9 ms·

Want to come to the US? Be prepared to hand over your passwords

82 points by cryo 10y ago

cbeach 10y ago
If the UK had been able to read the rants of Omar Bakri Muhammad beforehand, we could have avoided him immigrating from Syria. Once here, he fostered the notorious Hizb Ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun movements. Both these movements have made this country a less safe place to be. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bakri_Muhammad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bakri_Muhammad Sadly in these times, and from a handful of nations - we do need to consider who we're letting in, and what their real attitude is toward the West. In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11. Let's not be naive here.
- pabloski 10y ago
  As if under Obama there was no TSA. I am starting to really despise this "fake news" machines called mass media. They are trying to show that Trump is the Antichrist while they choose to forget how Obama has destroyed half of Middle East and setted up a police State through NSA, secret laws, secret courts, indiscriminate droning of innocent people. Hypocrites at its best, this is what the mass media have become. Oh right, Trump hasn't received the Nobel prize for peace!
  - throwayawnotime 10y ago
    you write: "how Obama has destroyed half of Middle East and setted up a police State through NSA" Do you emember the 90's, 2000's?
  - vixen99 10y ago
    Fake news? Watching CNN and BBC World you'd guess that most people are against Trump's ban. That's not quite what this survey shows for Europeans. https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-europeans-think-about-muslim-immigration https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-european... "Our results are striking and sobering ..."
    - w0utert 10y ago
      I've seen Trump tweet that survey as well, goes to show how short-sighted and selective people are when it comes to judging information at its face value. The survey asked about limiting immigration from Islamic countries, not about a general travel ban for people from an arbitrary list of countries. Big difference. If the survey had asked about immigration in general (not just from some islamic countries), I expect the results would not have been much different. Yet by simply reframing the question slightly and the results could have been vastly different. It has been shown time and time again that by simply adding a subtext ('...except for people with a stable job, income and education', 'does that also apply to relatives of your friendly neighbor from Egypt who runs the islamic store at the corner') all of a sudden the majority isn't so certain what they think about immigration anymore. Last but not least this is after a slew of recent acts of terrorism and a general discontent of the population of many countries with their government, the EU, the economy, etc. It says more about the sentiment of angry/disappointed people, than about what they really think about immigration policy. I'm a little sad this is what people nowadays base their opinions on, and act on it when they vote. To me it seems the idea of democracy and asking people to choose their own government and policy is starting to fall apart by the stupidity and ignorance of people, and the ease by which they are played by feeding them half-truths and misinformation. It's scary to think about what this could lead to.
      - cancancan 10y ago
        The right wing sentiments have been on the rise long before the recent terrorist attacks. Anyone not living in an echo chamber could see it, you don't really need that survey. > To me it seems the idea of democracy and asking people to choose their own government and policy is starting to fall apart by the stupidity and ignorance of people... I would argue that this kind of reasoning is precisely why many people are turning to the right. Instead of allowing them to voice their concerns and trying to understand them even if you end up disagreeing with them, they are shunned and labeled as stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, etc. Just put anyone you disagree with in the basket of deplorables and call it a day. Job done, right? Well it isn't. And if Brexit and Trump are not strong enough signals, there will be more and stronger. This picture captures the sentiment quite well: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw2Bx5bUcAAV2Of.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw2Bx5bUcAAV2Of.jpg The longer the high-horsing continues the more the pendulum swings to the right and society becomes more divided and on a path to catastrophic collision. Unfortunately, no lessons have been learned so far. The arrogance continues, and so will the response to it.
  - p49k 10y ago
    This is classic Whataboutism[1]. The startup community has been criticizing Obama on many of these issues for the past eight years as well. That Obama engaged in such activity doesn't suddenly mean that Trump's administration is justified, nor does it mean that things won't get much worse with Trump. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    - fennecfoxen 10y ago
      Writing it off as "whataboutism" is a way to avoid uncomfortable lines of questioning, so I will make these questions explicit here: Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically? Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the cause for petty power games? Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny? Can you trust them to push for durable reform against tyranny, or are they merely interested in install their own tyrant?
      - mugsie 10y ago
        > Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically? maybe because in the very first press conference, the press secretary lied, blatantly, and acted like it was no big deal. > Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny? "Fight Against Tyranny" just out of interest - what tyranny is that?
      - p49k 10y ago
        Writing it off as "whataboutism" is a way to avoid uncomfortable lines of questioning No it's not, it's to point out a clear logical fallacy in OP's post. Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically? They didn't; this is false. The same people who are angry at specific abuses after Jan 20 were also angry before. See the thousands of articles posted on HN about these issues over the past eight years. This is also true from major news sources - even the liberal ones haven't failed to criticize Obama over these issues. That having been said, it should be expected that a president who is more severe in abusing his power would provoke more anger. It's not black and white. Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the cause for petty power games? For the rest of your post, can you explain what you mean by "they", by "the fight for $CAUSE" and the "Fight Against Tyranny"? Also, can you give specific examples? This is too ambiguous to respond to.
- onion2k 10y ago
  Let's not be naive here. These measures won't work. Any moderately intelligent person will just buy a new phone before they come here, and claim not to have a social media profile. Terrorists are evil; they aren't stupid. Only a very naive person would think this is an effective way of keeping extremists out.
  - burgerdev 10y ago
    Which in turn makes people without social media profiles more suspicious. Thinking that I was kind of satisfied after deleting my facebook account :( Will they eventually realize that "Give us your laptop's password!" is even more efficient?
