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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

by 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.
hysan 10y ago
I made a similar comment last month after having recently moved back from living abroad for several years. I'm genuinely curious, do Americans notice how far things have changed compared to a couple years ago? Or were the changes so gradual that no one's noticed? I didn't visit the States during my time abroad so the difference to me was very shocking
- hashkb 10y ago
  Yes, we notice. Some of us... I'd happily hand over my twitter and fb usernames because I don't post anything there. The amount of privacy you should expect on social media has not changed.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    That's fine for you, but cooperating with this policy helps normalize and legitimize it and makes it more suspicious for others to decline.
  - netsharc 10y ago
    It seems like a roundabout way of squashing speech. Make the citizenry aware that they will look through your social media accounts, and it causes the citizenry to automatically self-censor themselves. Yes I know it's talking about foreign travelers, but the citizen who reads about this probably can see the metaphorical cop glancing at him saying "You're next.". Self-censorship is amazing though, before the European refugee crisis, it seems Germans were polite or tolerant towards foreigners, because it's the social norm. Now in some cities, because they know their neighbors think the same about "those people", they've also realized they're free to express their negative views. Since they'll probably say "Please kindly write down your HN username", hello to the nice immigration officer reading this!
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  I think most of us are pretty ignorant about how the entry actually works in the US. The majority of Americans never even leave the country so they have no contact with US Customs officials to develop even basic awareness of the processes foreigners might go through.
dforrestwilson1 10y ago
Just to be clear here, Google and Facebook can and do track everywhere I go, and a lot of what I say aloud to other people, but they are now complaining about registering your online identity? The internet in its current form is broken let's face it. It's way way too easy to anonymously attack others or to deceive others. Seemingly every day I read about some bank or company which was hacked or a radical terrorist who became radicalized online. Right now everyone is running around online wearing black ski masks. You don't know me and I don't know you and we have very little (legal) means of verifying who the other person actually is. Maybe I live in Macedonia and get paid to post devil's advocate replies. I would honestly be happier if we just had a national ID tied to our internet access. I sort of wonder if Internet 1 will have to break before we create a better implementation.
- ashark 10y ago
  ... or we can have more anonymity and people can stop trying to make a buck by disclosing who they actually are to the entire world online (remember when that was considered obviously stupid and only a moron or n00b would do it?). Then we get to keep the good sides of anonymity, and the worst parts of online abuse go away.
- narrowrail 10y ago
  >I would honestly be happier if we just had a national ID tied to our internet access. I sort of wonder if Internet 1 will have to break before we create a better implementation. As a US citizen, this is truly offensive. It's as if you have no understanding of the government structure and history of The United States of America. We have 50 sovereign states, and this independence has allowed the state of New York to ban fracking and the state of Colorado to legalize cannabis. Not to mention that you just laid out what I would refer to as a police state. I believe you should read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, and think more carefully about what you proposed.
  - dforrestwilson1 10y ago
    So be offended and down-vote me for expressing my opinion then? What do you think a social security number is exactly? You seem to be confusing identification with independence. I have read both papers thank you.
vectorjohn 10y ago
Some of us don't see it as a problem if random people entering the country get their public tweets investigated. Why on earth wouldn't this be a good thing?
- smileysteve 10y ago
  What's the line for a tweet though? It may start with ISIS alignment (but seriously, if that's what catches a would be terrorist, it's both a pathetic statement of our other law enforcement and that terrorist.) But where does "suspicion" end? Black Lives Matter had a terrorist attack in Dallas, if I tweeted I was near a protest, will that flag me? What if I tweeted that President Elect Trump was "unelectable" as Barack Obama had press conference?
  - vectorjohn 10y ago
    But again, why would it be bad if that "flagged" you? It's not like any of this sends you straight to jail or something. You should be investigated further if there is some signal that can help direct limited resources where they will be more effective. Law enforcement doesn't have limitless resources, and the downside to misdirecting them or looking aimlessly is you let actual criminals or what have you go unnoticed. I simply don't understand the outrage. It seems random and unconnected to reality. Your public social media whatever is public. Why wouldn't it be investigated just like anything else about you that can be gleaned?
    - kelnos 10y ago
      Mainly because of the chilling effect on speech this sort of thing causes. If you're on notice that your social media accounts will be examined at a border crossing, you'll be less likely to speak your mind regularly, if you have anything to say that's at all critical of the government in question. As these sorts of things become more normalized and pervasive, people feel less comfortable exercising their right to free speech, which makes it one of those things that are "only true in theory". There's also the flaw in the idea that these things are related. If I say on a social media account something critical of the government or an elected official, that doesn't actually make me (me, personally, that is; I'm not speaking in generalities) any more likely to commit a crime or be involved in terrorism. However, a generic, statistics-based approach to flagging things like that assumes it does. It's also not clear about what's public and what's private. My Facebook account is locked down so only my friends can see anything I post. Some people make their Twitter and Instagram accounts private. While that's not the same sort of "private" as "only exists on my computer's hard drive", it's still certainly not public in the same way that a comment on a HN thread is. If I give an immigration official my FB username, does that mean they get to look at my posts through a backdoor given to them by FB, even though all my content there is marked friends-only? If so, then I have a problem with that as it violates my due process rights (it should require a specific warrant, with my name on it, for FB to hand over that data). If not, then providing my FB account to them is useless, as they won't be able to get anything from it anyway[1]. I get your "limited resources" argument, but, to be blunt, I just don't care. I am firmly of the opinion that less effective law enforcement is a perfectly acceptable consequence of greater personal privacy. Fewer people in the US are killed by terrorism than by falling off a piece of furniture, so I'm not particularly concerned with trying to optimize the search for terrorists at the expense of due process and privacy protections. [1] Actually that's not entirely true, as my friend list is public. So they could theoretically flag me based on someone I "know" (using scare quotes because a FB "friendship" tells you virtually nothing about the relationship between two people), which is ridiculous.

