Border agents are checking social media, but we still don’t know how closely | Hacker News Reader

Border agents are checking social media, but we still don’t know how closely

theverge.com

100 pointsTomte53 comments

I don't like this, I think it will have a chilling effect on free speech, but if you're posting in public I think you have to expect folks may pull up your posts.

What I absolutely hate is compelling folks to disclose their handles. I do not labor under the delusion this handle is "anonymous" (many, many people know who I am) but I purposefully avoid tying my legal name to it precisely because of situations like this. I'm not a criminal or a terrorist, I just want to have authentic conversations about matters of public interest. It's hard to be authentic when there's someone snooping on your posts.

waves to any border agents reading my post history in the future

> I don't like this, I think it will have a chilling effect on free speech, but if you're posting in public I think you have to expect folks may pull up your posts.

It's not just your posts that can get you in trouble at the border. They also check the posts of people you follow, and those too can get you in trouble.

There was just such a case in the news this week [1]. A 17 year old Palestinian arriving to start his freshman year at Harvard had his visa cancelled when he arrived and was sent home because they found that some of his social media friends posted political views that opposed US positions.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/department-of-h...

Imagine not having friends whose social media posts are critical of the US.

That's literally at the beginning of the article linked.

If social media related things should preclude entry it should be enacted as legislation and not left to violent criminals (a border control officer is indicted every 36 hours).

flips off any ICE/border agents reading my post history in the future

Do you have a source for "a border control officer is indicted every 36 hours"?

Page 17 of this report

https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/201...

The JIC received 256 reports of arrest in FY 2016 involving 251 employees. Five of these 251 employees had more than one arrest in FY 2016. In FY 2017, the JIC received 254 reports of arrest, involving 245 employees. Seven were arrested twice and one employee was arrested three times in FY 2017. This misconduct occurred primarily off-duty but also included illegal activity while on duty, in cases of corruption.

Thanks for your fine source, I first heard it on national NPR who mentioned that it used to be 1 felony indictment every 24 hours, so things are at least 33% better as far as ICE/border control is concerned.

An arrest is not an indictment. Arrests often don't even result in prosecution at all.

That's a very good point.

I don't see why this is so controversial. It seems like the proper way to do a background check in the current era.

It really all depends on _what_ disqualifies someone from entry. The worry seems to stem from a general distrust of ICE and the current administration rather than this actual technique.

I have to think that if someone bragging about criminal activity on Instagram/Twitter got through the border and murdered somebody, ICE would be criticized for not doing their due diligence.

Here's the thing, I know exactly what rules I'd ordinarily need to follow in order to enter the United States. It's a mental checklist when coming from Canada:

1) am I carrying any contraband? Drugs, guns, undeclared currency or goods, etc.

2) Can I show that I can support myself during my stay? Do I have a return ticket? Enough cash?

Compared to these requirements these searches are completely opaque. If I'm asked to hand over my device I'm thinking:

1) How much is the agent going to access? Is s/he going to see an NSFW pic I emailed to the gf?

2) Are there any legitimate protections keeping them from logging into my social media accounts and going through my history?

3) Is there any recourse if they see me making a "420" joke ten years ago on Facebook and denying me entry?

There should be clear criteria admissibility that also serves to protect your privacy.

> I don't see why this is so controversial. It seems like the proper way to do a background check in the current era.

Because it's not normal to perform extensive background checks for people visiting your country? I'd think it pretty weird it they wanted to interview my family, friends, employer, previous employer.

> The worry seems to stem from a general distrust of ICE and the current administration rather than this actual technique.

No... I mean I find the actual technique offensive. They can find public profiles associated with my name by googling me. Why do you need to provide them information about which handles are associated with me? If it's because otherwise they might mismatch profiles <-> individuals, perhaps they just shouldn't be using this information to profile people?

he was coming to live in the US as a student, not just visit.

It is offensive in this case because it wasn't anything he did that lost him the visa, just social media connections said.

More generally, I know that my social media is important to my wife's visa in a completely different country, and the government may interview our friends and family. (I view it as offensive, invasive; but it does normal that the government would indeed interrogate perhaps excessively immigrants, even temporary ones)

In the first case mentioned in the article. They request social media identifiers I believe for all visitors now.

   it wasn't anything he did that lost him the visa

You don't know that, nor does the NYT, not does the Crimson. None of these reporters saw any of the social media activity firsthand, nor do they claim to in the articles.

