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Comment by valdiorn | Hacker News Reader

"Finally, the officials baffled Jana submitted a printout of the entire Facebook correspondence with their host-father. "

Maybe something is lost in translation, but could the officials just have received the correspondence from the family she was coming to visit??

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Native German speaker here. The article alleges that "apparently" authorities had been monitoring their private correspondence for weeks. I highly doubt that this was the case. Usually it works like this: Once you're deemed suspicious at the passport control, you're sent for "secondary inspection" to an office in the back. There, you're being questioned further, and officials will search publicly available information for anything suspicious. This includes your Amazon wishlist [1] and in some cases searches of personal items like laptop data [2]. The most common case is when future au-pairs bring physical letters from their hosts with them, and CBO agents find them. There have been thousands of stories like this going back for decades, that's nothing new. What's new is the ubiquity of social media.

In this case, I assume the girl was stupid enough to post publicly on the wall of her future employer, and the CBO agents could easily find it and print it out. I seriously doubt that their private conversations have been monitored. That just wouldn't make any sense.

[1] http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/16/16039/1.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

Exactly as I read it. The translation is better as "Jana was baffled when the officials showed her a print out of all of her facebook correspondence." The article makes it clear they asked her a lot of questions before they presented the facebook messages, so they clearly had suspicion.

Given that the article claims that it happened to another girl, too, this is unlikely.

Obviously, the problem is not that they were denied entry (as far as I can tell, they did violate US immigration law), but how the US authorities learned about it, namely by accessing private Facebook correspondence.

Does anyone have a link to a human translated version of story?

I'm not going to type down a translation, but I can tell you this computer generated translation is very accurate.

Essen. Anyone interested in traveling the US to experience everyday life there as an intern or an au pair should be careful with their correspondence. The staff of the immigration authorities appear to be happy to read along on social networks like Facebook. Two young women were put onto the next plane back to Germany right after landing.

After completing high school, Jana H. wanted to go abroad to the land of unlimited opportunity – the United States of America. She organized her own au pair exchange. Found a nice family she wanted to work for and live with for a year. For agreed-upon daily spending money, Jana would take care of the children. At the same time, she wanted to take a language course to improve her English. She had regular contact with her host father through Facebook.

When the high school graduate finally landed in the US, she was taken to the side and questioned at the passport control in the airport. The officials at the American immigration agency wanted to know the reasons for her travel and how long she wanted to stay.

Wrong answers

Jana was ready for this kind of question. She wanted to visit friends of her parents and take an English course. Was she sure of that? was the next question. Yes, she was sure. Really, really sure?

Finally, the officials presented the astounded Jana with a print-out of the entire Facebook correspondence she had had with her host father. Their accusation: The young woman wanted to work in the States illegally. The authorities had obviously read along in Jana's private messages on the social network Facebook for weeks. Jana was not allowed to enter. The next airplane brought the 18-year-old back to Germany.

It wasn't an isolated incident. The dream of another youth of an internship on a horse ranch in the US also never came to fruition due to snooped Facebook messages – he, too, ended up right back at the airport after the flight over the pond.

291 words.

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