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U.S. government begins asking foreign travelers about social media

203 points by obtino 10y ago

nether 10y ago
Thanks Obama?
DoodleBuggy 10y ago
Source without TheVerge regurgitation http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-social-media-232930 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-soci...
- dang 10y ago
  Thanks, we changed the URL to that from http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs-border-patrol-social-media-account-facebook-twitter http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs-borde.... Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you, when one article is merely summarizing another, to submit the original instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
paradite 10y ago
So would this lead to self-censorship on social media?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- morganvachon 10y ago
  I already do this in part because of the nature of my job, and it has helped push me to lose interest in the major social media platforms. At the same time, my interaction in more obscure forums like this one and other tech sites has grown significantly.
  - coderdude 10y ago
    Who among us isn't already self-censoring? In contrast to yourself, I'm most self-censored here. In a game or in person is where I feel like I can speak freely. Here, not so much.
    - witty_username 10y ago
      I'm not self-censoring because my account is pseudonymous.
      - coderdude 10y ago
        I kind of envy that. But years ago I cared a whole lot about HN and tied my personal self to it. I owe a lot to the community, too. For better or for worse, I'm stuck. I don't know of a community I'd rather be part of. It just is what it is.
      - paradite 10y ago
        That does not make much difference to CIA or NSA to my knowledge. There are many ways to correlate pseudonymous with your real identity: IP address, usage pattern, speech pattern, or even patterns in the photos that you posted. That's way I never used pseudonyms, they are practically useless in hiding your real identity. Additionally they give you a false sense of anonymity.
        zeroer 10y ago
        Your parents gave you the name "paradite", then?
        paradite 10y ago
        I think it is a social norm in the English speaking countries to not use real name on Internet forums. So I wouldn't call the use of nicknames or Internet handles examples of pseudonyms. Also, I have no intention of using this nickname to hide my identity. You can Google it to find everything you need to know about me.
- toyg 10y ago
  Twitter usage in the UK is already heavily policed.
intrasight 10y ago
Of course the bad guys are going to have fake social media accounts, so I don't see what benefit could accrue from such a policy.
- DanBC 10y ago
  No, that's not the problem. We know that many bad guys don't bother hiding what they're saying or reading. The problem is that border security is going to over interpret normal text written by normal innocent people.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    Yea, that's a problem of false-positives inherent to any issue where the prevalence in the population is microscopic. If terrorists are 1-in-ten million, and the probability that you say something that has any interpretation that could be construed as terroristic is anything greater than that, then the overwhelming majority of hits are false-positives.
- isomorphic 10y ago
  The benefit is to normalize unreasonableness. And to add another scene of "doing something" to the never-ending production of Security Theater.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  It is not so easy to build a credible fake social media account, since normal accounts are years old.
  - Laforet 10y ago
    Maybe, but in many cases social media accounts are of very little indication of the person behind it. Employers, journalists and private investigators have been snooping around Facebook and Twitter long before State actors did and a lot of people maintain minimum activity on social media (and let it be family friendly too) just to blend in. If they habour any nefarious tendencies you are not going to find it on their public persona anyway.
X86BSD 10y ago
I wouldn't tell them shit. I would tell them I have none. Prove me wrong brown shirts.
- prawn 10y ago
  "Our analysis suggests that you do. You've been denied entry." "Can you show me the details?" "I'm sorry, we're not permitted to do that. The software just gives us an approve or deny response. Please move to the red line over there." "I am speaking at a conference in two days!" "I'm sorry sir. The decision cannot be reviewed, but you will be permitted to try again in two years." "Two years?!" "Please move to the red line, sir." I enjoy visiting the US as a tourist (hiking, etc). I also tweet occasionally about politics, including US politics. A move towards analysis like this would concern me a lot, largely because I can see it operating as a black box and leaving no options for review.
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    > A move towards analysis like this would concern me a lot I'm an American who has never left the country and probably never will apart from a planned cruise next year, and this scares the shit out of me. It's definitely a chilling effect, which I believe is the point. The US is about to become the very thing it ridicules North Korea for: isolationist, nationalist, and possibly fascist (the last based on Trump's picks for a racist filled far-right cabinet to go along with the Republican-controlled congress and his stated desire to have an all-Republican Supreme Court). These are dark days ahead.
    - csydas 10y ago
      As a frequent internationally traveling U.S. citizen I understand your newfound reluctance to travel but in light of the NSA reveals this is mostly just theatre in my opinion. With how much data is already collected when you pass a U.S. Border this is more just formally doing what they likely already can do. When you cross you scan your passport several times, pose for a new picture of yourself for a database, present you itinerary on how you got to the border, and non-native citizens get 10-printed on site by digital fingerprint readers. There's a very tiny leap to connect that to the already publicly available information, which likely already has a few thin threads connecting you. I would suggest that you shouldn't let it intimidate you from traveling if you are lucky enough to be able to. The government will do what it will do regardless. If it assuages your fears slightly, all through the Ukraine crisis and the standoffs with turkey and with the U.S. over Syria, I traveled to and from Russia. One time I was held for extended questioning, but it was mostly corroborating my story I think. The more paranoid side of me says this is to try to discourage people from travel and spending money outside the U.S., so the best "up yours, Uncle Sam" to me seems to be travel as much as possible. And while rogue or borish border guards do happen, most of my experiences with border guards are employees who wish they were doing absolutely anything else and just process as they're required. It is a scary precedent happening, but nothing they're doing is new, it's just ou in the open now. So do as you would, but I'd not give them the satisfaction of me not traveling.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mattnewton 10y ago
Ah yes, the Theil + Palintir influence starts to show. On one hand, maybe cool that you can list GitHub to show you are a professional, on the other much larger hand this data collection is terrifying and could be used for so many bad policies.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  i can't wait for the day when a border agent asks why I forked the mirai botnet repo.
