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The US is forcing its tourists to give away a list of all their social media accounts and all their email accounts. If you're a foreign journalist writing pseud
by murbard2 7y ago
The US is forcing its tourists to give away a list of all their social media accounts and all their email accounts. If you're a foreign journalist writing pseudonymously for your safety, you must now share that information with the US government to enter the country. This isn't quite on the level of forcing people to install malware on their phone yet, but give it a couple years.
- avocado4 7y agoSource? My friend just came over from Germany and she walked in thru the border like she's a US citizen, no questions asked other than purpose of visit.
- beauzero 7y agoHow is this enforcable? ...or is it just the accounts that you will be using while in the US? Technically this seems difficult to enforce.
- greglindahl 7y agoYou can potentially be permanently banned from entering the US if you lie or omit information.
- jandrese 7y agoRemember what name you used on that obscure forum you signed up for just to read a single answer in a single thread? No? Well, sucks to be you. I'm guessing in 99% of cases this information is either ignored or dumped into a database where a surveillance dragnet will lightly touch every record regularly looking for specific matches. But in the remaining 1% it will be abused to skirt around someone's human rights. And maybe they're hoping to catch some really dumb terrorists that write down the "Death to America" forum on that list. I do find it interesting that the form is not compatible with anonymous posting like 4chan.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Haga 7y agoYou can also be deported if you kick us contractors from a US construction site and hire Canadians or Mexicans. Competition, only in small doses please.
- murbard2 7y agoI think the point will be selective enforcement. Make a completely unreasonable request that travelers are unlikely to perfectly comply with (even if inadvertently -- do you remember your Digg profile?) and later enforce a penalty at your discretion. Soft-totalitarianism.
- ticviking 7y agoI've always liked the term Anarcho-Tyranny for this type of thing. It's the biggest reason why I am a huge fan of the idea of mandatory prosecution. If we can't afford to prosecute all the crimes we have on the books perhaps we have too many crimes on the books
- pulse7 7y agoSo much about falling freedom of press in the US...
- lixtra 7y agoOn the last ESTA form I saw, they were asking not for all, but specific accounts. Apart from fb and Twitter there was also github, but I don’t remember seeing mastedon for example. Did I miss something?
- mapcars 7y agoGithub? Really?
- rwmj 7y agoThe ESTA will be a bit different, but the exact question from the US visa application is: 7. Public-facing social media platforms and identifiers/handles used during the last five years. This includes any websites or applications the applicant has used to create or share content (photos, videos, status updates, etc.) as part of a public profile. I was advised by my lawyer that this covers Reddit and HN, and Facebook/Instagram (if I had any of those which I don't any more). The lawyer didn't mention github however, but someone can search my name and find that in 1 click anyway, that's hardly private information.
- landcoctos 7y ago> a public profile What if the profile isn't part of a person's profile? As in it has zero relation to their "real" life.
- zaroth 7y agoI think public in this context means viewable to the general public, whether it’s anonymous or not.
- mc32 7y agoHaven’t read up on this, but looks like if they’re looking for graphs they would include linked in profiles too...
- rwmj 7y ago
- folkrav 7y agoThey already can force you to give up physical access to your phone, which is basically the worst option.
- saagarjha 7y agoThey can't force you to unlock it, however.
- pjc50 7y agoWell, they can confiscate it and/or deport you if you don't.
- saagarjha 7y agoSure. If you're not a citizen, they can also probably hold you for a while too. But I don't think they can compel you to unlock the device.
- augstein 7y agoIn reality most tourist will hand over their devices though, to avoid being sent back to their country of origin.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoYeah, nobody is going to ruin their entire vacation by stonewalling the border security. This is why my friend let a border agent view her Tinder messages to ensure that "she wasn't coming for sex work," and then endured his parting words: "well, it seems that you're a good girl ;)."
- xenospn 7y agoLooks like the US is implementing the same policy Israel had for years. Make people feel like shit for coming into the country. I've been hearing these stories from tourists who visited Israel for years - and I honestly have no idea what the reason is.
- rovek 7y agoThis was optional on the ESTA form when I completed it less than a month ago, maybe it's different for different countries. Not a good direction but also not enforced in my experience.
- schoen 7y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337393 for the difference between ESTA and visa applications on this point.
- Iv 7y agoThat's worse IMO. I can (and would) opt out of taking my phone to China. I can't easily dodge US' requirements. These two bully super-powers really give me a bad feeling about the future...
- Japhy_Ryder 7y agoI can (and would) opt out of going to China. I'm all set with authoritarian dictatorships with torture camps and organ harvesting.
