7 ms·
U.S. now can ask travelers for Facebook, Twitter handles
- anotheryou 9y agoMore important: what happens when someone refuses to tell or claim not to have one?
- darioush 9y agowhatever happens to people when states assume they have things to hide.
- accountyaccount 9y agoto shreds you say
- a_humean 9y agoSubject you to more searches, seize your luggage with few means of appeal, and deport you. More and more reasons not to bother traveling or doing business with the US if it can be avoided.
- mikeash 9y agoFor US citizens, they may hassle you a bit but they have to let you in. For non-citizens, any refusal to cooperate will likely result in being refused entry and immediate deportation back to wherever they came from.
- giobox 9y agoDoes this actually apply to US citizens at all? All the reporting I've read suggests this is solely visa applicants, which of course will never include US citizens.
- mikeash 9y agoI don't think there's any official policy, but nothing stops them from asking when you go through customs. It's rare but it happens. For example: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/american-citizens-u-s-border-agents-can-search-your-cellphone-n732746 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/american-citizens-u-s-bo...
- epc 9y agoThis US policy doesn't apply to US citizens, but there is nothing to prevent non-US countries from reciprocating and requiring social media accounts from US citizens as part of their visa processes.
- Karellen 9y agoI actually don't have, and have never had, a facebook or twitter account. So, if I ever try to go to the US it's likely that that will be seen as "refusal to cooperate"? And I'm likely to be denied entry because of it? Wow.
- mikeash 9y agoI don't know what would happen there. If you can convince them that you truly have none, you should be fine, but they may be hard to convince. Immigration officers can refuse non-citizens entry for almost any reason.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoI'm the same, may be we would be advised to create a Facebook and Twitter account, but then would you be required to keep updating it and actually using it?
- khedoros1 9y agoI've had one for a long time, but I don't post publicly. Without friending me, it's difficult to tell that the account's in use.
- korzun 9y ago> For US citizens, they may hassle you a bit but they have to let you in. This does not apply to U.S citizens. The very first paragraph of the article covers this.
- mikeash 9y agoThis specific policy does not apply to US citizens, but the general act of being asked for social media passwords and similar certainly can.
- irrational 9y agoOr, like myself, really truly doesn't have one.
- korzun 9y agoThen you don't get a VISA. Pretty simple.
- dguaraglia 9y agoSimplistic answer to complex issues. The trademark right-winger approach.
- mikeash 9y agoHeadline is a bit misleading. This was possible before, it's just a bit more official now. "Visa applicants might have faced requests for their social media handles in the past, but the practice is now explicit...."
- xaviex 9y agoDo people who travel to other countries REALLY have the gall to post something threatening to the country they are traveling too?
- giobox 9y agoI don't think this is what concerns most people at all - a bigger concern is how broadly defined whatever measure they use for "anti-American" social media posts is. There's no shortage of harmless anti-Trump social media posting throughout the world - how long before we read a press story covering someone who tweeted a tame criticism of the president being denied entry? Twelve months ago I'd have found the idea hard to believe; today, not so much.
- xaviex 9y agoI absoultely agree that this is a horrible ivasion of privacy and that thinking of this happening sounded crazy months ago, yet now i wouldnt be surprised, my appologies if my tone was off in the original comment, the point i was making is that this is only going to hurt the people who have done no actual harm
- herbst 9y agoSure. I never found it a issue to post my opinion about democratic western countries openly. Surely I wouldn't do that with Thailand or other developing nations with slightly unstable political situation
- anotheryou 9y agoI don't post anything public on facebook. What will they say? Or will they breach my privacy right away and have a look anyways? From the outside it is not even clear how old the acc is.
- giobox 9y agoFacebook alone is a poor example as private accounts are the norm, at least among most folks I know. Twitter on the other hand is used far more widely with public accounts, and is commonly used as a platform for political discourse. The few "hate speech" style cases I've read (great example is the infamous "twitter joke" trial in the U.K.) have almost always stemmed from Twitter accounts. Instagram is similarly much more commonly used with public accounts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Joke_Trial https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Joke_Trial
- tritium 9y agoAnd travelers can now promptly regret Facebook's Real Name Policy.
- iRobbery 9y agofor real? i mean isn't that something those secret agencies should have done so already by fancy machine learning and stuff? And i remember, if you ask something, like a phone-number (of a girl in a club), you don't always get the proper information!
