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US 'extreme vetting' kicks in forcing visitors to hand over social media details
- zxcb1 7y ago"Freedom" vetting? What are they afraid of?
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoMuslims, wikileaks employees, and corporate espionage, I’d guess.
- ttul 7y agoNot to mention foreigners lookin’ to steal ‘merican jawbs!
- zxcb1 7y agoClarification to downvoters: "Freedom" implies corruption of language, as in the concept of freedom has a specific meaning and suggests an overall trend. Fear implies that you can not trust others, instead the striving for absolute control and transparency, resulting in the violation of rights. The question is honest, what merits these extreme measures? The downvoting without comment is dishonest. You did not understand or did not care enough to parse it and respond properly.
- Retric 7y agoAn extreme waste of resources from an anti terrorism perspective. But, occasionally useful when looking for people lying about their reasons to enter the US.
- enjo 7y agoWhich will come at the cost of billions of tourist dollars when people stop coming in because the entry lines are so long dealing with all of this nonsense. So I’m not sure it’s much of a win.
- noir_lord 7y agoOr in my case just add the US to the do-not-travel list. Which to be fair they put themselves on quite a while ago with other shit.
- Retric 7y agoAs odd as it sounds, the US has seen a significant uptick in tourism despite similar policies. https://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2017-I-001/documents/US%20Visits%20Trend%20Line.xlsx https://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2017-I-001/documents/US%20Vi... So, while their is likely some backlash, people seem to just accept with things.
- ttul 7y agoI’d argue that thriving tourism has more to do with a booming global economy than anything else.
- ocschwar 7y agoTourism in the US is heavily concentrated in blue zones. So a double "win" for the Trumpists. Subject the foreigners to indignity and hit the liberals in the wallet. SMFH
- senorjazz 7y agoThis I can understand. I have a friend who travels to the US semi regularly on a tourist reason (has family there) but then works informally, selling handicrafts / jewellery at markets and posts all over his facebook about what he is selling and when he will be selling it and where.
- leetrout 7y agoThis is both frightening and disheartening. We've not been the home of the brave for a while now and I think we're pretty far from the land of the free to the outside world. This is the next level of "papers please" and I bet if this remains and is enforced will be used against citzens as well. May or may not be as bad as China's social credit system. I want to say this feels "un-American" but I'm not sure we'll ever come back from over-reaching moves like this and TSA.
- senorjazz 7y ago> We've not been the home of the brave for a while now No more nor no less than any other country, who all have their own cultural stories why they are brave as well
- StavrosK 7y ago> who all have their own cultural stories why they are brave as well Like who? None of the countries I've lived in is anywhere near to calling themselves the "home of the brave" or something similar.
- bdowling 7y ago“Home of the brave” comes from a line in the American national anthem [0]. You will find similar patriotic statements in all countries’ national anthems. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner
- StavrosK 7y agoSure, but that doesn't mean any of what's in the anthem is in the citizens' national conscience. Not many other countries have the equivalent of the American Civil religion... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
- ajross 7y ago
- jon-wood 7y agoI did an ESTA application a few weeks ago and was wondering why anyone in their right mind would fill in the section where you can optionally provide social media details. Guess this answers that question.
- dontbenebby 7y agoIs this going on ESTA, or is it for more long term visas? I thought ESTA was the basically almost-not-a-visa they use for EU et al that basically just checks you're not a felon or a terrorist
- ephimetheus 7y agoThat question has been there for a while. I opted out of answering it (it is optional, and I read it still is), and didn’t have problems in January. Will test this again in a couple of weeks...
- dontbenebby 7y agoGood luck! I think it's a shitty policy, and I hope you publicly shame them if they won't let you in for trying to keep your privacy.
- datavirtue 7y agoWhy not just hit up the social media companies secretly? Guess this just makes things easier on the spooks.
- qlm 7y agoWill I be considered suspicious because I don't have a Facebook/Twitter/Instagram account?
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agohttps://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2017/06/28/denied-entry/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2017/06/28/denied-entry/
- zxcb1 7y agoWhy can't they match your passport to your Facebook profile?
- mxcrossb 7y agoMaybe this is overly cynical, but I think they can. Otherwise everyone could just claim they don’t have an account. But this kind of policy deters people from wanting to visit or immigrate to the US, which is this administrations real goal.
