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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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 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.

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 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 ;)

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