- stevenwoo 9y agoThey missed the San Bernadino female's online posting of support for jihad on Facebook, pre-immigration to America. It's seems as if it's the case of scouring the wrong data/too much data (i.e. NSA collecting every telephone call in the USA at this time, while vetting did not look at immigrant social media background so the machine learning would never have helped if it wasn't pointed at the right data source or able to choose the data source) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/san-bernardino-attacks-us-visa-process-tashfeen-maliks-remarks-on-social-media-about-jihad-were-missed.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/san-bernardino-attacks...
- jc_811 9y agoI'm all for privacy and the government not overstepping their bounds, but could someone please let me know why this is so bad? I'm genuinely curious. Your social media info is Public. If you have information public, that is your own fault and the govt can access that regardless if you give them your handles or not. If they were asking for passwords and access to accounts - of course that would be a different ball game. But simply asking for your handles (while you can easily say you don't have accounts) doesn't seem like too much of an intrusion to me.
- kevinh 9y agoI don't think the ability to lie to government agents is a good argument against a law that allows them to ask for that information. At best it gets you enhanced scrutiny, at worst you go to jail.
- jc_811 9y agoRight, I see your point. But I'm saying - they are asking for public information that ANYONE can search for. When you enter the country obviously they have to ask certain questions (or get info from your passport, ie name, DOB, country of origin, etc) - but I feel people get extra worked up for social media simply because it's digital. If you have public information out there I have no problem with anyone asking for it - it's public after all!
- firethief 9y agoIt's OK, they're only asking because they already know!
- chrismcb 9y agoSure anyone can search for jc_811. I don't get a lot of useful data. It I can search for Joe Conner, but that isn't going to get me to jc_811s posts. Just because something is public information didn't mean YOU have to provide it
- 9y ago
- davidw 9y agoMy wife was filling out ESTA forms for her parents, and they ask this stuff. Yuck.
- natch 9y agoIt certainly seems like bad guys will lie. Which makes it sound stupid at first. But maybe there's some logic to the law. At least for those who lie, it adds a punishable offense that can potentially be used for prosecution at a later date, if and when the evidence emerges. So, for example, let's say a foreign national living in the US is found later on to be apparently plotting a terror attack, but they haven't yet followed through with it, so there is nothing to prosecute them with. The authorities could dredge up deportation-worthy crimes by going back and doing a detailed look at the person and finding that they had committed the crime of providing false or incomplete information.
- dguaraglia 9y agoThat's kind of the "gotcha" question they ask you when getting a passport in an overseas office: "have you ever been affiliated with a terrorist organization or performed terrorist acts in another country?" At face value the question is ridiculous, but they put it there just to make sure they've got you on record lying to a government official if you are ever found out to have lied. Now, the problem with the Facebook/Twitter thing is that the really bad guys are not going to be stupid enough to have Facebook and Twitter accounts where they say they'll be committing terrorist acts, and they won't worry about being caught lying later on. So all in all, this sounds like posturing for posturing sake.
- mattnewton 9y agoYeah sounds like a way to entrap some stupid but ultimately harmless teenagers for the crime of speech supporting organizations the United States consideres terrorists.
- DanBC 9y agoOr for the kind of stupid shit that young people do. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312
- thr0waway1239 9y agoHmm.. this is way too much friction. I call upon the tech giants to brainstorm and make the process more seamless. For example: why can't the govt take your picture and upload it to their servers at FB/Google/etc and get all the relevant info in a jiffy?
- throw555555 9y agoOh no !. Now I have to create twitter,facebook and instagram accounts to travel to US ? Because I dont have any. If I declare in my visa form that I dont have any account, they are not going to believe it anyway. US is isolating themselves & getting funnier day by day.
- sctb 9y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14465534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14465534
- masondixon 9y agoEvery headline on this story has been misleading. When I read it I thought to myself - this is the first thing I really disagree with Trump on...but reading on: > The supplemental questionnaire will only be given to “a fraction of 1% of the 13 or so million people who apply for a visa to visit the United States each year
- ankushnarula 9y agoJust under the surface, this policy seems like a long play to reduce the global virality of radical online tendencies. While it might aid in US national security, it's a small part of a broader plan to transform national and global culture away from collaboration (horizontal growth) towards competition (vertical value). This is the essence of "Make America Great Again".