- zxcb1 7y agoThey have the data. Maybe they want to catch liars instead of just an algorithmic risk score?
- d33 7y agoExactly my thinking. What would they like to validate my identity then? Log into my GMail? Smaller communities like, say, HN?
- e12e 7y agoYou'll just have to hand over your hacker news account...
- bluefox 7y agoTourism-wise, US has been dead to me since 9-11, so I don't mind posting this comment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yasp 7y agoQueue other countries responding in kind to US citizens.
- fredgrott 7y agoThinking cap on, Why? NSA and by extension CIA already have this data as its unencrypted and flowing through the telecom taps they do. I think it implies that certain tech solutions by a certain founder are not performing as gov was led to expect. So basically visitors basically being told legally hey out yourself as far as public social messages because we the US gov have some tech problems with tracking dow3n that social message keyword stuff.
- yasp 7y agoDo NSA and CIA share this data with DHS?
- 50656E6973 7y agoIt's not unencrypted (except DNS and UDP) if it's https, right?
- colanderman 7y agoHow can US citizens fight this? It's not unconstitutional, since non-citizens aren't covered by the Bill of Rights. Do we just hope & pray that the next administration is gracious enough to revert a policy decision that has no negative impact on themselves or their constituents?
- roywiggins 7y agoThat's not quite right, the bill of rights applies to everyone with a foot on American soil, not just citizens.
- alistairSH 7y agoExcept within the 100 mile border zone, where some (but not all) of the Bill or Rights doesn't apply (or applies less strictly).
- roywiggins 7y agoThe border search exception means that certain searches are assumed to be "reasonable" that wouldn't be otherwise. Exactly what searches are reasonable and when has always been a bit in flux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception Brief stops for questioning at a fixed post on a highway are legal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Martinez-Fuerte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Martinez-Fuer... But it seems you can't actually physically search vehicles, unless something has since modified this precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Ortiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Ortiz
- ap3 7y agoThis is a requirement for a visa application- how many people applying for a US visa are on American soil?
- roywiggins 7y agoQuite a few I should think, people do change their visa status, renew visas, swap between different types of visas depending on their work/student/marital status.
- inherentFloyd 7y agoLet's do a little experiment: >"As we've seen around the world in recent years, social media can be a major forum for terrorist sentiment and activity. This will be a vital tool to screen out terrorists, public safety threats, and other dangerous individuals from gaining immigration benefits and setting foot on US soil." Now, we do some very simple replacement: >"As we've seen around the world in recent years, social media can be a major forum for communist sentiment and activity. This will be a vital tool to screen out communists, public safety threats, and other dangerous individuals from gaining immigration benefits and setting foot on US soil." If it's good enough for McCarthy, it's good enough for me.
- mfatica 7y agoDo you not agree that terrorism and communism are both threats to America?
- inherentFloyd 7y agoHoly fuck are you stuck in the cold war? "Communism" was never a threat to America and communist countries haven't been a threat since 1991.
- mfatica 7y agoChina is a communist country and has increasingly been committing human rights' violations in their attempt to become the supreme world superpower. This is publicly known
- dang 7y agoThis comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reading them and sticking to them when commenting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rudiv 7y agoWhere are these communists you speak of? Are you talking about the state government of Kerala?
- CydeWeys 7y agoThis article is short on details. What does "social media details" mean? Is that username and password, or just username? The former is much worse than the latter. I'm very wary of what I share publicly, so if you only see my public posts then I'm not too worried. But I sure as hell wouldn't be compromising my security and privacy and giving out my passwords. I would sooner choose a new random password, write it down, and then travel, and simply not use (or even be able to log in to, or disclose the passwords of) my social media accounts while traveling. What would they do then?
- kakaorka 7y agoIt’s only public handles (usernames)
- rdl 7y agoIt's public handles only. They specifically say they do not want your passwords. They also will not circumvent any security, so if you have a twitter account locked, or fb posts to friends-only, they are not included. This is explicitly about public postings and public information.