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    …or why you are working on a cryptographic chat application, or why people in your GitHub organizations are.
    - mattnewton 10y ago
      Yeah on second thought, it's all bad and not good.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 10y ago
The upside here is that these are the sorts of measures that will allow visa-free travel to continue. Ultimately, many countries that were once zero-risk considerations for entry are becoming riskier. The world is changing, people are migrating away from war in the middle east and other places and the US governments policy is to deny people deemed risky entry. Other countries require visas to deal with this sort of thing. US citizens of Pakistani origin need to jump through hoops to get an Indian visa, for example. That's far more intrusive and harmful. It's intrusive, but why should your virtual identity be different than your physical identity?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- msravi 10y ago
  > US citizens of Pakistani origin need to jump through hoops to get an Indian visa, for example. That's far more intrusive and harmful. With good reason, after the 26/11 Mumbai attack, which had the extensive involvement of an US citizen of Pakistani origin[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley
  - tehlike 10y ago
    good reason is very relative, i guess. You can find extremists in any nation/religion, and it doesn't make much sense to make life hard for _everyone else_.
    - msravi 10y ago
      In order to sort the bad apples you do need some sort of filter. You can do it either by (a) having sets of hierarchical filters with increasingly finer pores, or (b) with a single filter with the finest possible pores that everyone is put through. Ironically, having a coarse filter that sorts people based on nationality/religion as one of the first level filters actually makes life easier for everyone else. The other option is to profile everyone and pass these profiles through an extremely fine filter - which is what the SM profile information in the article seems to be targeted for. So, choose your poison. Do you want everyone to be intensively profiled at the cost of privacy, or do you want to be filtered using broad parameters such as religion and nationality?
dbg31415 10y ago
Does this law also make it possible to prove a negative?
totalperspectiv 10y ago
So it begins: http://craphound.com/scroogled.html http://craphound.com/scroogled.html This is an incredibly worth while read by Cory Doctrow that has only gotten more pertinent.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  "Sir, calm down, please. No, I'm not looking at your searches... That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up... ahahahahahaha, it's so accurate it hurts. It's totally constitutional because its information the corporation willingly handed over.
- tnorthcutt 10y ago
  More readable/better formatted page with that story: http://www.crimeflare.com/doctorow.html http://www.crimeflare.com/doctorow.html
contingencies 10y ago
China doesn't do that. The US makes China look free and friendly.
- Keverw 10y ago
  China does have a social score though. Sorta how we have credit scores but there's are not just financial.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  no it doesn't.
- therealpeal 10y ago
  > China doesn't do that. The US makes China look free and friendly. China does a lot more , a lot worse, that is in no way "optional" for citizens or travelers alike
  - paradite 10y ago
    Well I am a living example to counter your assertion. I am a Chinese citizen who has NOT been required to submit my social media accounts (US ones: GitHub, twitter, Facebook or Chinese ones: weibo, renren) to the Chinese immigration in the past. And to my best knowledge foreign travellers are also not required to do so. I can also imagine the story will blow up in every news media if they start doing so.
- patrickk 10y ago
  A friend travelling in China was shocked to discover that the government there apparently shares your identification documents with private businesses. Her passport scan was on the screen in some random shop (IIRC she saw it on a screen behind the counter when she went to pay). Also, when you apply for a travel visa in China, you have to tell the government exactly where you're travelling within China (e.g. x days in Beijing, x days in Shanghai), and who you're going to stay with (names, addresses). It's designed to prevent foreign journalists from digging up dirt, especially around election years (they increase the visa fee and make a double entry visa more awkward during these times, so journalists travelling between mainland China and places like Hong Kong will find it more difficult).
intransigent 10y ago
Since when is Social Media participation a compulsory activity?
- Create 10y ago
  Since they raised $16 billion, making it the third-largest in U.S. history.
viraptor 10y ago
Just a reminder that they already have this information and do not need to ask for it: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16810312 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16810312 People have been denied entry based on their online activity years ago.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
Claiming this is "optional" is utterly absurd. The power dynamic at US immigration is very unbalanced and they generally treat people terribly. If you "opt out" of providing this highly personal information they will no doubt send you to secondary where you will be required to provide it anyway. It is just normalising an invasion of privacy, and by the very nature of it they're already hinting that they might enter those social media accounts and pull apart your life. They already read diaries and look through your files, and anything that they find they'll use against you no matter how vague or what context it is said (e.g. don't even think about making jokes in private, they will ignore context like their life depended on it). Your choice when travelling to the US is: - Provide real ones (and risk getting bounced for something taken out of context and your privacy invaded). - Don't provide any (and risk getting bounced for looking suspicious). - Provide fake ones (and risk getting bounced for not providing a thorough record). They actually asked for feedback when this was first proposed and I wrote to them telling them why it was a bad idea. The problem is that they're asking American citizens for feedback about a proposal that doesn't impact them. I just happen to care because I am a green card holder who has family come in and know how terrible US immigration can be.
sohkamyung 10y ago
As far as I understand it, the requirement would be for foreign travelers to enter information about the social media that they use, but not their account passwords. If you have a Twitter account and you provide that information (your Twitter handle), what practical difference does it make? Twitter posts are public by default. Anybody can see your Twitter posts; you don't even have to be a follower, so I don't quite see what difference it makes to tell the US government the name of your Twitter account. Can somebody point out the error(s) in my thinking?