- fao_ 7y agoI can (and would) opt out of going to America. I'm all set with government-endorsed child trafficking and concentration camps.
- homonculus1 7y agoStopping noncitizens at the border for processing is a far cry from dragging millions of people out of their homes.
- r3bl 7y agoWould you classify the US treatment of Japanese citizens during WW2 as inhumane? Back then, they were called war relocation centers. Right now, we call them concentration camps. Same thing will happen with the current camps, both in the US and China. In both cases, it's only the citizens of those countries that object to the usage of the term "concentration camps", while everyone else classifies them properly. Nobody in the history has called their own camps for what they truly are. Keeping people in inhumane conditions because the government identified their nationality as suspects is a terrible thing to do regardless of how that same government tries to spin it.
- homonculus1 7y agoThose Japanese-American detainees had legal residential status when they were illegally rounded up without due process. The detainees in the current border camps have no such status. Some of them are eventually admitted as refugees but there is no obligation to allow any of them to simply enter the country. Presumably they would be permitted to leave the camps if they decided to go to a different country. If not, then the camps are in fact concentration camps. If so, then the comparison is hysterical political outrage that spits in the face of actual political detention.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- la_barba 7y agoOr they can just get the NSA to do their dirty-work. Non-US citizens have little to no protections against the NSA and the CIA spying on them.
- tantalor 7y agoI assume you're referring to this form: https://www.axistravel.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ONLINE-ESTA-USA-Visa-Form-Complete-and-return-to-Axis-Travel.pdf https://www.axistravel.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ONL... Regarding email address, it's under "contact information" same as "home address". What's the problem? Regarding social media, it says "optional", so...?
- bitcharmer 7y agoNot sure under which rock you were hiding all this time, so here you are: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48118558 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48118558 https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/05/01/u-s-customs-can-seize-your-phone-when-you-return-home-abroad/3632116002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/05/01/u-s-customs-ca... https://www.zdnet.com/article/warrantless-phone-laptop-searches-at-the-us-border-hit-record-levels/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/warrantless-phone-laptop-searc...
- tantalor 7y agoI was referring to "give away a list of all their social media accounts and all their email accounts", not "If you ... you must now share that information". Your references make no mention of the former.
- belltaco 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142
- dang 7y agoPlease edit personal swipes out of your comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- guan 7y agoThis is the form for ESTA, the travel authorization one must obtain if entering the US under the visa waiver program by air or sea. On the visa application forms, the social media questions are not optional, though still limited to a particular list of social media sites. The visa form is used people from countries who are not in the visa waiver program as well as who are not entering under the VWP (for example workers, students, journalists, tourists/business travelers staying longer than 90 days, and immigrants).
- secfirstmd 7y agoAlso five eye governments collect most of the (open/covert) data that they want when you a) apply for visa and b) you check in.
- keiferski 7y agoYes and that is a serious problem. Why don’t you submit a story and discuss it there, rather than perpetuate Whataboutism?
- panarky 7y ago> The US ... This style of argument is deflection, and it gets us nowhere. It's very effective in redirecting the focus away from one bad actor and onto another bad actor, though.
- joe_the_user 7y agoIt all depends on what level of attention one is assuming. I like to imagine a situation where people can understand a world with multiple bad actors.
- godelski 7y agoTo add to your comment: We should be critical of our own government. Panarky clearly agrees with this (me too). The difference is that the conversation is about China. We can also have a conversation about the US or <insert any Western country> and how they are not respecting people's freedom. But this conversation is about China. It's also a conversation that needs to be had. Plus this redirection is similar to "Bob shot a guy 30 times." "Oh yeah? Bill punched a guy". Neither Bob or Bill are likely good guys, but come on... Bob is definitely worse and Bill's actions don't really relate to how we want to condemn Bob's actions.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jolmg 7y ago> But this conversation is about China. I don't know. It seems kind of weird to want to restrict the conversation like that, but I guess I kind of see your point. > Plus this redirection is similar to "Bob shot a guy 30 times." "Oh yeah? Bill punched a guy". The way I saw it, the neighborhood is turning kind of bad. Someone comments "Bob shot a guy 30 times", and another adds "Bill punched a guy". Neither of these people have met Bob nor Bill and don't really care about them in particular, but their interest lies in the neighborhood as a whole.
- godelski 7y ago
- driverdan 7y agoI downvoted you because this whataboutism is a distraction from the topic. We should fight back against the US policy too but it's clearly not the same thing.
- iiuuhhggff 7y agoI upvoted him because he adds a larger perspective to this issue.
- HyperTalk2 7y agoA wild whataboutism appears.
- djohnston 7y agothis is not true and there are plenty of comments below disproving this false assertion
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