My guess is that he "liked" text or image(s) that for some reason raised concern.

  if someone bragging about criminal activity on Instagram/Twitter got through the border and murdered somebody

Like Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani in the USA on a valid visa, who pledged allegiance to ISIS on social media before the San Bernardino massacre.

These policies to inspect social media are one result.

Rather, these social media policies are a result of a government and news media that operate on an assumption that everything bad can be prevented if only they have enough power. Random idiots merely supply a convenient narrative for longstanding authoritarian motives.

Because a lot of conversions nowadays happen online. If you have to give them access to everything then they'll also know everything about you and there's absolutely no reassurance that this information isn't going to be used in malicious ways. Even the NSA couldn't keep its agents in check and they abused access to the data for personal gain. How are they going to stop border agents?

Source on the mentioned abuse of access?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog... seems to be relevant

What always worries me about this is I genuinely do not have any social media accounts, with the exception of HN and reddit, and I am vaguely terrified I will be turned away at a border somewhere for not giving up my facebook/twitter/snapchat/etc details because what 20 something year olf doesn't have facebook/twitter/snapchat/etc?

Has anyone created a service where you enter your social media handles and it scans them to flag posts / content / friends who should be deleted before attempting entry to the USA?

better make sure to flag the receipt for that service in your email. and the transaction in your bank statements. since CBP is now saying use of the service is evidence of a guilty mind and sufficient for exclusion

So you want me to give some random company all of my social media account handles so that it’s all conveniently in one single place for a nazi run organization to access?

Precisely to which "nazi run organization" are you referring?

Wow, I got greyed out for that kind of question... I'll ask again: seeing as the nazis haven't held real power since WWII, which organization (with the possible exception of a few insignificant political parties) do they run?

it's almost impossible to be a Muslim who knows middle Eastern muslims and not have someone on your soc med feeds who posts anti American views. I have (real, in person) friends in my soc med feeds who post anti American views. I don't agree with them, but I somehow sympathise with them since they're refugees who came here after America destroyed their homeland.

if that's the reason his visa got cancelled it's exactly a racist policy - he was punished for who he was. you could pretty much say, we want to cancel the visa of this honest young student, let's just spend half an hour on their socmed and we'll paint them as a terrorist sympathiser.

they're my friends, they're not me. please distinguish.

ah, America: once the land of free speech, equality before the law, liberty and justice. now, the statue of liberty has fallen to her knees, face in hands, her tears the only thing keeping alive the tortured souls who surround her.

I am from a small country in eastern europe. There is not way you can grow up in there without having a few acquaintances who are either Russian nuts or hold some sort of racist views.

Moreover, some of these people weren’t really as bad when they were younger, so you can simply forget to get rid of them from your friendlist, too.

Besides, I keep them because it perfectly reminds me of what lack of education could do to me.

This is just like judging a person for what they are reading - does it not get to you that someone may be reading the opposite point of view just for the sake of reinforcing their own opinion?

There was an operation against Chinese students around the same time: https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/...

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming-freshm...

> She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list.”

It's not known if the friend is an ISIS member or merely someone posting memes ridiculing US policies - which can be contradicting and capricious, why? We have discourse, we vote for people who write legal statutes and appoint officials who makes further administrative/judicial decisions. They're subject to change.

Judges regularly reject government motions and can even strike legal statutes from the books. People can disagree with the law and argue about it. Laypeople can banter, even if they don't know what they're talking about.

Of course he doesn't have full political rights in US because he's not a citizen. And if he wanted to naturalize, wouldn't he be scrutinized on his background and interviewed?

He's reached out to the news, couldn't he volunteer FB posts made by the friend so we can know what we're talking about? He has to be a big fan of USA - hopefully - if he applied to Harvard and got accepted with a scholarship!

Off topic: Did you know the student is from Tyre? It used to be an island, https://www.ancient.eu/image/537/siege-of-tyre/. This is the city that Alexander the Great built a causeway to attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkWy47ighY

Sure wish I could've seen border agents before 2001, voice is the vibe was way more chill.

I once told a younger coworker that before 9/11 kids could actually visit the cockpit of the plane during a flight. He wouldn't believe me. A lot of things were way more chill before that yeah.