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  A lot of people on Twitter don't associate their twitter handle with their real name. That anonymity provides them safe haven to say things they might not say in public. Plus Twitter is just one social media platform. Reddit, 4Chan, Facebook, Hacker News, and so on are also considered social media. And once this becomes mandatory you risk getting in trouble for neglecting to provide some or all. Plus once they're tied to your real life identity they can use that information indefinitely. As an aside, I find it ironic all the people posting from anonymous accounts "why is this a big deal?" Why do you have anonymous accounts if you feel that way? Hugely hypocritical.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    I'm sure there's an interpretation under which Gmail is a social media platform.
- hedora 10y ago
  The change is that the CBP agent will now look at your past public twitter statements, and (if facebook lets them) the semi-private communications of your known associates, and then use that to decide if they should detain you, deny access, etc. I imagine this will be implemented in a questionable fashion, like keyword search or "deep" learning, since the agent won't have time to actuall read stuff for each traveller. So, you find yourself stranded in an airport because some acquaintance you haven't talked to since high school made an anti-American comment (typoed "top" as "tpp" next to an expletive) and shared it with their facebook friends. This will clearly have a chilling effect on freedom of speech (and Trump says he wants to add some border test to make sure you have "American values" shudder). Anyway, your business trip is cancelled, so you can't do your job moving forward and have no recourse. The fact that they are looking at this stuff for foreign travelers is already way outside historical standards for acceptable government behavior. In all likelihood, they will/are running similar tests against US citizens for things like the terrorist watch list (and they want to expand the implications of being on that list, taking away more constitutional rights without trial, or any sort of due process).
peteretep 10y ago
> started demanding > the request is currently > “optional.” Law of the excluded middle
- belovedeagle 10y ago
  Not sure what you're trying to accomplish in this comment, but you're wrong anyways. This is an example of contradiction (~(P/\~P)), not excluded middle (P\/~P)..
  - peteretep 10y ago
    Go on then kiddo, explain how in this context they differ. I'll Paypal you $5 if your answer is both coherent and correct, and there's any evidence at all that you understand the difference in this context.
    - belovedeagle 10y ago
      I'm at a loss as to how I could successfully explain the difference to someone who is clearly full of shit and doesn't himself understand the difference. There's really nothing to explain: You quoted a contradiction. You then typed the non sequitur "law of excluded middle"; I take it we were supposed to infer that the quote is false because of excluded middle. However, the quote is false because it is a contradiction, not because of excluded middle. I can alter the quote so it is false because of excluded middle: > did not demand > the request is currently not "optional" (Feel free to send BTC to 1L941R7SdDRGrVhgckCLABWuabQrniZTtP.)
      - peteretep 10y ago
        > I'm at a loss Shocker. > This is an example of > contradiction (~(P/\~P)), > not excluded middle (P\/~P) However: ~(P/\~P) <=> De Morgan's (~P\/~~P) <=> double negation (~P\/P) <=> \/ is commutative (P\/~P) Is there a difference between the two? Of course. Is producing notation that can be shown to be equivalent any way to conduct the argument? No, and it was also a clue you wouldn't know how to explain the difference between the two. > I take it we were > supposed to infer > that You can take whatever you like from it. The underlying English itself is ambiguous - you can indeed demand something that's optional - so there's not actually a contradiction there. It's more interesting then to draw attention to the fact that a third alternative to the truth value of the statement may be upcoming - perhaps the information will remain optional, unless of course you want any chance at all of your application succeeding? Tertium non datur, yet.
hackuser 10y ago
Has anyone here written something online, revealed something about yourself online (are you Muslim? Communist?), or are you associated with someone or some group online (friends with Edward Snowden on Facebook? Friends with CAIR?) that might cause you to be denied entry into the U.S.? As far as I know, the U.S. has denied entry to its critics, though I don't know how consistently they do that. (To be absolutely clear: I don't think anyone should be discriminated against based on their religion or political beliefs.)
- viraptor 10y ago
  Haha, good luck with that agent hackuser. But seriously, this is all up to interpretation. You've got a social profile on the service called "hacker news" - you're already suspect in the eyes of many people.
throw2016 10y ago
This is creepy and beyond the pale. And indefensible for any pretension of democracy and free speech. What right does anyone have to 'mine' your personal speech history? This directly criminalises speech and brazenly places a chilling effect on open and free discourse. This US security state has become so emboldened by citizen inaction and hand waving and ordinary americans must take control of their state. Please defend basic human rights and dignity. Don't let the naive, statists and apologists come here and defend and seek to normalize this blatant authoritarianism.
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
The headline is misleading. I'd suggest changing the submission URL to use the original Politico post and their title: "U.S. government begins asking foreign travelers about social media". Not that I approve of this policy. Maybe it's time to kill off my social media accounts.
- onion2k 10y ago
  Maybe it's time to kill off my social media accounts. Wouldn't stopping posting and shutting down your accounts be a considered a negative indicator? "What changed that made you want to hide? Don't you trust the government?" It might be better to set up something that just randomly shares the latest Beyonce news or something.
  - devoply 10y ago
    Maybe immediately after a year or two... it's like meh. Don't need it.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  I know someone (who will no longer travel to the US for conferences now) who had this shakedown attending a conference earlier this year. Not having a Twitter account immediately got him the third degree, because not having social media accounts is a red flag.
  - sasas 10y ago
    Could you elaborate further on the situation without compromising details on the person? I.e. Who gave them the third degree and under what circumstances were they asked for their twitter account ?
mschuster91 10y ago
The question is, what can be done against this? With Trump soon in power, Congress in Republican hands and the Supreme Court soon too, there is no corrective element left outside Republican hands any more, except a military coup, secession of individual States or civil war. And I like none of these options, especially not given that China and to some extent Russia massively try to take geopolitical influence over from the US.
geomark 10y ago
Just last month I commented here [1] how strange it is to see America slowly but steadily moving in the same direction as the military dictatorship that I live under. And here is yet another move in that direction, because here in Thailand they have been asking foreigners for their social media account information since around mid-year this year. Edit: Link to the pertinent section of the form used by Thai immigration to ask for social media account information. [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12974377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12974377 [2] http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/pre/14609779491460977993l.jpg http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/pre/1460977...