    - tn13 10y ago
      I already have fake profiles on FB linked-in and Twiter!
  - mattcoles 10y ago
    Not to mention the gross violation of privacy here...
- rimantas 10y ago
  But the attackers were from Saudi Arabia, which is "curiously" (nothing curious about that) not on the list.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    > But the attackers were from Saudi Arabia 15 were from KSA, two from Egypt, one from Morocco and one from Yemen. The DHS and State Department determined that all but one of those countries (1) did not threaten the USA on a national-policy basis and (2) shared sufficient pre-travel information on their subjects attempting to enter the USA. The made that determination prior to February 2016. So indeed nothing curious.
- barrkel 10y ago
  This is the easiest thing in the world to game, so only innocent people would have their privacy violated. Criminals and other people with bad intent would maintain a facade of normalcy. Social media vetting has structurally the same argument as banning guns, BTW. If you ban guns, then only non-criminals will be without guns; if you require people's social media passwords, only non-criminals will be without privacy.
- isoprophlex 10y ago
  https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_1_1.pdf https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_... “From 1975 through 2015, the chance that an American would be killed in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion a year" Before commenting on the large temporal window, please refer to figure 1 in the PDF. Table 1 is nice to read too. You'll see how, in the light of actual data, your comment can be interpreted as fear-driven preposterousness.
  - cancancan 10y ago
    And a chance of getting killed by an atomic bomb before 1945 is zero :)
- gambiting 10y ago
  >>In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11 source? >>If the UK had been able to read the rants of Omar Bakri Muhammad beforehand, we could have avoided him immigrating from Syria. On the other hand, recent terrorists in France, Germany, US, were all known to the police, and yet they weren't stopped. If you think that surrendering your privacy when crossing borders is worth it, then I think you are deeply mistaken.
  - polotics 10y ago
    amazing that this 2001 street party meme, already debunked to death, is still being trotted out
  - cbeach 10y ago
    >> Source Well documented all over YouTube. Here's one summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_TwEaF5Jh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_TwEaF5Jh0
    - gambiting 10y ago
      summary of parties....in US. Let me quote the original statement: "In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11" so.....again, source?
riffic 10y ago
You would violate the terms of service for sharing your passwords with a third-party. Facebook for example: https://www.facebook.com/terms https://www.facebook.com/terms Section 4, number 8: "You will not share your password (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account."
- ominous 10y ago
  "do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account" Logging in using a common combinations of browser, OS, machine, keyboard, environment also jeopardizes the security of your account. Exploits, keyloggers, onlookers, etc. Does violating the terms of service trigger anything, or is just something that Facebook can use against you, should it be needed?
  - Sjoerd 10y ago
    It is currently unclear whether violating the terms of service is a crime: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/violating-terms-use-isnt-crime-eff-tells-court-again https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/violating-terms-use-is...
    - fjert 10y ago
      I'm confused how it is at all debatable that violating a company's arbitrary ToS would be a crime.
- amelius 10y ago
  This is useless, legally speaking, since the law overrides any ToS from any company.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The request from the immigration officers isn't actually a legal obligation, it's just that they can make it a condition of entry.
devoply 10y ago
Sorry don't have any passwords to share, they are in my password keeper and I left that file at home.
- Someone 10y ago
  I would expect the reply would be "do you want to fly back or stay for a while in a 'hotel' we choose?"
- ploggingdev 10y ago
  From the article: > If they don’t want to cooperate then they don’t come in. If they truly want to come to America they’ll cooperate, if not then ‘next in line’. You will most likely be considered as "not cooperating".
- DrJokepu 10y ago
  And then the CBP officer will put you on the next flight back. You don't have to hand over your password, they don't have to admit you to the United States.
  - aedron 10y ago
    The travel info airport websites now says that if you are traveling to the U.S., please make sure all your electronic devices are charged with a full battery.
thesehands 10y ago
I wonder how long before social media services begin to offer a dead man switch equivalent whereby all private communication is deleted given a user defined 'wrong' password that grants access to the account?
- krapp 10y ago
  Given that most American social media and telecom companies seem to go above and beyond to cooperate with US intelligence and law enforcement (Room 641A, PRISM, etc.) I think it's more likely that there will be a switch that dumps all private communication directly to an NSA server on demand.
skzo 10y ago
Nope, not planning on ever going to the US again.
- facetube 10y ago
  We're planning on emigrating away from the US. We're out of stocks entirely, and are doing as much as we can to avoid directing money to the US government while these serial liars have it in their grasp. We're not buying things unless we absolutely need them. The United State has begun a long, downward spiral at the hands of the comically-unqualified Mr. Trump. Every day that America refuses to reckon with this problem – Mr. Trump's serial lying, his nepotism, his increasingly-eratic behavior, and the dangerous Lenninist "destroy everything" views of his surrogate Bannon – the harder it becomes to undo. Donald Trump is a serial liar, a bully, a probable sex offender, and carries with him a following of christian dominionists who are (a) in possession of nuclear weapons and (b) desperately want a war with a billions-strong religion they've decided to wage was on, via the doctrine of collective punishment. Labor is a type of capital. Trumpism, meet capital flight.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    If you think this spiral began with Trump, you're living in a fairy tale.
    - facetube 10y ago
