New Social Media Question on DS-160 and DS-260 Visa Applications | Hacker News Reader

New Social Media Question on DS-160 and DS-260 Visa Applications

immigrationgirl.com

138 pointsthrowmex83 comments

This is alarming considering many people have multiple handles. Anonymous speech is a major reason America exists[1] and is a constitutional right[2]:

>In Watkins v. United States (1957), NAACP v. Alabama (1958), Bates v. Little Rock (1960), and Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (1963), the Court protected the anonymity of members of controversial groups to ensure their First Amendment right of association.

Imagine a visitor has handles not tied to their real name. (Maybe they don't feel comfortable criticizing their government under their real name)

Should the visitor be forced to list these sensitive identifies in order to enter America?

Keep in mind that lying to border officials is pretty much always a reason to be permanently barred from any country.

I hope our allies lead by example and don't respond in kind - I'd hate to have to get turned away at the Peace Bridge because I wouldn't lie and wouldn't endanger my privacy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers

[2] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/32/anonymous-speech

Do nonresidents that are not presently in the United States have constitutional rights?

Yes. There's been Supreme Court cases that say you still get due process, can't be beaten into confessions, etc. I don't know if that applies to 1A specifically, but they absolutely have some rights:

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/255281-ye...

America believes that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, as long as they're a couple of generations removed from immigrants and #BackTheBlue.

Your article talks about illegal aliens. By definition they are present in the US, or they wouldn't be illegal or aliens.

The OP asked if non-citizens outside the US have constitutional rights. The answer is no.

Unless you're declared an enemy combatant, or terrorist, whatever those things mean. Cf: everybody tortured or just waiting for disposition at Guantanamo since 2002. Oh and that's for citizens too.

See sec 501 - https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-fact-sheet-patriot-act-ii

US Citizens have rights everywhere in the world, and everyone has rights when on US soil. People who are neither US citizens not in US soil have no rights under the constitution.

> Imagine a visitor has handles not tied to their real name. (Maybe they don't feel comfortable criticizing their government under their real name)

I have used at least 100 personas over the past decade.

But I've gone out of my way to avoid associating any of them with my meatspace identity. I compartmentalize by VM, Internet connection path via VPNs and Tor, contacts, activities, interests, and language.

> Should the visitor be forced to list these sensitive identifies in order to enter America?

I wouldn't. Because I'm confident enough that they couldn't be associated with me. Not without concerted effort by the FBA and/or NSA. Also, I have retained no records of all but ~10 of them, so I couldn't disclose them if I wanted to.

So bottom line, if you have sensitive identifies that you wish to keep private, they had better be thoroughly compartmentalized. Nobody who knows you in meatspace should know anything about any of them.

What if I don't have my face as my profile picture ? Will I be denied entry at the border because the officer cannot "verify" that the FB profile belongs to me ?

I can forsee many idiosyncratic incidents waiting to happen in the near future with this.

It's similar to a problem i had a few years ago when signing up for Airbnb. At the time I didn't use social networks, so there was no way for me to verify my identity except for a baroque, unoptimized process in which i sent a scan of my ID, and even then i wasn't successful. At what point will it become recommended and then inevitably required that people applying for US visas have active profiles from one of the accepted providers?

I mean this is solid logic if you're older and experienced the advent of the internet.

But keep in mind that we have an entire generation of people coming up that are growing up during the age of the internet. Kids aren't going to be concerned about using the internet as themselves and obviously they'll do or say stupid things as they age. So while you may become more concerned about privacy, everything you did as a kid is on the internet. Forever.

This is indeed tragic. For decades, I've been warning people to compartmentalize everything. With as much overkill as they can manage. But my reach is miniscule, and most people find it too inconvenient.

And it does mess up ones life. I'd love to share with family and meatspace friends about my online life. But I don't. Not even with my wife. So I just play dumb. At my age, it's plausible. But for young people, it would be hard.

So you get a visa of some kind, maybe it's not just a tourist visa but one that lets you stay here for years, maybe eventually you even get a green card, maybe you get married and have kids here.

If they ever find even one of those identities, they can legally kick you out forever.

If you even later get citizenship, they can possibly revoke that citizenship and kick you out forever.

It's a pretty big risk there.

Yes, it's a huge risk.

But if an immigrant has identities that would get them kicked out, disclosing them would just keep them out. And if any of those are readily discoverable, it's probably not worth even trying to get a visa or immigrate.

But if there are ~innocuous identities, it's best to disclose them. Unless there are links to not so innocuous ones.

>But if an immigrant has identities that would get them kicked out, disclosing them would just keep them out

It's perfectly possible they'd be allowed in, but either due to a malicious insider or a data breach the information will leak, and someone from the old country will come looking for revenge.

Well, disclosing them would keep them out. And sure, while lying might get them in, they could be kicked out later.

I was arguing that, in those circumstances, perhaps it's not worth taking the risk.

Stylometry is getting better by the day :)

Very true, and a concern for me.

