course, for those sold at a premium once past "security"; and except for pesto https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/genoa-airport-... ).

I think, in general, that it's better to do the opposite: if someone wants to do a stupid thing, make them look as strange as possible; try do the exact opposite thing, so that their rationale (e.g. "otherwise terrorism") is undermined. Plus, of course, that opposite thing might be a good idea on its own.

It'd only be "normal" if they did it to everybody. If they specifically targeted American tourists and left everyone else alone I don't think we'd see that problem.

There's a story about this that in some airport, they only ask americans to take their shoes off. If airports around the world required that for all domestic flights on americans, I think that you say would happen quickly.

Brazil does tit-for-tat and practices complete reciprocity :)

Shortly after 9/11, the USA required Brazilian tourists to use a fingerprint scanner. A Brazilian judge made a rule for American tourists to do the same:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/10/world/us-and-brazil-finger...

It was a huge mess at first because Brazil hadn't required any other countries to do it in the past. I suspect that customs threw away the fingerprints at first (it was done with ink originally), but it's done digitally nowadays.

Brazil does this for all countries. American tourists, for example, have to pay $100 for a visa because Brazilians need to do the same in the U.S.

To this day, it's considerably easier for Europeans to enter Brazil than Americans. While the U.S. hasn't rescinded the fingerprint law (that I know of), it's possible this policy prevented escalation...

the visa fee for US to Argentina is very similar, and they go out of their way to let you know it's because of the US's stupid policy towards them

I'm pretty sure there is a very small intersection between the group of Americans who would travel internationally and be annoyed by this and the Americans who support policies like this.

Exactly - the ones who are scared that Iranians are terrorists who should be banned are the same ones who couldn't name 3 cities in Iran.

Yes, but I suspect that the part of the population who supports this policy is small. A much larger part either does not care or dislikes this in general, but not enough to voice their opinion. Reciprocation could help make this majority speak up.

Plus, I would not overestimate degrees of separation -- if a friend's granddaughter traveling internationally for a high school trip supplies social account credentials, and those get leaked it is a powerful demonstration of stupid law in action. Having her get a load of humiliating / X-rated junk as a result would I suspect make even a strong supporter rethink his support.

The EU is convincing the USA for years that they should allow visa-free entry to five of its members (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland, Romania). Without concrete actions against the USA, they got nowhere.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/world/europe/eu-visas-uni...

I was just grilled in Munich trying to leave the EU, because when I entered in Athens the person stamping passports didn't care enough to put any ink on the stamp.

My point is that the EU is a big place with differing levels of care about what happens at the borders. I doubt all of the EU would/could reciprocate even if they wanted to.

I remember when Brazil did that with respect to fingerprinting. They started scanning fingerprints because US starting doing it to the Brazilian citizens when they arrived in US. Didn't follow the story after but annoying citizens of the other country by reciprocating in-like is a common strategy. Onerous visa requirements or moving from requiring to not requiring visas is also done.

Only 36% of the Americans has a valid passport: https://matadornetwork.com/life/64-americans-never-left-u-s/

We've talked about this before many times, but as a person who used to live in Europe I never quite understood why Americans don't have a national ID. Maybe something with a chip, anything better than a social security number basically. Make it free so anyone can get it.

I've heard all kinds of reasons to not have IDs they don't make sense - IDs are racist apparently, or some kind of a right wing conspiracy about government controlling people. Many other countries seems to manage with national IDs, some are more poor, some just as technologically advanced.

Lots of Americans don't understand it, either. Any national ID system get shot down because of some variation on 'left-wing government overreach', so we get the current crappy system where each individual state has its own identification card.

It's also a great way to deny voting for minorities. I suspect this is the major reason for not having an identity system.

India and developing countries managed to have national IDs and here it's some kind of major issue.

Is the argument that minorities are incompetent or just poor and can't get IDs if they want to vote? I think if they are free to get there should be no issue denying voting to anyone?