      Never said it did. However, Trump brings dangerous aspects with him that other leaders have lacked: (i) he's willing to engage in direct personal attacks against the media, the judicial system, and electorate as a whole (i.e. "check out sex tape"), going as far as to tell the entire fourth estate to "be quiet for a while". (ii) he has repeatedly cast nuclear weapons as a tool not just of mutual assured destruction, but as a potentially useful first-strike tool as well – "the power, the devastation, is very important to [him]". [1] The implications for this in Iran should be troubling – Tehran alone has 78 million civilian men, women, and children who don't want to die. (iii) he had the gall to ask for Russia's support in securing opposition research against his political opponent, during a live news conference on July 17th, 2016. Russia remains under US sanction for its role in the MH17 disaster and the well-documented programs aimed at interfering with the 2016 US election [2]. "Russia, if you're listening..." [3]. The American public needs to know the extent of the preexisting relationship between Trump, his associates, and Putin's administration. (iv) He has yet to eliminate basic conflicts of interest within his administration (e.g. Kushner, a son-in-law prohibited under 5 USC § 3110 in normal circumstances). He had yet to place his business holdings – which continue to fall afoul of the constitution's emoluments clause, e.g. in the GSA situation – into a true family-undirected blind trust. (v) He has a long trend of loudly and publicly denigrating judges, jurists, the legislative bench as a whole, an entire department store, criminal suspects cleared of wrongdoing, and wounded prisoners of war who still serve the country today. He appears to have no civics-101 level set of knowledge with which to navigate the legislative or judicial process. (vi) Trump openly used white supremacist imagery and symbolism ("88 generals, fourteen three-star or higher") throughout his campaign. [4][5][6] Noted white-supremacist website Stormfront celebrated the release of his September 6th, 2016 press release depicting multiple white-supermacist symbols. (vii) Trump refuses to accept conclusions of scientific fact, especially those related to the impact of man on the climate of planet Earth. (viii) Trump does not appear to have the technical competence for the job of president: he repeatedly fails to understand constitutional limits, and frequently does not seek out any substantive analysis of existing precedent and case law before issuing orders. This causes predictable chaos (as we witnessed during his immigration order). (ix) Trump goes out of his way to harass and defame peaceful protests. When there is an isolated violent act at an existing peaceful protest, Trump follows the doctrine of collective punishment and holds the whole protest group responsible. (x) We've never seen mass internet adoption at this level during a presidential campaign, and we've never also been the target of a state-sponsored disinformation campaign (see [2]). There are new forces at work here. If you want to go further: Steve Bannon, sometimes-president but full-time National Security Council member, is a board member of Cambridge Analytica, the company that manipulated social graph relationship data to determine which clusters of people (sorry, "Influencers") to microtarget. [7] 1:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSrP1KSR0H4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSrP1KSR0H4 2: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Statement_on_Declassified_Intelligence_Community_Assessment_of_Russian_Activities_and_Intentions_in_Recent_U.S._Elections.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Sta... 3: https://youtu.be/ZnY7D4M4k68?t=20s https://youtu.be/ZnY7D4M4k68?t=20s 4: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/88-retired-u.s.-generals-and-admirals-endorse-trump https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/88-retired-u.s.-... 5: http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/88.html http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/88.html 6: http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/14-words.html http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/14-words... 7: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers-who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/ http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-cruncher...
dbg31415 10y ago
How do they store your passwords? Wouldn't the liability of having all those financial account passwords be enough reason not to do something this moronic? Furthermore, what if my account requires 2FA? How do they prove I even have an account? This is pure dipshitery.
Nugem_ 10y ago
And who is to say whether or not someone has a Facebook account? 1 Billion FB users, 7 Billion people on earth (guessing, didn't look up numbers) And what about criminals that know about this possible boarder check and will have dummy padded pro American social media accounts?
- onion2k 10y ago
  FB claims almost 1.9 billion users, with 1.7 billion active at least once a month. Still some way off everyone, but for the right demographic (between 20 and 40, lives in a city, in a country with communications infrastructure) it's not unreasonable to see not having a FB account as really unusual.
- 101938101 10y ago
  Only terrorists do not have a Facebook account!
known 10y ago
Fascism?
laaph 10y ago
I took Turkish airways from San Francisco to Istanbul. It was packed, though most were transferring to places further. Now I'm on the return trip, and the airplane is half full. I'm wondering if all the Indians and south Asians will be coming back to the US, or did I catch a slow day back to the US? Perhaps this is the wrong place to wonder of all the effects of US immigration policies, but even here people are saying they won't go to the US.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  I spent a few weeks in India last month, and talking to local techies I didn't get the impression that the Indian 'American Dream' has lost any interest. The Western media is reporting otherwise though, so read into this as you like.
  - aedron 10y ago
    People in India and the rest of the third world all want to go to Europe or the U.S. It is the rest of us you have to worry about. As an engineer in Europe who has often toyed with the idea of going to America, that idea is all but dead, mostly because I would have to enter a legal no man's land (U.S. border security) where anything I have ever said might be used to hold me in custody and/or expel me from the country (including a comment like this one, were I dumb enough to post it on a forum tied to my real name). For people who have a choice, America is looking less attractive by the day.
    - bobosha 10y ago
      > People in India and the rest of the third world all want to go to Europe or the U.S. It is the rest of us you have to worry about. I would challenge that notion. The Indian community is now in a reverse immigration, that the population is reaching an equilibrium (~3 million). While the students continue to flock to US univs, many are choosing to return. And this was before Trump. I suspect this would be even more now given the h1b visas and other challenges.
ploggingdev 10y ago
It's already happening, even to people who are not from the 7 blacklisted countries : https://twitter.com/wirehead2501/status/829559451610931200 https://twitter.com/wirehead2501/status/829559451610931200
pjc50 10y ago
Does any other country do this? Are they going to start now that the US is doing it? It's definitely put me right off traveling to the US with a smartphone or a computer. The strange thing is: don't they already have quite a lot of this information? Isn't that what the whole fight with the NSA is about? Is this just a very high profile way of intimidating dissidents? e.g. https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-bo...
- gambiting 10y ago
  It's normalizing the invasion of privacy. If you subject everyone to it, then it becomes the new normal. My parents grew up in a communist republic, and every phone call would begin with "this conversation is being monitored" said by the operator(and yes, the operator would listen in and report you to the secret police if you said something suspicious). Initially people were upset and then they didn't care, because you couldn't call anyone in any other way, so you had to accept that every conversation was being listened to.
  - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
    But we are only doing it to catch serious criminals!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7369543.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7369543.stm
- Veratyr 10y ago
  Does it matter? America doesn't care what other countries do. America is unique, or close to unique in the western world in that: - It taxes its citizens and permanent residents abroad. - It doesn't require employers to give vacation time, sick leave, personal leave or parental leave. - Other nearby countries have to clear incoming travellers with it before they can allow them on a plane to their territory. Just off the top of my head.
dragonbonheur 10y ago
Setting up an IFTTT recipe to post from RSS feeds to Social media accounts is child's play. Anyone can create a fake social media footprint while they sleep, so it's pointless to demand passwords to social media accounts. Can't expect much intelligence or common sense from an Idiocracy.
greens231 10y ago
wow. reposting my comment from another article here: till last year i was thinking of getting a visa and trying my luck in the valley. now it seems (having learned more about america) that a significant part of the population thinks science is a liberal hoax, thinks the government and media is constantly lying, carries assault rifles and believes shit like pizzagate is not only plausible but true.
- song 10y ago
  To be fair, apart from carrying guns (which is a bit of an American specificity), a significant percentage of the population of any country is quite stupid, easily manipulated and tend to vote for populist types that cater to their low intelligence. For examples in Europe, see Brexit, Berlusconi, the rise of Lepen in France, the Freedom Party of Austria and a lot of examples... The problem is that this time, in the US, those people have actually been able to vote for a candidate that represent their values (and it's not the second time, Bush was already a good example of that)
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    I think you're spot on, it's so dangerous to think this can't happen anywhere else. Stupid laws get ratified in every country. For the US, one difference is the media coverage is good, and the debate is widely publicised. Whereas in e.g. the UK, everybody just shrugs [0]. Apathy is far more dangerous than outrage. [0] e.g. being compelled to hand over passwords in "terror" or "national security" matters, or be jailed otherwise
dandelion_lover 10y ago
By the way, EFF seeks stories about digital border searches: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/invasive-digital-border-searches-tell-eff-your-story https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/invasive-digital-borde...
cesarb 10y ago
Giving a third-party access to your passwords is worse than merely a privacy invasion. It gives said third-party the ability not only to read, but also to write. It's even worse if your account has elevated privileges. And, like others, I wonder how they deal with 2FA.
reachtarunhere 10y ago
Makes me feel RMS is not crazy afterall.
- verytrivial 10y ago
  It is a bit sad that someone is often (jokingly) referred to as crazy because of consistent application application of a defensible moral position. I think people get stuck on the idea that it is difficult for users to get as good an experience with free-only software, or that it is difficult to make money creating that software. That's a different problem and not an argument he engages with his zeal. Choosing to defend freedom and not support tyranny is a moral decision not a purely economic calculation. Edit: I just R'd the FA and speaking as a non-US citizen, I will not visit that country for the foreseeable future.
- krapp 10y ago
  How would the tenets of Free Software prevent the US government from demanding the account passwords of international travelers?
- aedron 10y ago
  My hippie parents used to talk a lot of crazy paranoid shit when we were growing up. All of it has since been proven true.
csomar 10y ago
This is the first step and after that putting your online passwords will be a mandatory step of accessing the US whether you need a Visa or not. The next step will be a mandatory access of all your online accounts (emails, social media, etc) by the government for US Citizens. I'm not a US citizen and I don't live there. But if you can't see this coming, then you have been successfully frightened by the system and sold on "terrorism".
- secfirstmd 10y ago
  As we mentioned in our trainings. In some contexts and threat models it might be worth certain individuals building their fake secondary social media presence profiles and creating a pattern of life for them, for just this reason.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    It doesn't help though, because the form will ask for all online social media accounts, so if you fail to mention your real one it will either get you in trouble straight away, or at some undefined point in the future. Say you go to US for work, give them a fake account, then 10 years later you want to apply for citizenship and you can't, because 10 years earlier you lied on your entry form.
    - csomar 10y ago
      Maybe, then, if you are a real terrorist you hold on from publishing your photos/videos of beheading people on social media accounts with your name?
      - pjc50 10y ago
        What about hiding your ACLU work? https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-bo...
    - secfirstmd 10y ago
CM30 10y ago
Depressingly, it seems this idea was originally proposed around June 2016, with the scheme only just being made mandatory instead of optional: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-customs-border-protection-social-media-accounts-facebook-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-custom... So it's not purely tied to the recent political changes. The US Department of Homeland Security has wanted this for a while. Either way, it's terrible. It goes against the terms of service for almost all online service providers, it opens up another avenue for customs to frame you by using your account to post messages/view controversial content, it's a massive privacy risk and it mostly punishes people who are both small time enough and honest enough to only have one account per service to hand over.
- gpvos 10y ago
  Back then there were no plans to ask for passwords, just the names/URLs of the accounts.
benevol 10y ago
This country is pretty obviously on a downward spiral for some time now. And things only seem to accelerate. It's just sad to see things go backwards again. Especially given the influence the country has on the entire World. Let's stop this madness.
merricksb 10y ago
Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598505
Overtonwindow 10y ago
Why couldn't they create fake accounts?
nogbit 10y ago
Just setup dual boot to auto load some lame duck OS with some lame duck user activity, for laptops anyway. Any attempt to load the other boot without some special password results in a "drive not found"...ahem, yah...not found. Encrypted drives of course, the people doing the inspections don't have a clue. Worried about phones, you are pwned already, hell, Intel ME pwned all of us!