However, many years ago, I went largely offline, as my meatspace identity. I still do some social media with family, but not in English. And for decades, my work was off the record, doing litigation support. I did edit expert reports and legal documents, but most of that isn't public. And in any case, the style is different.

But sure, if you blog and tweet as your meatspace identity, and then have ~anonymous personas using the same language, stylometry could nail you. There is software for protecting against that, however. And it's getting better too.

>However, many years ago, I went largely offline

See, right there you're narrowing the set by leaking your approximate age.

I don't think your opsec is as good as you think it is :)

I almost always lie about my personas :)

But Mirimir in some ways is my least anonymous one.

But even if all of your 10000 identities are innocuous, perhaps disclosing as many as 10000 identities itself get get your visa rejected.

That's an excellent point.

So if you're going to have numerous identities, it's best to do it right. And maybe then not disclose them.

But still iffy, if you know that you'll likely be emigrating.

Keep in mind if your country or origin doesn't allow dual citizens (Indian, The Netherlands, Japan, etc.) and you get US citizenship (and revoke your home country) and the US decides to take your citizenship, that leave you without a state. That's a human rights violation.

>I have used at least 100 personas over the past decade. But I've gone out of my way to avoid associating any of them with my meatspace identity... I wouldn't [disclose them]. Because I'm confident enough that they couldn't be associated with me.

Do you realize that publicly stating you plan to lie to border officials could, in itself, be grounds for denial to enter a country?

Sure. But Mirimir is just a persona. No country that I'd be entering would know the association.

Is Werner also a persona?

I am not Vladimir Werner ;)

To me this is no different than the question on the US citizenship application form.[1]

Have you ever committed, or assisted in committing, or attempted to commit, a crime for which you were NOT arrested?

For me this translates into "Have you ever committed a crime that we are unaware of?". Of course you answer no. There is no one in the US who could honestly answer that question with "no", but yet they ask.

On the flip side, it also covers the gov'ts ass because if they find out you did, you can have your citizenship revoked because you lied on your application.

[1]https://www.uscis.gov/system/files_force/archive/delete/n-40...

Having a social media account is a crime?

No, my point was if the government has no knowledge of X, you’d be crazy to volunteer it.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Not necessarily, but lying about having one is a crime.

I'm curious how this is supposed to work for Facebook, or an Instagram or Twitter account set to private. What good is a username if no content is publicly available?

Naturally, it would seem to follow then that if all the State Department is asking for is the username, and this isn't just for show, they must have some other method of access, presumably an agreement with social media companies, clearly spelled out somewhere down in section 27b.6 of the TOS.

But then what about WeChat? I somehow doubt Tencent is going to have the same relationship with the US State Dept. that Facebook does.

+1 for 27b.6

No one will bother. Because this does not affect citizens.

Let's see how many will call their congressmen about this because it violates rights of non US citizens.

> No one will bother. Because this does not affect citizens.

I, a US citizen literally JUST spoke out against the practice in the post you are directly replying to.

How does it violate the rights of non US citizens? Non citizens have no inherent right to enter the US. Applying for a VISA to enter the US is a voluntary act, therefore, a non citizen is completely free to chose whether it is worth providing this information in exchange for possibly being allowed in the US.

People that are upset about this being asked have obviously never had to complete a VISA application to the US or likely any country. The US and most countries ask far more intrusive questions.

I went through the visa application process for the US. Could you give an example of a more intrusive question?

What rights are those exactly?

A starter list:

https://www.eff.org/issues/know-your-rights

https://www.eff.org/issues/border-searches

I am so glad I left the US to get a PR in Canada. I have a multiple entry 10-year tourist visa to US now. The immigration system will never get reformed. Once the recession follows in a year or two and unemployment goes up no when is going to talk about immigration(no one cares now but they will care even less).

They're adding more hurdles for prospective immigrants, and for those that get through the system to retrospectively invalidate naturalization because of incomplete information on a form.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/04/denaturalization-case-ci...

And remember that they want the list of all the clubs and associations you have ever been “associated” (not just a member) with in your lifetime if you apply for a green card. They want the address, name of the president and dates of association, for your entire life.

> estimated that 0.005% of U.S. visa applicants worldwide, or in the range of 65,000 individuals per year,

1,300,000,000 people apply for visas each year?!

That cannot be right. There are about 10 mil visas issued, so the number of applications cannot be much higher (it costs $160 to apply). So probably 13 mil.

My US Visa is good for ten years (B1-B2 from Argentina, paid $160 and submitted the DS-160). If they all are like mine, then maybe it's 1.300.000. That's consistent with the total 10M you mentioned.

The percent sign might be unintentional.

Most countries need tourist visas to enter at all. Any chinese person that comes to the US for the first time needs to get one. Those last 10 years.

75 million people visit the US every year.

The magnitude looks believable.

FWIW this has been a question on the ESTA (visa waiver for, say, Australians) for at least 2 years.

Ya but isn’t it optional?