- joeguilmette 10y ago
  I live in Thailand too - if you're in BKK let's get a drink. @travlbum
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  What happens if I don't fill in these questions? Or should I just forget about visiting these countries?
  - geomark 10y ago
    Thai immigration appears to be inconsistent about the requirement to complete this part of the form. Some offices say it is optional. Some offices don't ask you to fill it out at all. As far as I know they aren't asking tourists to complete it when they arrive. It seems to be only for foreigners staying long term. Time will tell whether or not they ratchet up the requirement for all foreigners to complete it.
    - ShinyCyril 10y ago
      FWIW, I was in Thailand a few weeks ago (no visa, it was a relatively short trip) - I did not see this question on the immigration form.
  - herbst 10y ago
    I just ignored them. Nobody bothered to ask. Seems optional to me. Also its Skype, Linkedin and Facebook if i remember right. I dont have those.
blauditore 10y ago
What if you claim to not have any account, or refuse to provide it? Does it default to "terrorist"? Also, I think there would be a better solution: Just give travelers a form with one question. Are you a terrorist? [yes (default)] [no]
- amitparikh 10y ago
  This question is actually on the ESTA form: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-US-visa-form-ask-seemingly-absurd-questions-on-criminal-terrorist-activities-and-intentions https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-US-visa-form-ask-seemingl...
- nolok 10y ago
  It defaults to "you lied on your immigration form" which means you lose any conflict whatsoever that might happen. That's the entire reason the "do you plan on committing crimes" questions are there, after all.
bjelkeman-again 10y ago
So it will be interesting when you say that you don't have any social media accounts, or point to some essentially empty accounts. Immigration officer: "This bjelkeman-again account on Hacker News isn't your?" Me: "No sir, it isn't" Officer: "But it has your name." Me: "Sorry, I don't know who that is. Somebody impersonating me perhaps?" Officer: "Hand me your phone. An unlock it." Me: "Here it is. But it is empty. I load it from a downloaded encrypted image when I arrive at my destination. The key is given to me when I have arrive. For company security reasons." Officer: "You have to come with me." It is going to be interesting.
- koheripbal 10y ago
  I think this would be your answers if you want to be questioned further.
  - lbotos 10y ago
    True, but none of this is really far-fetched in the realm of security. People can do this not to be difficult (as you are insinuating) but out of genuine data protection.
    - Periodic 10y ago
      My last company created a policy that when traveling to some countries, specifically China, we were told to only take fresh Chromebooks and set the up at our location. That way we could be reasonably certain there was no spyware (verified RO boot) and no way for for them to take our data even if they took our laptop during entry. Of course, the could have installed a hardware keylogger, but the risk was low enough.
      - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
        So pretty close to my imagined situation.
ulfw 10y ago
I seriously wonder if they would let somebody like Trump enter the country if he were a foreigner, based on what he posts on Twitter.
tristor 10y ago
As I've discussed in some of my comments in the past, the only morally principled way to deal with this is simply to say "No." and accept the consequences. It may suck, it may derail plans, or even alter the course of your life. But at the end, thousands of people saying "No." is the only way to stop this. The US isn't the first country to do this and it won't be the last. It's a sadly hypocritical state of affairs, but not surprising given the way things have gone recently. I travel all over the world, and I will adamantly refuse to give any information about myself which isn't contained already on my passport. The entire point of a passport is to provide the relevant information to determine whether or not to admit me across a border. If that is not sufficient, then I suppose you'll have to deport me and deal with any PR fallout for doing so (if any).
- Periodic 10y ago
  If you do that, then you may be judged solely on your passport. That's fine if you come from a stable and prosperous country. Traveling abroad on a German or US Passport? You're probably fine. Try the same thing on a Syrian passport and you're probably going to run into problems. I agree that we should protest, but it won't help that middle eastern student who wants to go to a conference or the business person who wants to meet a potential trade partner. Both need to travel for their livelihood, and depending on their circumstances it could significantly affect their life at home based on the opportunities they can find abroad. They might not have the luxury or the courage to simply walk away. In the US we have a way to stop this: we have to be loud enough to be heard. That doesn't involve civil disobedience (no one would listen to spoiled US citizens) but we can complain to our politicians, we can protest, we can get into the media with it. Unfortunately, it's not a majority opinion and will likely be drowned out in favor of the current wave of xenophobia sweeping US politics. If you did this coming into the US, half the country would just say they were glad you didn't come. At this point, civil disobedience on the issue is likely irresponsible.
  - tristor 10y ago
    > At this point, civil disobedience on the issue is likely irresponsible. That might be true if it were only the US doing this, as the US provides other measures to fight this type of ridiculousness. It's not /only/ the US that's doing this sort of thing, it's just that the US is now doing it too. Other countries have been doing the same thing for years, and it is something we should fight against worldwide. I see nothing irresponsible about civil disobedience given that this is a global issue of border agents requiring travelers to unlock phones, turn over passwords and social media accounts, etc. I am fortunate to be traveling on a US passport, so as you point out the consequences for my refusal to cooperate are probably not as dire for me as it would be for someone from some other countries. Nonetheless, standing up for your basic principles and human rights is not a fight that is comfortable. I freely acknowledge that many people who disobey at the border could have life altering consequences for doing so, but it's also not acceptable for these sorts of questions to be asked. It's none of the government's business, frankly. Every individual has to make that choice for themselves.
vectorjohn 10y ago
Doesn't seem like a problem. The fake outrage about it is laughable. This is no different than any other kind of personal interview. They want to see evidence that you're a normal ass person, this isn't some sort of action to de-anonymize the internet, spy on your private whatever.
rurban 10y ago
The article has several mistakes: The new ESTA has those fields: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Linkedin, Youtube. No Twitter, no VKontakte. To fill out those forms is optional, not mandatory.
mzw_mzw 10y ago
How many people complaining about this policy enthusiastically voted to elect the political party that has put into place this policy in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and insisted that even considering any alternative was a straight slide into fascism?