- ebilodeau 7y agoHeadline potentially misleading as I believe this policy applies only to people applying for visas, and not to all visitors to the US. https://www.apnews.com/c96a215355b242e58107c2125c18fc4a https://www.apnews.com/c96a215355b242e58107c2125c18fc4a
- alistairSH 7y agoEverybody traveling to the US needs a VISA, unless they have a waiver, which requires an ESTA, which requires some personal contact information. I don't know if the social media info will be added to the ESTA application, but it wouldn't surprise me. The visa waiver program also only applies to about 35-40 nations (there are 190 or so in the UN).
- ephimetheus 7y agoThere has been a section on social media accounts on the ESTA application for a while, but it was optional at least up to now.
- rdl 7y agoObviously, being granted a visa to visit a country as a foreign person is a privilege under law; this is totally different from restrictions placed on citizens (or persons legally present in the country). This would be terrible if applied to citizens in a LE/IC context. For visas, there are some serious potential negatives to this (it might be used to target those critical of the US Government or specific Presidents, it might be used as a proxy for religion or sexual orientation or some other protected status). It also has positives: aside from catching incredibly stupid terrorists or other undesirable aliens who post a lot of clearly indicative content and then report, it also allows an easy rejection for a person who fails to report a known bad account already connected to him. It's a mistake to assume all terrorists or undesirable aliens have perfect OPSEC. The one corner case where it's probably exceptionally useful is if there's someone like circa-2015 Anjem Choudary who hasn't yet been convicted of a crime, but is recruiting for IS using various social media handles. He's a known individual and more effective as a recruiter due to his public status. He then has to choose either to not report (and thus be banned), to report (and thus be banned), or to delegate US recruiting to someone else (who will be less effective). I'd prefer we collect all this data and then ALSO have a more transparent process for processing visas. It should be clear why one is being rejected, and an opportunity to appeal. There should be reporting of aggregate statistics. The thing I'm most worried about would be a covert policy, of, say, "no redheaded people" which was actually enforced by marking every redhead as an IRA member and rejecting as a terrorist, but that is something which could be addressed. There are probably also explicit policies which people find objectionable and could be addressed through public pressure/voting/etc. (right now I think the ESTA bars for people who visit specific countries might be bad, although I don't know how much worse non-ESTA visa process is if you're from an ESTA country.) USG (and commercial sources) already have increasingly-complete name/passport/etc. to social media identifier and activity databases, so the main point here is to go from xx% to a higher level, and then to set up a "you lied on the form" opportunity for rejection or deportation. On balance, I think this is a good policy change.
- whymeiask 7y ago.
- ravenstine 7y agoI think because it's now going to be a required question? It's one thing if you're putting information about yourself for the public to see and having the government research it independently, but it's another for it to be expected that you hand over your account handles to social media accounts that might not even be publicly visible in the first place. Even worse that the government would be essentially using multinational corporations as de facto identity vetting.
- ravenstine 7y agoHow can they possibly require people who don't have social media profiles to hand such details over? Where's the proof that someone has or hasn't a social media profile? If they can verify that someone who claimed not to have a Facebook account indeed does, then why ask the question at all? And if the US government is going to rely on Facebook and Google for identify vetting, then we've really entered an overtly "CorpGov" era, to steal a term from Yippies. Even if this is only a problem for visa applicants at the moment, who's to say what the next step will be?
- superkuh 7y agoCory Doctorow wrote a short story on this (google search information and online postings being searched at airport customs) back in the early 2000s called, "Scroogled": http://superkuh.com/scroogled.html http://superkuh.com/scroogled.html
- Gpetrium 7y agoFor now, it likely serves a few purposes: to cross-reference information in the database, as a legitimate reason to deny someone who may have lied to the officer, to uncover new information about the individual [1] & to decrease the need of a court order. The best course of action a civilian can do is to put pressure on their govs to create a system that protects their perceived interests. [1] Since the person can't tell what kind of information the immigration office has, they are more likely to over-present
- alistairSH 7y agoSo, won't terrorists simply maintain 2 media profiles, one public for the TSA and one private for planning their next mission?
- merricksb 7y agoEarlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- refurb 7y agoMy question is - what does DHS do with this info? Considering the workload on visa reviewers, I highly doubt they are perusing through people’s social media and making a judgement. I’m assuming DHS already has a list of flagged handles and just comparing the two against each other. I also assume handles are stored so if flagged at a later date, a visa could be revoked.
- SN76477 7y agoI want to know why. What business is it of anyone's? What do they think they are going to find?