I remember doing this on a flight from Frankfurt to New York in 1984 or 1987. My mother used to be a flight attendant on the same airline so she asked if we could go, and me and my brother and my mother could go into the cockpit somewhere over the Atlantic ocean. I was in my early teens at the time and it was very cool.

As a kid I visited the cockpit and was invited to sit in the jump seat of an Airbus 320 landing in Rome a day before 9/11. One of my favourite childhood memories.

I remember that too, just never been to the US in those days. You could see the cockpit from the front seats because the door was open and from time to time the pilot would come hangout too. Currently listening to Schwarzegger's bio and he landed in the US in the 60s after like weeks of deciding to migrate and had no job apart from being a body builder. No H1B process (for which he wouldn't have qualified anyways). Other times...

As a child, I traveled a lot (international) with my parents. I had a log book (available for children from many airlines) that was signed by the Captain or First Officer on the flight deck of each flight. I don't recall a visit to the flight deck ever being refused, except on an extremely short flight.

The world has changed much since those days, generally not for the better.

I had equal wonder when someone told me you were able to visit the cockpit. Too bad

Our choice to be increasingly paranoid is perhaps not really the best path forward. It might even be counterproductive (a la the beatings shall continue until morale improves).

Access by non-crew was restricted in USA airspace before then. I flew to Canada a few times a year in the late 1990s. I was invited into the cockpit several times, but I had to be out before we reached US airspace.

It makes me think of Google algorithm snafus where certain words or phrases are presumed to be about some Bad Thing, so you now can't talk about sex ed or the like without getting dinged as "clearly smut."

This seems bad seen through lens of "everyone should be treated fairly" but if you instead look at it as "America is a private club which accepts membership applications of people that it likes for whatever reasons" then it's quite normal. You have to show that you fit in with whatever you think they want. Some people might be permanently excluded through no fault of their own but the same is true of many clubs or gangs that have all kinds of frivolous reasons for refusing membership.

If it was a small country, that 2nd view might make more sense, but it has so much power that people everywhere are going to alter their lives to try to fit in because it's the most important club around, and those who miss out are going to be very disadvantaged compared to the lucky few who make it in.

> "America is a private club which accepts membership applications of people that it likes for whatever reasons"

This is every nation state on earth. Of course they care about your background, skills and likelihood of naturalization. It's hardly unique to the US

> Of course they care about your background, skills and likelihood of naturalization.

How is all that relevant when you're on a week long business trip or visiting as a tourist? Vast majority of visitors in USA are not staying.

Afaik, for nonimmigrant visas they don't care about skills, but they do care about any ideological background (preventing terrorism) and they care a lot about the probability of overstaying the visa: they want to see evdence of connections and plans to return from the US.

> Afaik, for nonimmigrant visas they don't care about skills,

I am afraid they actually do. I know someone’s visitor visa was rejected because the consular officer thought he works on AI. I have no idea why working on AI is grounds for rejection.

I don’t know why I am getting downvoted but I have been asked to submit my CV even when applying for B1 tourist visa. So they do care about skills.

Or F1 student.

Most other countries don't have such a monopoly on being the best place to go to. For an engineer or scientist at least, America is often where your career can go the furthest.

It seems a bit non-straightforward that the right of a private club to choose members seems like an important freedom, but that that only applies when there are numerous competitive alternative clubs. For countries, that's usually the case but America is number one in many ways and sometimes by such a wide margin that applicants don't really have a choice that isn't much worse. So maybe it has more responsibility to be fair in order to avoid being tyrannical to the rest of the world.

So you'd be okay if every other country in the world did the same to US citizens? They would demand you hand over all of your social media information and then scrape the data when going on vacation? Would you trust all of those governments? Because that's where we're headed. If the US does this then so will every other country.

Canada already does it.

Except it's not a "club", which would imply a voluntary nonexclusive membership as well as the competition arising from free choice.

Rather it's more like a Homeowners Association that starts enacting overbearing rules, like say putting up a locked gate that can only be opened by bona fide residents (and not simply their guests).

This seems a little too cynical and reactionary for me. Are we to simply resign ourselves to the societal and legal infrastructures we exist in and which our tax dollars, labor and existences support becoming creeping authoritarian dead without freedom? Should we be okay with letting any such "membership" applications becoming inexplicably opaque?

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