203 points by obtino 10y ago

Thanks Obama?

Source without TheVerge regurgitation http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-social-media-232930 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-soci...

dang 10y ago
Thanks, we changed the URL to that from http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs-border-patrol-social-media-account-facebook-twitter http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs-borde.... Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you, when one article is merely summarizing another, to submit the original instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

paradite 10y ago

So would this lead to self-censorship on social media?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
morganvachon 10y ago
I already do this in part because of the nature of my job, and it has helped push me to lose interest in the major social media platforms. At the same time, my interaction in more obscure forums like this one and other tech sites has grown significantly.
- coderdude 10y ago
  Who among us isn't already self-censoring? In contrast to yourself, I'm most self-censored here. In a game or in person is where I feel like I can speak freely. Here, not so much.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    I'm not self-censoring because my account is pseudonymous.
    - coderdude 10y ago
      I kind of envy that. But years ago I cared a whole lot about HN and tied my personal self to it. I owe a lot to the community, too. For better or for worse, I'm stuck. I don't know of a community I'd rather be part of. It just is what it is.
    - paradite 10y ago
      That does not make much difference to CIA or NSA to my knowledge. There are many ways to correlate pseudonymous with your real identity: IP address, usage pattern, speech pattern, or even patterns in the photos that you posted. That's way I never used pseudonyms, they are practically useless in hiding your real identity. Additionally they give you a false sense of anonymity.
      - zeroer 10y ago
        Your parents gave you the name "paradite", then?
        paradite 10y ago
        I think it is a social norm in the English speaking countries to not use real name on Internet forums. So I wouldn't call the use of nicknames or Internet handles examples of pseudonyms. Also, I have no intention of using this nickname to hide my identity. You can Google it to find everything you need to know about me.
toyg 10y ago
Twitter usage in the UK is already heavily policed.

intrasight 10y ago

Of course the bad guys are going to have fake social media accounts, so I don't see what benefit could accrue from such a policy.

DanBC 10y ago
No, that's not the problem. We know that many bad guys don't bother hiding what they're saying or reading. The problem is that border security is going to over interpret normal text written by normal innocent people.
- zeroer 10y ago
  Yea, that's a problem of false-positives inherent to any issue where the prevalence in the population is microscopic. If terrorists are 1-in-ten million, and the probability that you say something that has any interpretation that could be construed as terroristic is anything greater than that, then the overwhelming majority of hits are false-positives.
isomorphic 10y ago
The benefit is to normalize unreasonableness. And to add another scene of "doing something" to the never-ending production of Security Theater.
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jpalomaki 10y ago
It is not so easy to build a credible fake social media account, since normal accounts are years old.
- Laforet 10y ago
  Maybe, but in many cases social media accounts are of very little indication of the person behind it. Employers, journalists and private investigators have been snooping around Facebook and Twitter long before State actors did and a lot of people maintain minimum activity on social media (and let it be family friendly too) just to blend in. If they habour any nefarious tendencies you are not going to find it on their public persona anyway.

X86BSD 10y ago

I wouldn't tell them shit. I would tell them I have none. Prove me wrong brown shirts.

prawn 10y ago
"Our analysis suggests that you do. You've been denied entry." "Can you show me the details?" "I'm sorry, we're not permitted to do that. The software just gives us an approve or deny response. Please move to the red line over there." "I am speaking at a conference in two days!" "I'm sorry sir. The decision cannot be reviewed, but you will be permitted to try again in two years." "Two years?!" "Please move to the red line, sir." I enjoy visiting the US as a tourist (hiking, etc). I also tweet occasionally about politics, including US politics. A move towards analysis like this would concern me a lot, largely because I can see it operating as a black box and leaving no options for review.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  > A move towards analysis like this would concern me a lot I'm an American who has never left the country and probably never will apart from a planned cruise next year, and this scares the shit out of me. It's definitely a chilling effect, which I believe is the point. The US is about to become the very thing it ridicules North Korea for: isolationist, nationalist, and possibly fascist (the last based on Trump's picks for a racist filled far-right cabinet to go along with the Republican-controlled congress and his stated desire to have an all-Republican Supreme Court). These are dark days ahead.
  - csydas 10y ago
    As a frequent internationally traveling U.S. citizen I understand your newfound reluctance to travel but in light of the NSA reveals this is mostly just theatre in my opinion. With how much data is already collected when you pass a U.S. Border this is more just formally doing what they likely already can do. When you cross you scan your passport several times, pose for a new picture of yourself for a database, present you itinerary on how you got to the border, and non-native citizens get 10-printed on site by digital fingerprint readers. There's a very tiny leap to connect that to the already publicly available information, which likely already has a few thin threads connecting you. I would suggest that you shouldn't let it intimidate you from traveling if you are lucky enough to be able to. The government will do what it will do regardless. If it assuages your fears slightly, all through the Ukraine crisis and the standoffs with turkey and with the U.S. over Syria, I traveled to and from Russia. One time I was held for extended questioning, but it was mostly corroborating my story I think. The more paranoid side of me says this is to try to discourage people from travel and spending money outside the U.S., so the best "up yours, Uncle Sam" to me seems to be travel as much as possible. And while rogue or borish border guards do happen, most of my experiences with border guards are employees who wish they were doing absolutely anything else and just process as they're required. It is a scary precedent happening, but nothing they're doing is new, it's just ou in the open now. So do as you would, but I'd not give them the satisfaction of me not traveling.

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mattnewton 10y ago

Ah yes, the Theil + Palintir influence starts to show. On one hand, maybe cool that you can list GitHub to show you are a professional, on the other much larger hand this data collection is terrifying and could be used for so many bad policies.

wheelerwj 10y ago
i can't wait for the day when a border agent asks why I forked the mirai botnet repo.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  …or why you are working on a cryptographic chat application, or why people in your GitHub organizations are.
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    Yeah on second thought, it's all bad and not good.