by geomark 10y ago

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.

hysan 10y ago

I made a similar comment last month after having recently moved back from living abroad for several years. I'm genuinely curious, do Americans notice how far things have changed compared to a couple years ago? Or were the changes so gradual that no one's noticed? I didn't visit the States during my time abroad so the difference to me was very shocking

hashkb 10y ago
Yes, we notice. Some of us... I'd happily hand over my twitter and fb usernames because I don't post anything there. The amount of privacy you should expect on social media has not changed.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  That's fine for you, but cooperating with this policy helps normalize and legitimize it and makes it more suspicious for others to decline.
- netsharc 10y ago
  It seems like a roundabout way of squashing speech. Make the citizenry aware that they will look through your social media accounts, and it causes the citizenry to automatically self-censor themselves. Yes I know it's talking about foreign travelers, but the citizen who reads about this probably can see the metaphorical cop glancing at him saying "You're next.". Self-censorship is amazing though, before the European refugee crisis, it seems Germans were polite or tolerant towards foreigners, because it's the social norm. Now in some cities, because they know their neighbors think the same about "those people", they've also realized they're free to express their negative views. Since they'll probably say "Please kindly write down your HN username", hello to the nice immigration officer reading this!
Jtsummers 10y ago
I think most of us are pretty ignorant about how the entry actually works in the US. The majority of Americans never even leave the country so they have no contact with US Customs officials to develop even basic awareness of the processes foreigners might go through.

dforrestwilson1 10y ago

Just to be clear here, Google and Facebook can and do track everywhere I go, and a lot of what I say aloud to other people, but they are now complaining about registering your online identity? The internet in its current form is broken let's face it. It's way way too easy to anonymously attack others or to deceive others. Seemingly every day I read about some bank or company which was hacked or a radical terrorist who became radicalized online. Right now everyone is running around online wearing black ski masks. You don't know me and I don't know you and we have very little (legal) means of verifying who the other person actually is. Maybe I live in Macedonia and get paid to post devil's advocate replies. I would honestly be happier if we just had a national ID tied to our internet access. I sort of wonder if Internet 1 will have to break before we create a better implementation.

