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Another US visa holder was denied entry over someone else’s messages
- dmitrygr 7y agoTell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are Edit: I'm not condoning or arguing against the CBP decision, just pointing out that their line of thinking is not novel. It has been around since the times of Socrates.
- graeme 7y agoViral whatsapp messages are common in south asia. Receiving a message doesn't mean it's from a friend.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoTell me what subreddits you subscribe to and I'll tell you who you are.
- dmitrygr 7y agoI'm not condoning or arguing against the CBP decision, just pointing out that their line of thinking is not novel. It has been around since the times of Socrates.
- graeme 7y agoSure. But they're bungling the heuristic. It's equivalent of seeing viagra ads in an email spam folder and accusing someone of intent to smuggle drugs.
- fortran77 7y agoExactly right. If I were planning to study in or visit another nation, I wouldn't be associating with people who want to destroy that nation. The first example, Ismail Ajjawi, was of a Lebanese man who has ties to Hezbollah. I don't visit Lebanon for a reason and I have turned down business there. That would be the respectable thing for him to have done in the United States. He's already slippery. He's a Lebanese national who mis-characterizes his identity. He was coming to work on a visa that didn't permit it. That should raise one eyebrow. The other was raised by who he associates with.
- hirako2000 7y agoWhat are you talking about? You might be associated with individuals who posted content that may appear questionable. You may have a connection of a connection on social media who wrote something questionable altogether. Where does the association end? FYI software at the border to inspect phone content simply parse the file system and copies over all files for further analysis. It also transfers all emails and more text analysis. Anything flagged by filters get shown to the operator who may be surprised to see so much crap on a visitor device.
- damnyou 7y agoNo, we do not "raise one eyebrow" because someone was born on the wrong patch of dirt. That is a shameful and disgusting approach for the "shining city on a hill" to take.
- fortran77 7y agoIf he were asking for asylum because his life was in danger--that's when we're the "shining city on a hill". And of course we should carefully evaluate those sorts of claims and try to do the correct and just things. But that's not the case here, is it?
- damnyou 7y agoIt doesn't matter — it is so obviously wrong to discriminate based on country of origin that I can't even believe we're having this discussion. (And yes, I'm aware that consular posts do it all the time, issuing fewer visas to people from the wrong countries. States suck, and state violence sucks.)
- daveFNbuck 7y agoSo if someone responds to your comment with something objectionable, you'll be ok with people using that to restrict your rights and privileges?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tracer4201 7y agoI have friends who are Indian, Hispanic, white, black, Muslim, and Jewish. Some of them despise the President. One feels pretty strongly against Brexit. Another one is a staunch defender of Palestinians and believes Netanyahu is a crook who will continue annexing settlements in the West Bank to appease hardliners in order to stay in power. What does any of this say about whether I should be allowed in the US?
- rjsw 7y agoYou sound like a candidate for a drone strike /s.
- iforgotpassword 7y agoA lot of (young) people seem to quickly add people to their contacts or friend list after barely having spent time together. And those usually never get removed as most apps conveniently hide infrequently used contacts in the default view.
- swiley 7y agoWhat’s the alternative to that? Not ever getting to know anyone? The social advice older people tend give younger people in the US is often extremely self destructive and isolating.
- iforgotpassword 7y agoWell my point was actually just that because someone is on your friends list on facebook doesn't actually mean you had any interaction with them in the last decade or even remember who that is, let alone sympathize with anything they post to their timeline. But to answer your question: How about just not adding everyone you meet at a party at 3 am to your Facebook while drunk? I don't see how this prevents you from meeting people IRL. People managed to get to know each other before social media just fine. Bonus chatter: When I was almost done with college I had a new flat mate who just started his bachelor's and joined him once or twice when he went out. Usually during college time you don't care about or notice age that much. But suddenly I was surrounded by a bunch of 19 year old freshmen at a BBQ and everyone was constantly checking their phones and messaging people who weren't there. Suddenly an age gap of 6 years that was never an issue before made me feel like a freaking grandpa.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- influx 7y agoThe document states he claimed he was going to work at his relative's gas station, which seems plausible. This is a visa violation, and would get you denied from basically every country in the world.
- tastroder 7y agoThe article clearly addresses that issue. What's that weird line of reasoning anyway? Should CBP cancel all Visas for people that have relatives owning businesses in the US? Edit: since that other thread contains similar stuff. Can we please agree to read articles on volatile topics before commenting people?
- egypturnash 7y agoDid you read the text of the article? He vehemently denies that he was going to work at his relative's gas station. One line of questioning focused on an officer’s accusation that Dakhil was planning to work at a gas station owned by his cousin — which Dakhil denied. “They totally changed this scenario,” he said, rebutting several remarks and descriptions reported by the officers. “They only disclosed what they wanted to disclose,” he said. “They want to justify their decision, so they mentioned working in a gas station by themselves,” he claimed.
- influx 7y agoRead the report of the officers, Techcrunch intentionally put it at the end of the article to bury it, but there are two sides to this story and the report is quite plausible: "[] stated that he was not sure how much he would get paid or how many hours per day he will work. [] stated that by working at one of the gas stations, this would free [] of the responsibility and allow [] to work at a different gas station." There's a lot of detail in that statement that lends credibility over what Dakhil says.