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Spooky23 10y ago

The upside here is that these are the sorts of measures that will allow visa-free travel to continue. Ultimately, many countries that were once zero-risk considerations for entry are becoming riskier. The world is changing, people are migrating away from war in the middle east and other places and the US governments policy is to deny people deemed risky entry. Other countries require visas to deal with this sort of thing. US citizens of Pakistani origin need to jump through hoops to get an Indian visa, for example. That's far more intrusive and harmful. It's intrusive, but why should your virtual identity be different than your physical identity?

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msravi 10y ago
> US citizens of Pakistani origin need to jump through hoops to get an Indian visa, for example. That's far more intrusive and harmful. With good reason, after the 26/11 Mumbai attack, which had the extensive involvement of an US citizen of Pakistani origin[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley
- tehlike 10y ago
  good reason is very relative, i guess. You can find extremists in any nation/religion, and it doesn't make much sense to make life hard for _everyone else_.
  - msravi 10y ago
    In order to sort the bad apples you do need some sort of filter. You can do it either by (a) having sets of hierarchical filters with increasingly finer pores, or (b) with a single filter with the finest possible pores that everyone is put through. Ironically, having a coarse filter that sorts people based on nationality/religion as one of the first level filters actually makes life easier for everyone else. The other option is to profile everyone and pass these profiles through an extremely fine filter - which is what the SM profile information in the article seems to be targeted for. So, choose your poison. Do you want everyone to be intensively profiled at the cost of privacy, or do you want to be filtered using broad parameters such as religion and nationality?

dbg31415 10y ago

Does this law also make it possible to prove a negative?

totalperspectiv 10y ago

So it begins: http://craphound.com/scroogled.html http://craphound.com/scroogled.html This is an incredibly worth while read by Cory Doctrow that has only gotten more pertinent.

wheelerwj 10y ago
"Sir, calm down, please. No, I'm not looking at your searches... That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up... ahahahahahaha, it's so accurate it hurts. It's totally constitutional because its information the corporation willingly handed over.
tnorthcutt 10y ago
More readable/better formatted page with that story: http://www.crimeflare.com/doctorow.html http://www.crimeflare.com/doctorow.html

contingencies 10y ago

China doesn't do that. The US makes China look free and friendly.

Keverw 10y ago
China does have a social score though. Sorta how we have credit scores but there's are not just financial.
wheelerwj 10y ago
no it doesn't.
therealpeal 10y ago
> China doesn't do that. The US makes China look free and friendly. China does a lot more , a lot worse, that is in no way "optional" for citizens or travelers alike
- paradite 10y ago
  Well I am a living example to counter your assertion. I am a Chinese citizen who has NOT been required to submit my social media accounts (US ones: GitHub, twitter, Facebook or Chinese ones: weibo, renren) to the Chinese immigration in the past. And to my best knowledge foreign travellers are also not required to do so. I can also imagine the story will blow up in every news media if they start doing so.
patrickk 10y ago
A friend travelling in China was shocked to discover that the government there apparently shares your identification documents with private businesses. Her passport scan was on the screen in some random shop (IIRC she saw it on a screen behind the counter when she went to pay). Also, when you apply for a travel visa in China, you have to tell the government exactly where you're travelling within China (e.g. x days in Beijing, x days in Shanghai), and who you're going to stay with (names, addresses). It's designed to prevent foreign journalists from digging up dirt, especially around election years (they increase the visa fee and make a double entry visa more awkward during these times, so journalists travelling between mainland China and places like Hong Kong will find it more difficult).

intransigent 10y ago

Since when is Social Media participation a compulsory activity?

Create 10y ago
Since they raised $16 billion, making it the third-largest in U.S. history.

viraptor 10y ago

Just a reminder that they already have this information and do not need to ask for it: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16810312 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16810312 People have been denied entry based on their online activity years ago.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago

Claiming this is "optional" is utterly absurd. The power dynamic at US immigration is very unbalanced and they generally treat people terribly. If you "opt out" of providing this highly personal information they will no doubt send you to secondary where you will be required to provide it anyway. It is just normalising an invasion of privacy, and by the very nature of it they're already hinting that they might enter those social media accounts and pull apart your life. They already read diaries and look through your files, and anything that they find they'll use against you no matter how vague or what context it is said (e.g. don't even think about making jokes in private, they will ignore context like their life depended on it). Your choice when travelling to the US is: - Provide real ones (and risk getting bounced for something taken out of context and your privacy invaded). - Don't provide any (and risk getting bounced for looking suspicious). - Provide fake ones (and risk getting bounced for not providing a thorough record). They actually asked for feedback when this was first proposed and I wrote to them telling them why it was a bad idea. The problem is that they're asking American citizens for feedback about a proposal that doesn't impact them. I just happen to care because I am a green card holder who has family come in and know how terrible US immigration can be.

sohkamyung 10y ago

As far as I understand it, the requirement would be for foreign travelers to enter information about the social media that they use, but not their account passwords. If you have a Twitter account and you provide that information (your Twitter handle), what practical difference does it make? Twitter posts are public by default. Anybody can see your Twitter posts; you don't even have to be a follower, so I don't quite see what difference it makes to tell the US government the name of your Twitter account. Can somebody point out the error(s) in my thinking?