82 points by cryo 10y ago

If the UK had been able to read the rants of Omar Bakri Muhammad beforehand, we could have avoided him immigrating from Syria. Once here, he fostered the notorious Hizb Ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun movements. Both these movements have made this country a less safe place to be. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bakri_Muhammad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bakri_Muhammad Sadly in these times, and from a handful of nations - we do need to consider who we're letting in, and what their real attitude is toward the West. In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11. Let's not be naive here.

pabloski 10y ago
As if under Obama there was no TSA. I am starting to really despise this "fake news" machines called mass media. They are trying to show that Trump is the Antichrist while they choose to forget how Obama has destroyed half of Middle East and setted up a police State through NSA, secret laws, secret courts, indiscriminate droning of innocent people. Hypocrites at its best, this is what the mass media have become. Oh right, Trump hasn't received the Nobel prize for peace!
- throwayawnotime 10y ago
  you write: "how Obama has destroyed half of Middle East and setted up a police State through NSA" Do you emember the 90's, 2000's?
- vixen99 10y ago
  Fake news? Watching CNN and BBC World you'd guess that most people are against Trump's ban. That's not quite what this survey shows for Europeans. https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-europeans-think-about-muslim-immigration https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-european... "Our results are striking and sobering ..."
  - w0utert 10y ago
    I've seen Trump tweet that survey as well, goes to show how short-sighted and selective people are when it comes to judging information at its face value. The survey asked about limiting immigration from Islamic countries, not about a general travel ban for people from an arbitrary list of countries. Big difference. If the survey had asked about immigration in general (not just from some islamic countries), I expect the results would not have been much different. Yet by simply reframing the question slightly and the results could have been vastly different. It has been shown time and time again that by simply adding a subtext ('...except for people with a stable job, income and education', 'does that also apply to relatives of your friendly neighbor from Egypt who runs the islamic store at the corner') all of a sudden the majority isn't so certain what they think about immigration anymore. Last but not least this is after a slew of recent acts of terrorism and a general discontent of the population of many countries with their government, the EU, the economy, etc. It says more about the sentiment of angry/disappointed people, than about what they really think about immigration policy. I'm a little sad this is what people nowadays base their opinions on, and act on it when they vote. To me it seems the idea of democracy and asking people to choose their own government and policy is starting to fall apart by the stupidity and ignorance of people, and the ease by which they are played by feeding them half-truths and misinformation. It's scary to think about what this could lead to.
    - cancancan 10y ago
      The right wing sentiments have been on the rise long before the recent terrorist attacks. Anyone not living in an echo chamber could see it, you don't really need that survey. > To me it seems the idea of democracy and asking people to choose their own government and policy is starting to fall apart by the stupidity and ignorance of people... I would argue that this kind of reasoning is precisely why many people are turning to the right. Instead of allowing them to voice their concerns and trying to understand them even if you end up disagreeing with them, they are shunned and labeled as stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, etc. Just put anyone you disagree with in the basket of deplorables and call it a day. Job done, right? Well it isn't. And if Brexit and Trump are not strong enough signals, there will be more and stronger. This picture captures the sentiment quite well: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw2Bx5bUcAAV2Of.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw2Bx5bUcAAV2Of.jpg The longer the high-horsing continues the more the pendulum swings to the right and society becomes more divided and on a path to catastrophic collision. Unfortunately, no lessons have been learned so far. The arrogance continues, and so will the response to it.
- p49k 10y ago
  This is classic Whataboutism[1]. The startup community has been criticizing Obama on many of these issues for the past eight years as well. That Obama engaged in such activity doesn't suddenly mean that Trump's administration is justified, nor does it mean that things won't get much worse with Trump. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    Writing it off as "whataboutism" is a way to avoid uncomfortable lines of questioning, so I will make these questions explicit here: Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically? Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the cause for petty power games? Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny? Can you trust them to push for durable reform against tyranny, or are they merely interested in install their own tyrant?
    - mugsie 10y ago
      > Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically? maybe because in the very first press conference, the press secretary lied, blatantly, and acted like it was no big deal. > Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny? "Fight Against Tyranny" just out of interest - what tyranny is that?
    - p49k 10y ago
      Writing it off as "whataboutism" is a way to avoid uncomfortable lines of questioning No it's not, it's to point out a clear logical fallacy in OP's post. Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically? They didn't; this is false. The same people who are angry at specific abuses after Jan 20 were also angry before. See the thousands of articles posted on HN about these issues over the past eight years. This is also true from major news sources - even the liberal ones haven't failed to criticize Obama over these issues. That having been said, it should be expected that a president who is more severe in abusing his power would provoke more anger. It's not black and white. Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the cause for petty power games? For the rest of your post, can you explain what you mean by "they", by "the fight for $CAUSE" and the "Fight Against Tyranny"? Also, can you give specific examples? This is too ambiguous to respond to.
onion2k 10y ago
Let's not be naive here. These measures won't work. Any moderately intelligent person will just buy a new phone before they come here, and claim not to have a social media profile. Terrorists are evil; they aren't stupid. Only a very naive person would think this is an effective way of keeping extremists out.
- burgerdev 10y ago
  Which in turn makes people without social media profiles more suspicious. Thinking that I was kind of satisfied after deleting my facebook account :( Will they eventually realize that "Give us your laptop's password!" is even more efficient?
  - tn13 10y ago
    I already have fake profiles on FB linked-in and Twiter!
- mattcoles 10y ago
  Not to mention the gross violation of privacy here...
rimantas 10y ago
But the attackers were from Saudi Arabia, which is "curiously" (nothing curious about that) not on the list.
- dingaling 10y ago
  > But the attackers were from Saudi Arabia 15 were from KSA, two from Egypt, one from Morocco and one from Yemen. The DHS and State Department determined that all but one of those countries (1) did not threaten the USA on a national-policy basis and (2) shared sufficient pre-travel information on their subjects attempting to enter the USA. The made that determination prior to February 2016. So indeed nothing curious.
barrkel 10y ago
This is the easiest thing in the world to game, so only innocent people would have their privacy violated. Criminals and other people with bad intent would maintain a facade of normalcy. Social media vetting has structurally the same argument as banning guns, BTW. If you ban guns, then only non-criminals will be without guns; if you require people's social media passwords, only non-criminals will be without privacy.
isoprophlex 10y ago
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_1_1.pdf https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_... “From 1975 through 2015, the chance that an American would be killed in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion a year" Before commenting on the large temporal window, please refer to figure 1 in the PDF. Table 1 is nice to read too. You'll see how, in the light of actual data, your comment can be interpreted as fear-driven preposterousness.
- cancancan 10y ago
  And a chance of getting killed by an atomic bomb before 1945 is zero :)
gambiting 10y ago
>>In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11 source? >>If the UK had been able to read the rants of Omar Bakri Muhammad beforehand, we could have avoided him immigrating from Syria. On the other hand, recent terrorists in France, Germany, US, were all known to the police, and yet they weren't stopped. If you think that surrendering your privacy when crossing borders is worth it, then I think you are deeply mistaken.
- polotics 10y ago
  amazing that this 2001 street party meme, already debunked to death, is still being trotted out
- cbeach 10y ago
  >> Source Well documented all over YouTube. Here's one summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_TwEaF5Jh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_TwEaF5Jh0
  - gambiting 10y ago
    summary of parties....in US. Let me quote the original statement: "In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street parties to celebrate 9/11" so.....again, source?