I think the idea is to deny minorities the right to vote so that you can win elections.

Make IDs subsidized if person makes less than $X/year or just subsidize for everyone. Whether ID is required for voting can be orthogonal to having IDs for other government services just not have a flimsy piece of paper with a 9 digit number on that is now know to everyone probably after the Equifax hack.

But let's say it is required for voting as well and it is subsidized. How exactly does it deny minorities the right to vote? Not sure what minorities we are thinking about but wonder if there is an implication that some would not be able to figure out how to get an ID, which I think is a bit insulting to those minorities. For example let's look at India:

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar

Aadhaar is the world's largest biometric ID system, with over 1.171 billion enrolled members as of 15 Aug 2017.[3] As of this date, over 99% of Indians aged 18 and above had been enrolled in Aadhaar.[4]

---

So this is a country with a lot more poor people, with issues such as open defecation, and worse poverty, and arguable not as advanced as US, and they managed but here in US it's somehow a minority issue? I just don't see it.

I am sorry but you're not getting my point if IDs are available in a properly controlled manner from the federal government, which has members that are independent of the white house (like the FBI head) I'm all for subsidized id's. What I don't want is it to go to the state level.

It's really "funny" how quickly this post got flagged down on HN.

Some VCs, tech people, etc. who make money from immigrants are going into panic mode.

Can we leave the innocent bystanders out of this? As a US citizen this new rule is garbage

Indeed, as a US citizen it is obvious this policy will soon be expanded to everyone.

As US citizens you (collectively) knowingly voted for government that implemented such laws and it is up to you to vote for government that doesn't pass such insane laws. So sorry, you are not a bystander here; I'd say equally demeaning and annoying border controls for US citizens in other countries would be logical consequences one could expect.

This is not a law, it's a regulation, developed by a governmental body whose head is appointed. There is no Senator a small fish like me can call to stop this madness

I'm not much into US politics, but as far as I understand, Trump was personally involved in many recent bans/regulations. Furthermore, isn't that "head" appointed by president, senate or other elected governmental body?

Also, this started before Trump, so democrats don't get a pass.

The increase in weird border controls actually started under Obama. There's really no winning in American politics when it comes to sensible regulation or immigration policies. Trump is mainly just responsible for the recent "travel bans" and also the decrease of legal immigration

Insane border laws has been consecutive added by the US for the last 16 years ever since 9/11. It would be nice if the trend could be reversed.

I didn't say it has happened overnight. The idea doesn't change.

Yeah, let's completely ignore the 193 million people that disapprove of our current government. To put this in perspective if the number of people that disapprove of Trump were a country it would be 7th largest in the world.

they should have voted.

He lost the popular vote. But we have this weird weighting scheme favoring empty states.

Actually collectively we voted against the government. Trump lost the popular vote but won specific states which is how he got elected.

Obama started this policy, Trump just continued it.

It is very easy to point fingers at one figure or political party, in this case though the waters have been slowly rising since 9/11 through Bush Jr, Obama, and now Trump.

Until American citizens are impacted (either through loss of tourism money or more directly) I don't see much happening.

Still, it's your and only your job to undo this.

> As German citizens you German Jews (collectively) knowingly voted for government that implemented such anti-semitic laws and it is up to you to vote for government that doesn't pass such insane laws.

Yes, I went there. What kind of insane guilt-attribution system makes the parent commenter (and all others who dissent) responsible for the actions of the US government?

As another US citizen I also agree that this new rule is garbage.

The way to stop it is to apply pressure to the rule makers. They still work for us (although most of the time it does not feel this way), so the constituents must tell rule makers to change stupid rules. Otherwise they are not innocent bystanders anymore. And nowadays the constituents will not care unless they feel the pain.

We all are "too busy" (at least I know that I am) unless our own relatives have to give out logins while going abroad. I wish it was not this way, but this is the way it is today :(

> As a US citizen this new rule is garbage

And this new rule wouldn't be garbage if it wasn't a US citizen?

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