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
A lot of people on Twitter don't associate their twitter handle with their real name. That anonymity provides them safe haven to say things they might not say in public. Plus Twitter is just one social media platform. Reddit, 4Chan, Facebook, Hacker News, and so on are also considered social media. And once this becomes mandatory you risk getting in trouble for neglecting to provide some or all. Plus once they're tied to your real life identity they can use that information indefinitely. As an aside, I find it ironic all the people posting from anonymous accounts "why is this a big deal?" Why do you have anonymous accounts if you feel that way? Hugely hypocritical.
- zeroer 10y ago
  I'm sure there's an interpretation under which Gmail is a social media platform.
hedora 10y ago
The change is that the CBP agent will now look at your past public twitter statements, and (if facebook lets them) the semi-private communications of your known associates, and then use that to decide if they should detain you, deny access, etc. I imagine this will be implemented in a questionable fashion, like keyword search or "deep" learning, since the agent won't have time to actuall read stuff for each traveller. So, you find yourself stranded in an airport because some acquaintance you haven't talked to since high school made an anti-American comment (typoed "top" as "tpp" next to an expletive) and shared it with their facebook friends. This will clearly have a chilling effect on freedom of speech (and Trump says he wants to add some border test to make sure you have "American values" shudder). Anyway, your business trip is cancelled, so you can't do your job moving forward and have no recourse. The fact that they are looking at this stuff for foreign travelers is already way outside historical standards for acceptable government behavior. In all likelihood, they will/are running similar tests against US citizens for things like the terrorist watch list (and they want to expand the implications of being on that list, taking away more constitutional rights without trial, or any sort of due process).

peteretep 10y ago

> started demanding > the request is currently > “optional.” Law of the excluded middle

belovedeagle 10y ago
Not sure what you're trying to accomplish in this comment, but you're wrong anyways. This is an example of contradiction (~(P/\~P)), not excluded middle (P\/~P)..
- peteretep 10y ago
  Go on then kiddo, explain how in this context they differ. I'll Paypal you $5 if your answer is both coherent and correct, and there's any evidence at all that you understand the difference in this context.
  - belovedeagle 10y ago
    I'm at a loss as to how I could successfully explain the difference to someone who is clearly full of shit and doesn't himself understand the difference. There's really nothing to explain: You quoted a contradiction. You then typed the non sequitur "law of excluded middle"; I take it we were supposed to infer that the quote is false because of excluded middle. However, the quote is false because it is a contradiction, not because of excluded middle. I can alter the quote so it is false because of excluded middle: > did not demand > the request is currently not "optional" (Feel free to send BTC to 1L941R7SdDRGrVhgckCLABWuabQrniZTtP.)
    - peteretep 10y ago
      > I'm at a loss Shocker. > This is an example of > contradiction (~(P/\~P)), > not excluded middle (P\/~P) However: ~(P/\~P) <=> De Morgan's (~P\/~~P) <=> double negation (~P\/P) <=> \/ is commutative (P\/~P) Is there a difference between the two? Of course. Is producing notation that can be shown to be equivalent any way to conduct the argument? No, and it was also a clue you wouldn't know how to explain the difference between the two. > I take it we were > supposed to infer > that You can take whatever you like from it. The underlying English itself is ambiguous - you can indeed demand something that's optional - so there's not actually a contradiction there. It's more interesting then to draw attention to the fact that a third alternative to the truth value of the statement may be upcoming - perhaps the information will remain optional, unless of course you want any chance at all of your application succeeding? Tertium non datur, yet.

hackuser 10y ago

Has anyone here written something online, revealed something about yourself online (are you Muslim? Communist?), or are you associated with someone or some group online (friends with Edward Snowden on Facebook? Friends with CAIR?) that might cause you to be denied entry into the U.S.? As far as I know, the U.S. has denied entry to its critics, though I don't know how consistently they do that. (To be absolutely clear: I don't think anyone should be discriminated against based on their religion or political beliefs.)

viraptor 10y ago
Haha, good luck with that agent hackuser. But seriously, this is all up to interpretation. You've got a social profile on the service called "hacker news" - you're already suspect in the eyes of many people.

throw2016 10y ago

This is creepy and beyond the pale. And indefensible for any pretension of democracy and free speech. What right does anyone have to 'mine' your personal speech history? This directly criminalises speech and brazenly places a chilling effect on open and free discourse. This US security state has become so emboldened by citizen inaction and hand waving and ordinary americans must take control of their state. Please defend basic human rights and dignity. Don't let the naive, statists and apologists come here and defend and seek to normalize this blatant authoritarianism.

TheAceOfHearts 10y ago

The headline is misleading. I'd suggest changing the submission URL to use the original Politico post and their title: "U.S. government begins asking foreign travelers about social media". Not that I approve of this policy. Maybe it's time to kill off my social media accounts.

onion2k 10y ago
Maybe it's time to kill off my social media accounts. Wouldn't stopping posting and shutting down your accounts be a considered a negative indicator? "What changed that made you want to hide? Don't you trust the government?" It might be better to set up something that just randomly shares the latest Beyonce news or something.
- devoply 10y ago
  Maybe immediately after a year or two... it's like meh. Don't need it.
rodgerd 10y ago
I know someone (who will no longer travel to the US for conferences now) who had this shakedown attending a conference earlier this year. Not having a Twitter account immediately got him the third degree, because not having social media accounts is a red flag.
- sasas 10y ago
  Could you elaborate further on the situation without compromising details on the person? I.e. Who gave them the third degree and under what circumstances were they asked for their twitter account ?

mschuster91 10y ago

The question is, what can be done against this? With Trump soon in power, Congress in Republican hands and the Supreme Court soon too, there is no corrective element left outside Republican hands any more, except a military coup, secession of individual States or civil war. And I like none of these options, especially not given that China and to some extent Russia massively try to take geopolitical influence over from the US.

geomark 10y ago

Just last month I commented here [1] how strange it is to see America slowly but steadily moving in the same direction as the military dictatorship that I live under. And here is yet another move in that direction, because here in Thailand they have been asking foreigners for their social media account information since around mid-year this year. Edit: Link to the pertinent section of the form used by Thai immigration to ask for social media account information. [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12974377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12974377 [2] http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/pre/14609779491460977993l.jpg http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/pre/1460977...