riffic 10y ago

You would violate the terms of service for sharing your passwords with a third-party. Facebook for example: https://www.facebook.com/terms https://www.facebook.com/terms Section 4, number 8: "You will not share your password (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account."

ominous 10y ago
"do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account" Logging in using a common combinations of browser, OS, machine, keyboard, environment also jeopardizes the security of your account. Exploits, keyloggers, onlookers, etc. Does violating the terms of service trigger anything, or is just something that Facebook can use against you, should it be needed?
- Sjoerd 10y ago
  It is currently unclear whether violating the terms of service is a crime: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/violating-terms-use-isnt-crime-eff-tells-court-again https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/violating-terms-use-is...
  - fjert 10y ago
    I'm confused how it is at all debatable that violating a company's arbitrary ToS would be a crime.
amelius 10y ago
This is useless, legally speaking, since the law overrides any ToS from any company.
- pjc50 10y ago
  The request from the immigration officers isn't actually a legal obligation, it's just that they can make it a condition of entry.

devoply 10y ago

Sorry don't have any passwords to share, they are in my password keeper and I left that file at home.

Someone 10y ago
I would expect the reply would be "do you want to fly back or stay for a while in a 'hotel' we choose?"
ploggingdev 10y ago
From the article: > If they don’t want to cooperate then they don’t come in. If they truly want to come to America they’ll cooperate, if not then ‘next in line’. You will most likely be considered as "not cooperating".
DrJokepu 10y ago
And then the CBP officer will put you on the next flight back. You don't have to hand over your password, they don't have to admit you to the United States.
- aedron 10y ago
  The travel info airport websites now says that if you are traveling to the U.S., please make sure all your electronic devices are charged with a full battery.

thesehands 10y ago

I wonder how long before social media services begin to offer a dead man switch equivalent whereby all private communication is deleted given a user defined 'wrong' password that grants access to the account?

krapp 10y ago
Given that most American social media and telecom companies seem to go above and beyond to cooperate with US intelligence and law enforcement (Room 641A, PRISM, etc.) I think it's more likely that there will be a switch that dumps all private communication directly to an NSA server on demand.

skzo 10y ago

Nope, not planning on ever going to the US again.