As far as I remember it's the same question. It's easy to say no ... I mean, I have a Twitter account, but I can't remember the last time I posted. Easy enough to forget about, no?

Yes, it's optional.

Does someone know which platforms/providers are available in the dropdown menu? I mean, sure there will be Facebook and Twitter but what about HN/Reddit/Imgur/Whatsapp for example?

Someone else took a picture of the drop down menu:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/checkpoints-borders-policy-d...

It seems to match the list that appeared in the news earlier: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/world/americas/travelers-...

> The proposal covers 20 social media platforms. Most of them are based in the United States: Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Myspace, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Vine and YouTube. But several are based overseas: the Chinese sites Douban, QQ, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Youku; the Russian social network VK; Twoo, which was created in Belgium; and Ask.fm, a question-and-answer platform based in Latvia.

I applied for a visa waiver for a short term trip to the US a couple of weeks ago. They asked about social media, but the question was optional. Surprisingly, Github was also on the list there. I’m not sure what border patrol agents will think of my pull requests - but so long as that question is optional I’m going to opt out of answering it.

Obviously they’ll deny you entry if you don’t adhere to the national coding style. It’s about time a nation has the courage to enforce curly braces on a new line.

https://twitter.com/gsiskind/status/1134459671706832896?s=12

It would have been helpful to get the bill number so we could know who voted for it... Oh, wait, the president just declared that this is the way it is (justified by "terrorism" of course.)

I thought we had rules.

US government operates on a number of bases -- not all rules are based on legislation.

Generally, by order pf precedent; Constitution, case law, legislation (US Code), regulation (Code of Federal Regulations), and executive orders. Plus others, such as court procedure, prosecutorial discretion, and more.

LLI's resources at Cornell University are a good start (though not a complete list).

https://www.law.cornell.edu

Anybody listed “NONE” and run into issues? One might also delete accounts or add caveats that they are not your personal accounts?

Also yet another reason to stop engaging in these networks. This is actually using them for surveillance and network analysis and you have no insight into what’s happening. The companies are allowing it.

Just have to hope your ex high school girlfriend isn’t an anarchist or has a friend of a friend that “liked” a terrorist video I guess?

It looks like, according to the article, you at least have to have a history of email accounts. I don’t know if that applies for the other social accounts.

Anyone who wants to see the exact wording can start a DS-160 application at https://ceac.state.gov/genniv.

I wonder what happens some of your social media accounts are private. Do they just move on, or do they get the data from the provider?

There's absolutely no search hits on the text of this question. Is this real?

Well of course you won't find search hits for this. This is an online form you get when applying for a visa. It doesn't get indexed by search engines since it's hidden behind an application system.

It's obviously a hoax, which is obvious with even the smallest amount of research. People who fell for the hoax should be pretty embarrassed.

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/PDF-other/DS-160_...

You're linking a DS-160 example from 2017. I don't understand what are you trying to disprove (or prove) with this.

You can apply for a DS-160 at https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/, where I guarantee you will now find this question.

NB: That site fails to provide the visa request form for me, even with JS enabled.

Direct link?

That's why I am not going to visit the US. It is essentially becoming another dystopian police state. Shame because there is so many great places to see there, but there is also plenty of other countries that are no paranoid controlling freaks. I can only vote with my wallet.

Which countries do you travel to that DO NOT check social media as part of their visa process?

Here is a 2015 article talking about it being done in the UK and how the US is lagging because they were not using social media as part of the visa process.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/12054754...

China has never asked me for my social media accounts in any of the multiple times I've applied for a visa.

Last time I was in Mexico and Jamaica. They didn't need my social accounts.

All of Schengen Europe (as of 2017)?

You have few, if any, fundamental rights at or near the US border. It is why PR releases from the ALCU call it a "Constitution Free Zone".

As we can clearly see with this comment, that's a headline that does much more harm than good. In fact: you are broadly subject to search at the US border (that "exception" to the presumption against search was in effect during the administrations of the framers of the Constitution), but that's approximately the extent of it (don't get us started on that dumb map they drew).

It helps nobody to perpetuate the idea that you lose your rights to due process, &c simply by dint of being intercepted by CBP at the border. Similarly: citizens of the US can neither be detained indefinitely nor denied entry at the border.

Yes you conveniently ignore that you are not secure in your persons, effects, or papers at the border. What happens if you refuse to unlock your phone as a US Citizen?

They take your phone, hold you for a while, then let you into the United States?

That 4A doesn't mean the same thing at the border as it does on the streets of Chicago is not in dispute.

The constitution doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be secure in those things “under all circumstances.” It says you shall be secure in those things “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Searches at the border have always been considered reasonable.

This is not true at all. Yes, when crossing an international border, USBP doesn't need a warrant to search you. If you're not crossing a border, but are within 100 miles, they do need a warrant.

As a US citizen, they have to let you in, even if you don't cooperate. Of course, they can harass and delay you, but you still have most of your rights.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com