4 ms·
I was once on a list that got me secondary searching every single time I flew in the USA, for several years. This was back in the 1990s, when asking for your
by veidr 9y ago
I was once on a list that got me secondary searching every single time I flew in the USA, for several years.
This was back in the 1990s, when asking for your password wasn't a thing I've ever heard of them doing, but also when me bringing 128-bit encryption software (aka the US version of Netscape Navigator) to Japan, where I was a foreign student, was a serious crime akin to arms smuggling.
Of course, I never found out for sure why I was on that list, and eventually I apparently wasn't on it anymore. But during that time I did read a fascinating article in some magazine, by Nathan Myhrvold (the now-infamous patent troll scumbag). Apparently, he was on the same list, despite being a super rich fat white guy from Microsoft.
His theory was that he got on the list by buying one-way plane tickets in cash. That resonated with me, because I often did the same thing back then… I just never really knew when I wanted to come back, and I didn't have much credit on my one credit card.
That's obviously both circumstantial and anecdotal, however I don't think it really takes too much to get on one of these secret (and very probably unlawful, but effectively un-challengeable) lists.
- adventured 9y ago> he was on the same list, despite being a super rich fat white guy from Microsoft. What could the "fat" part of that possibly have to do with anything related to targeting, other than as a cheap excuse for you to denigrate Myhrvold?
- ratacat 9y agoThank you for this.
- EGreg 9y agoProbably means he looked more "safe" and "complacent" and that didn't stop them.
- veidr 9y agoWell, I really just meant it more in the sense of him being a typical/normal/mainstream/not-unusual American. But also, yeah: fuck Nathan Myhrvold. He's a smarmy piece of shit whose parasitical exploitation of America's societal weaknesses and dysfunction far outweighs all the modest contributions he's ever made. I hope he trips and falls face-first into one of his large sous-vide contraptions. (That time, I was denigrating him on purpose.)
- letmein 9y agoMyhrvold is a scumbag now, but back in the 90's he pulled off a heroic fuck you to NSA. NSA didn't want to allow Microsoft to build RSA into Windows and export it. Even though the cat was out of the bag and foreign OEMs and vendors were already selling RSA. NSA wanted Microsoft to not give users more than 40 bits of encryption keys. So Myhrvold, as President of Microsoft, flippantly offered to pad the keys generated by Windows with NSA's public RSA key. Win Win. Users can export more than 40 bits, and NSA gets a backdoor. Microsoft won and was allowed to export software using RSA. No doubt that little stunt put Myhrvold on some Watchlist for Life. It's too bad he became evil after he became a billionaire and started only caring about money and Yachts and hob knobbing with other 1% elites.