French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found | Hacker News Reader

French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found

theguardian.com

88 pointsprawn25 comments

Are visitors to the US now required to produce their phone and password to allow immigration to look at messages?

It's been a very long time (1972) since I traveled outside the US, so I'm obviously not up to speed on international travel, but I am really surprised that people are not permitted to cross international boundaries without producing a phone for inspection.

Iirc a judge stopped the systematic requirement to inspect, but if you're not a citizen and refuse they can put you in the deportation gulag for a couple weeks and I guess not look at the phone. Not legal advice.

I wonder what usually travels if one travels with a burner phone (a phone obviously barely previously used) to the US, or in other places where one would not want to risk their phone getting confiscated. Is there any experience on that? Should one try to build some plausible deniability on that (eg use lightly a phone for a while for it to at least appear used)?

Remember the happy days of "that's crazy, I'm glad it can't happen here"?

Yes I do distinctly recall November 4, 2024.

I was thinking 2016 plus a few no-personal-repercussions scandals.

No, sorry, I understand it was clear it could happen in the late XVIII century. Hence some definite effort to avoid bad turns. Hence engineering with care, hence maintenance.

Signals had been there. And the dangers were "known knowns".

If USA can fund and support genocide just fine, is not letting some people into the country based on some frivolous reasons really that crazy a thing?

I'm not defending the position, but for a lot of Americans I think the emphasis is "it can't happen here."

Not sure what you mean by "here" and where you see the distinction. It's still in the "Americans doing bad things to foreigners" category. There's no distinction. It's just that rejecting some French on the border is just relatively minor bad thing, compared to materially supporting genocide.

I posted this previously as it's own thread but it got no uptake, but the sentiment is so appropriate here:

https://boingboing.net/2025/03/19/tom-the-dancing-bug-news-o...

Well, what do you expect for disrespecting America's monarch?

I’m seeing a way larger than usual amount of political posts making the HN frontpage without flagging.

I’m not complaining, to be clear. As a non American, I wonder if it signals a shift in thinking from the users?

You could instead wonder if, thinking remaining the same, events are evaluated as having special significance.

I think it’s more of a change in material circumstances. It’s not really “political” to be informed about the realities of entering a country.

And with technology and privacy being directly relevant.

The current course of the US heavily influences its future progress in science and technology.

Or should I say regression?

it's flagged now

Same story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43416476

I would be interested in knowing to what extent the HN back history shows evidence of webscraping, and to what extent there is evidence this social network (because it is one) is feeding the same information space that US Customs and Immigration use to determine who to pull out of the line.

I guess I'll need a burner phone when traveling to the US in the near future. Just as a lot of people do when visiting China. What a turn of events!

Hey JD, what was that about free speech?

I remember when the Republican party at least pretended to have some sympathy along the lines of libertarianism.

It is pretty clear now they want to use the state to impose / punish what they deem "wrong" thinking / ideas.

It's largely the Hungary playbook being run in America by the Heritage Foundation

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