- damnyou 7y agoYour priors are wrong. You should assume CBP is lying until definitively proven otherwise.
- notkaiho 7y agoCompletely unrelated to the article, dealing with TechCrunch (Oath's) cookie privacy notes is an absolute nightmare. No (clear) way to opt out of them. Sad.
- eps 7y agoFirefox + uBlock Origin will do the trick.
- curiousgal 7y agoCrossing any border with pictures of dead children on your phone is plain stupid regardless of the recent idiotic U.S. visa policy.
- troynt 7y agoYou do not control what is on your phone. Any app/website can put whatever it wants on your phone and you would have no idea.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- andy_ppp 7y agoIt wasn't because of the message, it was because he was called Ismail Ajjawi and presumably had different skin pigmentation than caucasian Americans.
- buttholesurfer 7y agoWhy do people act like they should be freely allowed into a country? Anyways the title is misleading. He was denied because his “intent to engage in unauthorized employment during his entry.”
- jrochkind1 7y agoSo.. at this point nobody should try coming into the U.S. with a non-clean-wiped phone, eh?
- avocado4 7y agoMight want to clean your phone if you have photos of dead children on it.
- jrochkind1 7y agoOr, from the other story, facebook friends with politics the border agent doesn't like. Or, who knows. It's not like there are rules written anywhere.
- sys_64738 7y agoDon't travel with electronics. It'll ask just as many questions of why you have a wiped clean phone or laptop. In this story they were simply looking for justification to deny the guy and they found it. I'd gauge that the border guards here would use clean electronics for the like as 'you must be hiding something'.
- jrochkind1 7y agoHow long until you can't get a US Visa if you don't have a facebook account? You need to have one, so they can snoop it. If you say you don't have one, you must be lying.
- sys_64738 7y agoAbout now by the looks of the new social media reporting requirements. You don't have a FB account? No US visa for you!
- Mikeb85 7y agoA few too many question marks here. A message with a dead child from an acquaintance he met at Hajj? A 3 month visa to travel with his wife and child who weren't with him yet? But he was visiting his relative who owned a business... Surely he can see why this looks bad.
- csomar 7y ago> The officers asked Dakhil if he wanted to claim for asylum, which he declined. Interesting. They are denying him a tourism entry but also asking him if he wants to stay indefinitely.
- whiddershins 7y agoI flagged this article, and I am happy for someone to explain if that isn’t the correct action. I flagged it for the reason that the headline purports to know something tech crunch can’t possibly know: the reason the individual was denied entry. It’s clear that the CBP says whatever they are saying, and it’s clear the individual has a different version of events. That’s all that’s clear from this as far as I can tell, yet tec crunch is asserting this is a particular pattern they have somehow discovered. This feels beyond biased in to deliberately misleading.
- Mikeb85 7y agoI mean, it's pretty much par for the course with US and global media these days. Stir up outrage for the clicks...
- dragonwriter 7y ago> I flagged it for the reason that the headline purports to know something tech crunch can’t possibly know: That's a reason to suggest modifying the HN headline from the source headline to something more accurate for the factual content; flagging is for a story that is out-of-bounds for the site, not for suboptimal (including clickbait, editorializing, or outright misleading) headline on an otherwise appropriate story.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoTrue, but I'd argue the non-clickbait version of the story is out of bounds for the site. "Some guy says CBP lied about why they denied him" doesn't exactly lead to deep discussion.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> True, but I'd argue the non-clickbait version of the story is out of bounds for the site. That's fine; I wouldn't argue that it is improper to flag this as off-topic (I may or may not agree, but it's a reasonable opinion in any case, and an appropriate reason for flagging.)
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- bgorman 7y agoUnfortunately large portions of the US government operate outside of civilian oversight. (TSA, CBP, NSA) etc. At this point foreign governments should probably be advising their citizens to take a burner phone to the US.
- irq11 7y agoMods: unflag this. This is a prime example of ideological abuse of the flagging system.
- tech5000 7y agoAll the people here trying to throw CBP under the bus, did you read their report? If I have a 'terroristic' picture on my phone and I try to cross a border, and at the same time I tell CBP that I want to work in my cousin's gas station so that he will be freed up to do other things, it is reasonable to think that CBP might exercise their right to decline to admit me. Commenters who are saying that CBP are lying: if its he said / she said, I am going to believe the person without the dead baby image on their phone. Not the person with the 5 year visa who wants to be away from their wife and child for three months for 'vacation'. It seems a bit weak to me to call CBP liars absent any evidence (and here there is none) that they have lied. Mainly what I want to say is about the dead baby image: if my 'friend' sends me that photo, we are having a talk stat about good judgement, he is not sending me any more photos, I am probably blocking him, and that photo is getting deleted. And if I have that photo on my phone and I choose to tell some bullshit story about child safety PSAs etc, and about my cousin's gas station, I have to expect that discretionary decisions are not going to go well for me.
- Freak_NL 7y agoIn a positive turn of events, Ismail Ajjawi has now been granted a new student visa and can attend classes at Harvard as planned: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/03/palestinian-student-harvard-ismail-ajjawi-immigration https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/03/palestinia...