ashark 10y ago
... or we can have more anonymity and people can stop trying to make a buck by disclosing who they actually are to the entire world online (remember when that was considered obviously stupid and only a moron or n00b would do it?). Then we get to keep the good sides of anonymity, and the worst parts of online abuse go away.
narrowrail 10y ago
>I would honestly be happier if we just had a national ID tied to our internet access. I sort of wonder if Internet 1 will have to break before we create a better implementation. As a US citizen, this is truly offensive. It's as if you have no understanding of the government structure and history of The United States of America. We have 50 sovereign states, and this independence has allowed the state of New York to ban fracking and the state of Colorado to legalize cannabis. Not to mention that you just laid out what I would refer to as a police state. I believe you should read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, and think more carefully about what you proposed.
- dforrestwilson1 10y ago
  So be offended and down-vote me for expressing my opinion then? What do you think a social security number is exactly? You seem to be confusing identification with independence. I have read both papers thank you.

vectorjohn 10y ago

Some of us don't see it as a problem if random people entering the country get their public tweets investigated. Why on earth wouldn't this be a good thing?

smileysteve 10y ago
What's the line for a tweet though? It may start with ISIS alignment (but seriously, if that's what catches a would be terrorist, it's both a pathetic statement of our other law enforcement and that terrorist.) But where does "suspicion" end? Black Lives Matter had a terrorist attack in Dallas, if I tweeted I was near a protest, will that flag me? What if I tweeted that President Elect Trump was "unelectable" as Barack Obama had press conference?
- vectorjohn 10y ago
  But again, why would it be bad if that "flagged" you? It's not like any of this sends you straight to jail or something. You should be investigated further if there is some signal that can help direct limited resources where they will be more effective. Law enforcement doesn't have limitless resources, and the downside to misdirecting them or looking aimlessly is you let actual criminals or what have you go unnoticed. I simply don't understand the outrage. It seems random and unconnected to reality. Your public social media whatever is public. Why wouldn't it be investigated just like anything else about you that can be gleaned?
  - kelnos 10y ago
    Mainly because of the chilling effect on speech this sort of thing causes. If you're on notice that your social media accounts will be examined at a border crossing, you'll be less likely to speak your mind regularly, if you have anything to say that's at all critical of the government in question. As these sorts of things become more normalized and pervasive, people feel less comfortable exercising their right to free speech, which makes it one of those things that are "only true in theory". There's also the flaw in the idea that these things are related. If I say on a social media account something critical of the government or an elected official, that doesn't actually make me (me, personally, that is; I'm not speaking in generalities) any more likely to commit a crime or be involved in terrorism. However, a generic, statistics-based approach to flagging things like that assumes it does. It's also not clear about what's public and what's private. My Facebook account is locked down so only my friends can see anything I post. Some people make their Twitter and Instagram accounts private. While that's not the same sort of "private" as "only exists on my computer's hard drive", it's still certainly not public in the same way that a comment on a HN thread is. If I give an immigration official my FB username, does that mean they get to look at my posts through a backdoor given to them by FB, even though all my content there is marked friends-only? If so, then I have a problem with that as it violates my due process rights (it should require a specific warrant, with my name on it, for FB to hand over that data). If not, then providing my FB account to them is useless, as they won't be able to get anything from it anyway[1]. I get your "limited resources" argument, but, to be blunt, I just don't care. I am firmly of the opinion that less effective law enforcement is a perfectly acceptable consequence of greater personal privacy. Fewer people in the US are killed by terrorism than by falling off a piece of furniture, so I'm not particularly concerned with trying to optimize the search for terrorists at the expense of due process and privacy protections. [1] Actually that's not entirely true, as my friend list is public. So they could theoretically flag me based on someone I "know" (using scare quotes because a FB "friendship" tells you virtually nothing about the relationship between two people), which is ridiculous.