facetube 10y ago
We're planning on emigrating away from the US. We're out of stocks entirely, and are doing as much as we can to avoid directing money to the US government while these serial liars have it in their grasp. We're not buying things unless we absolutely need them. The United State has begun a long, downward spiral at the hands of the comically-unqualified Mr. Trump. Every day that America refuses to reckon with this problem – Mr. Trump's serial lying, his nepotism, his increasingly-eratic behavior, and the dangerous Lenninist "destroy everything" views of his surrogate Bannon – the harder it becomes to undo. Donald Trump is a serial liar, a bully, a probable sex offender, and carries with him a following of christian dominionists who are (a) in possession of nuclear weapons and (b) desperately want a war with a billions-strong religion they've decided to wage was on, via the doctrine of collective punishment. Labor is a type of capital. Trumpism, meet capital flight.
- tdkl 10y ago
  If you think this spiral began with Trump, you're living in a fairy tale.
  - facetube 10y ago
    Never said it did. However, Trump brings dangerous aspects with him that other leaders have lacked: (i) he's willing to engage in direct personal attacks against the media, the judicial system, and electorate as a whole (i.e. "check out sex tape"), going as far as to tell the entire fourth estate to "be quiet for a while". (ii) he has repeatedly cast nuclear weapons as a tool not just of mutual assured destruction, but as a potentially useful first-strike tool as well – "the power, the devastation, is very important to [him]". [1] The implications for this in Iran should be troubling – Tehran alone has 78 million civilian men, women, and children who don't want to die. (iii) he had the gall to ask for Russia's support in securing opposition research against his political opponent, during a live news conference on July 17th, 2016. Russia remains under US sanction for its role in the MH17 disaster and the well-documented programs aimed at interfering with the 2016 US election [2]. "Russia, if you're listening..." [3]. The American public needs to know the extent of the preexisting relationship between Trump, his associates, and Putin's administration. (iv) He has yet to eliminate basic conflicts of interest within his administration (e.g. Kushner, a son-in-law prohibited under 5 USC § 3110 in normal circumstances). He had yet to place his business holdings – which continue to fall afoul of the constitution's emoluments clause, e.g. in the GSA situation – into a true family-undirected blind trust. (v) He has a long trend of loudly and publicly denigrating judges, jurists, the legislative bench as a whole, an entire department store, criminal suspects cleared of wrongdoing, and wounded prisoners of war who still serve the country today. He appears to have no civics-101 level set of knowledge with which to navigate the legislative or judicial process. (vi) Trump openly used white supremacist imagery and symbolism ("88 generals, fourteen three-star or higher") throughout his campaign. [4][5][6] Noted white-supremacist website Stormfront celebrated the release of his September 6th, 2016 press release depicting multiple white-supermacist symbols. (vii) Trump refuses to accept conclusions of scientific fact, especially those related to the impact of man on the climate of planet Earth. (viii) Trump does not appear to have the technical competence for the job of president: he repeatedly fails to understand constitutional limits, and frequently does not seek out any substantive analysis of existing precedent and case law before issuing orders. This causes predictable chaos (as we witnessed during his immigration order). (ix) Trump goes out of his way to harass and defame peaceful protests. When there is an isolated violent act at an existing peaceful protest, Trump follows the doctrine of collective punishment and holds the whole protest group responsible. (x) We've never seen mass internet adoption at this level during a presidential campaign, and we've never also been the target of a state-sponsored disinformation campaign (see [2]). There are new forces at work here. If you want to go further: Steve Bannon, sometimes-president but full-time National Security Council member, is a board member of Cambridge Analytica, the company that manipulated social graph relationship data to determine which clusters of people (sorry, "Influencers") to microtarget. [7] 1:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSrP1KSR0H4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSrP1KSR0H4 2: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Statement_on_Declassified_Intelligence_Community_Assessment_of_Russian_Activities_and_Intentions_in_Recent_U.S._Elections.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Sta... 3: https://youtu.be/ZnY7D4M4k68?t=20s https://youtu.be/ZnY7D4M4k68?t=20s 4: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/88-retired-u.s.-generals-and-admirals-endorse-trump https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/88-retired-u.s.-... 5: http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/88.html http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/88.html 6: http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/14-words.html http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/14-words... 7: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers-who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/ http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-cruncher...

dbg31415 10y ago

How do they store your passwords? Wouldn't the liability of having all those financial account passwords be enough reason not to do something this moronic? Furthermore, what if my account requires 2FA? How do they prove I even have an account? This is pure dipshitery.

Nugem_ 10y ago

And who is to say whether or not someone has a Facebook account? 1 Billion FB users, 7 Billion people on earth (guessing, didn't look up numbers) And what about criminals that know about this possible boarder check and will have dummy padded pro American social media accounts?

onion2k 10y ago
FB claims almost 1.9 billion users, with 1.7 billion active at least once a month. Still some way off everyone, but for the right demographic (between 20 and 40, lives in a city, in a country with communications infrastructure) it's not unreasonable to see not having a FB account as really unusual.
101938101 10y ago
Only terrorists do not have a Facebook account!

known 10y ago

Fascism?

laaph 10y ago

I took Turkish airways from San Francisco to Istanbul. It was packed, though most were transferring to places further. Now I'm on the return trip, and the airplane is half full. I'm wondering if all the Indians and south Asians will be coming back to the US, or did I catch a slow day back to the US? Perhaps this is the wrong place to wonder of all the effects of US immigration policies, but even here people are saying they won't go to the US.

lucaspiller 10y ago
I spent a few weeks in India last month, and talking to local techies I didn't get the impression that the Indian 'American Dream' has lost any interest. The Western media is reporting otherwise though, so read into this as you like.
- aedron 10y ago
  People in India and the rest of the third world all want to go to Europe or the U.S. It is the rest of us you have to worry about. As an engineer in Europe who has often toyed with the idea of going to America, that idea is all but dead, mostly because I would have to enter a legal no man's land (U.S. border security) where anything I have ever said might be used to hold me in custody and/or expel me from the country (including a comment like this one, were I dumb enough to post it on a forum tied to my real name). For people who have a choice, America is looking less attractive by the day.
  - bobosha 10y ago
    > People in India and the rest of the third world all want to go to Europe or the U.S. It is the rest of us you have to worry about. I would challenge that notion. The Indian community is now in a reverse immigration, that the population is reaching an equilibrium (~3 million). While the students continue to flock to US univs, many are choosing to return. And this was before Trump. I suspect this would be even more now given the h1b visas and other challenges.

ploggingdev 10y ago

It's already happening, even to people who are not from the 7 blacklisted countries : https://twitter.com/wirehead2501/status/829559451610931200 https://twitter.com/wirehead2501/status/829559451610931200

pjc50 10y ago

Does any other country do this? Are they going to start now that the US is doing it? It's definitely put me right off traveling to the US with a smartphone or a computer. The strange thing is: don't they already have quite a lot of this information? Isn't that what the whole fight with the NSA is about? Is this just a very high profile way of intimidating dissidents? e.g. https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-bo...