joeguilmette 10y ago
I live in Thailand too - if you're in BKK let's get a drink. @travlbum
2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
What happens if I don't fill in these questions? Or should I just forget about visiting these countries?
- geomark 10y ago
  Thai immigration appears to be inconsistent about the requirement to complete this part of the form. Some offices say it is optional. Some offices don't ask you to fill it out at all. As far as I know they aren't asking tourists to complete it when they arrive. It seems to be only for foreigners staying long term. Time will tell whether or not they ratchet up the requirement for all foreigners to complete it.
  - ShinyCyril 10y ago
    FWIW, I was in Thailand a few weeks ago (no visa, it was a relatively short trip) - I did not see this question on the immigration form.
- herbst 10y ago
  I just ignored them. Nobody bothered to ask. Seems optional to me. Also its Skype, Linkedin and Facebook if i remember right. I dont have those.

blauditore 10y ago

What if you claim to not have any account, or refuse to provide it? Does it default to "terrorist"? Also, I think there would be a better solution: Just give travelers a form with one question. Are you a terrorist? [yes (default)] [no]

amitparikh 10y ago
This question is actually on the ESTA form: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-US-visa-form-ask-seemingly-absurd-questions-on-criminal-terrorist-activities-and-intentions https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-US-visa-form-ask-seemingl...
nolok 10y ago
It defaults to "you lied on your immigration form" which means you lose any conflict whatsoever that might happen. That's the entire reason the "do you plan on committing crimes" questions are there, after all.

bjelkeman-again 10y ago

So it will be interesting when you say that you don't have any social media accounts, or point to some essentially empty accounts. Immigration officer: "This bjelkeman-again account on Hacker News isn't your?" Me: "No sir, it isn't" Officer: "But it has your name." Me: "Sorry, I don't know who that is. Somebody impersonating me perhaps?" Officer: "Hand me your phone. An unlock it." Me: "Here it is. But it is empty. I load it from a downloaded encrypted image when I arrive at my destination. The key is given to me when I have arrive. For company security reasons." Officer: "You have to come with me." It is going to be interesting.

koheripbal 10y ago
I think this would be your answers if you want to be questioned further.
- lbotos 10y ago
  True, but none of this is really far-fetched in the realm of security. People can do this not to be difficult (as you are insinuating) but out of genuine data protection.
  - Periodic 10y ago
    My last company created a policy that when traveling to some countries, specifically China, we were told to only take fresh Chromebooks and set the up at our location. That way we could be reasonably certain there was no spyware (verified RO boot) and no way for for them to take our data even if they took our laptop during entry. Of course, the could have installed a hardware keylogger, but the risk was low enough.
    - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
      So pretty close to my imagined situation.

ulfw 10y ago

I seriously wonder if they would let somebody like Trump enter the country if he were a foreigner, based on what he posts on Twitter.

tristor 10y ago

As I've discussed in some of my comments in the past, the only morally principled way to deal with this is simply to say "No." and accept the consequences. It may suck, it may derail plans, or even alter the course of your life. But at the end, thousands of people saying "No." is the only way to stop this. The US isn't the first country to do this and it won't be the last. It's a sadly hypocritical state of affairs, but not surprising given the way things have gone recently. I travel all over the world, and I will adamantly refuse to give any information about myself which isn't contained already on my passport. The entire point of a passport is to provide the relevant information to determine whether or not to admit me across a border. If that is not sufficient, then I suppose you'll have to deport me and deal with any PR fallout for doing so (if any).

Periodic 10y ago
If you do that, then you may be judged solely on your passport. That's fine if you come from a stable and prosperous country. Traveling abroad on a German or US Passport? You're probably fine. Try the same thing on a Syrian passport and you're probably going to run into problems. I agree that we should protest, but it won't help that middle eastern student who wants to go to a conference or the business person who wants to meet a potential trade partner. Both need to travel for their livelihood, and depending on their circumstances it could significantly affect their life at home based on the opportunities they can find abroad. They might not have the luxury or the courage to simply walk away. In the US we have a way to stop this: we have to be loud enough to be heard. That doesn't involve civil disobedience (no one would listen to spoiled US citizens) but we can complain to our politicians, we can protest, we can get into the media with it. Unfortunately, it's not a majority opinion and will likely be drowned out in favor of the current wave of xenophobia sweeping US politics. If you did this coming into the US, half the country would just say they were glad you didn't come. At this point, civil disobedience on the issue is likely irresponsible.
- tristor 10y ago
  > At this point, civil disobedience on the issue is likely irresponsible. That might be true if it were only the US doing this, as the US provides other measures to fight this type of ridiculousness. It's not /only/ the US that's doing this sort of thing, it's just that the US is now doing it too. Other countries have been doing the same thing for years, and it is something we should fight against worldwide. I see nothing irresponsible about civil disobedience given that this is a global issue of border agents requiring travelers to unlock phones, turn over passwords and social media accounts, etc. I am fortunate to be traveling on a US passport, so as you point out the consequences for my refusal to cooperate are probably not as dire for me as it would be for someone from some other countries. Nonetheless, standing up for your basic principles and human rights is not a fight that is comfortable. I freely acknowledge that many people who disobey at the border could have life altering consequences for doing so, but it's also not acceptable for these sorts of questions to be asked. It's none of the government's business, frankly. Every individual has to make that choice for themselves.

vectorjohn 10y ago

Doesn't seem like a problem. The fake outrage about it is laughable. This is no different than any other kind of personal interview. They want to see evidence that you're a normal ass person, this isn't some sort of action to de-anonymize the internet, spy on your private whatever.

rurban 10y ago

The article has several mistakes: The new ESTA has those fields: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Linkedin, Youtube. No Twitter, no VKontakte. To fill out those forms is optional, not mandatory.

mzw_mzw 10y ago

How many people complaining about this policy enthusiastically voted to elect the political party that has put into place this policy in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and insisted that even considering any alternative was a straight slide into fascism?