gambiting 10y ago
It's normalizing the invasion of privacy. If you subject everyone to it, then it becomes the new normal. My parents grew up in a communist republic, and every phone call would begin with "this conversation is being monitored" said by the operator(and yes, the operator would listen in and report you to the secret police if you said something suspicious). Initially people were upset and then they didn't care, because you couldn't call anyone in any other way, so you had to accept that every conversation was being listened to.
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  But we are only doing it to catch serious criminals!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7369543.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7369543.stm
Veratyr 10y ago
Does it matter? America doesn't care what other countries do. America is unique, or close to unique in the western world in that: - It taxes its citizens and permanent residents abroad. - It doesn't require employers to give vacation time, sick leave, personal leave or parental leave. - Other nearby countries have to clear incoming travellers with it before they can allow them on a plane to their territory. Just off the top of my head.

dragonbonheur 10y ago

Setting up an IFTTT recipe to post from RSS feeds to Social media accounts is child's play. Anyone can create a fake social media footprint while they sleep, so it's pointless to demand passwords to social media accounts. Can't expect much intelligence or common sense from an Idiocracy.

greens231 10y ago

wow. reposting my comment from another article here: till last year i was thinking of getting a visa and trying my luck in the valley. now it seems (having learned more about america) that a significant part of the population thinks science is a liberal hoax, thinks the government and media is constantly lying, carries assault rifles and believes shit like pizzagate is not only plausible but true.

song 10y ago
To be fair, apart from carrying guns (which is a bit of an American specificity), a significant percentage of the population of any country is quite stupid, easily manipulated and tend to vote for populist types that cater to their low intelligence. For examples in Europe, see Brexit, Berlusconi, the rise of Lepen in France, the Freedom Party of Austria and a lot of examples... The problem is that this time, in the US, those people have actually been able to vote for a candidate that represent their values (and it's not the second time, Bush was already a good example of that)
- guitarbill 10y ago
  I think you're spot on, it's so dangerous to think this can't happen anywhere else. Stupid laws get ratified in every country. For the US, one difference is the media coverage is good, and the debate is widely publicised. Whereas in e.g. the UK, everybody just shrugs [0]. Apathy is far more dangerous than outrage. [0] e.g. being compelled to hand over passwords in "terror" or "national security" matters, or be jailed otherwise

dandelion_lover 10y ago

By the way, EFF seeks stories about digital border searches: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/invasive-digital-border-searches-tell-eff-your-story https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/invasive-digital-borde...

cesarb 10y ago

Giving a third-party access to your passwords is worse than merely a privacy invasion. It gives said third-party the ability not only to read, but also to write. It's even worse if your account has elevated privileges. And, like others, I wonder how they deal with 2FA.

reachtarunhere 10y ago

Makes me feel RMS is not crazy afterall.

verytrivial 10y ago
It is a bit sad that someone is often (jokingly) referred to as crazy because of consistent application application of a defensible moral position. I think people get stuck on the idea that it is difficult for users to get as good an experience with free-only software, or that it is difficult to make money creating that software. That's a different problem and not an argument he engages with his zeal. Choosing to defend freedom and not support tyranny is a moral decision not a purely economic calculation. Edit: I just R'd the FA and speaking as a non-US citizen, I will not visit that country for the foreseeable future.
krapp 10y ago
How would the tenets of Free Software prevent the US government from demanding the account passwords of international travelers?
aedron 10y ago
My hippie parents used to talk a lot of crazy paranoid shit when we were growing up. All of it has since been proven true.

csomar 10y ago

This is the first step and after that putting your online passwords will be a mandatory step of accessing the US whether you need a Visa or not. The next step will be a mandatory access of all your online accounts (emails, social media, etc) by the government for US Citizens. I'm not a US citizen and I don't live there. But if you can't see this coming, then you have been successfully frightened by the system and sold on "terrorism".

secfirstmd 10y ago
As we mentioned in our trainings. In some contexts and threat models it might be worth certain individuals building their fake secondary social media presence profiles and creating a pattern of life for them, for just this reason.
- gambiting 10y ago
  It doesn't help though, because the form will ask for all online social media accounts, so if you fail to mention your real one it will either get you in trouble straight away, or at some undefined point in the future. Say you go to US for work, give them a fake account, then 10 years later you want to apply for citizenship and you can't, because 10 years earlier you lied on your entry form.
  - csomar 10y ago
    Maybe, then, if you are a real terrorist you hold on from publishing your photos/videos of beheading people on social media accounts with your name?
    - pjc50 10y ago
      What about hiding your ACLU work? https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-bo...
  - secfirstmd 10y ago

CM30 10y ago

Depressingly, it seems this idea was originally proposed around June 2016, with the scheme only just being made mandatory instead of optional: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-customs-border-protection-social-media-accounts-facebook-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-custom... So it's not purely tied to the recent political changes. The US Department of Homeland Security has wanted this for a while. Either way, it's terrible. It goes against the terms of service for almost all online service providers, it opens up another avenue for customs to frame you by using your account to post messages/view controversial content, it's a massive privacy risk and it mostly punishes people who are both small time enough and honest enough to only have one account per service to hand over.

gpvos 10y ago
Back then there were no plans to ask for passwords, just the names/URLs of the accounts.

benevol 10y ago

This country is pretty obviously on a downward spiral for some time now. And things only seem to accelerate. It's just sad to see things go backwards again. Especially given the influence the country has on the entire World. Let's stop this madness.

merricksb 10y ago

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598505

Overtonwindow 10y ago

Why couldn't they create fake accounts?

nogbit 10y ago

Just setup dual boot to auto load some lame duck OS with some lame duck user activity, for laptops anyway. Any attempt to load the other boot without some special password results in a "drive not found"...ahem, yah...not found. Encrypted drives of course, the people doing the inspections don't have a clue. Worried about phones, you are pwned already, hell, Intel ME pwned all of us!