6 ms·

> In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her t

by mmsc 2y ago

> In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application. “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what? It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from. You can’t have a German and Argentinian passport and enter Germany with the German passport and leave with the Argentinian one. Nor can you leave Germany with just the Argentinian one. You can go to other Schengen countries, but you can't leave the Schengen region ("since is your entrance stamp?")

chatmasta 2y ago
Many (most?) countries do not require you to show any passport when exiting the country. (But if you’re traveling by air, then the next country you enter will likely share your passport details with the country you just departed.)
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  Can you give an example? Sounds strange to me. Even within Schengen area there can be temporary border checks and you usually need to identify yourself when leaving it.
  - askonomm 2y ago
    In-shengen border controls are extremely easy to bypass, and if you travel a lot you know exactly where they are (especially since it is quite rare). Baltic countries have no checks at all at the borders, so you can go Sweden to Finland, Finland to Estonia, Estonia all the way down to Poland without any checks at all, easy. I know there's often a check at the France / Spain border, but I also know they only check busses and rarely any cars, so you can just either drive through with a rental car or just walk over (I once got my ID stolen and could not get over with a bus, so I hitchhicked / walked from Nice to Barcelona).
    - mmsc 2y ago
      Those in-Schengen checks for buses and so on are largely just "do you have a valid passport?" and I'm not aware of any real checks of visa status, overstay checks, etc. If you get caught without a passport, you get detained though. If you've forgotten your passport somewhere, someone else can take it to an airport (or a physical border) and the border control at the airport can then confirm your identity.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        You only need to show an id, not a passport, right?
        askonomm 2y ago
        Either is fine, yeah.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      > In-shengen border controls… I‘m talking about temporary border controls that any country within the area may implement in certain circumstances according to the agreement. They are not the norm, Schengen is supposed to have only an external border.
    - anthk 2y ago
      You can trivially head from Irun to Hendaye.
    - Moto7451 2y ago
      No one checked my passport going from Germany to Poland or Poland to France this past week by air. Per the EU’s website, Romania and Bulgaria don’t check when flying between them. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-citizen/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-c...
- FabHK 2y ago
  Examples/source? According to this stack overflow question, the US is (fairly) unique in not having immigration exit checks. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/122289/why-don-t-some-countries-notably-usa-have-exit-immigration https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/122289/why-don-t-...
  - llmllmllm 2y ago
    The UK doesn't have exit checks.
    - mmsc 2y ago
      Of the ~50 countries I've been to in the past 10 years, The UK is the only one I remember which I did not need to show any ID when leaving. I thought it was strange because this is just one way countries catch overstays.
      - zarzavat 2y ago
        They get the records from the airlines. They don’t need to pay someone to stamp passports at the border to know who is overstaying.
        mmsc 2y ago
        Sure (and I'm not sure if that's actually how it works), but the border control also physically stops someone from leaving after they've overstayed. If someone has overstayed, they just go to the airport and hop on a plane with no consequences.
        zarzavat 2y ago
        Some countries do fine overstayers, but UK is quite happy for people to leave with no penalty, it just doesn’t want them to come back again afterwards. If someone overstays without a good reason then they are probably not entering the UK again for a long time. The consequences are almost worse without the exit controls because overstayers will waste money on a flight only to get turned around at the border - assuming they don’t need a visa or ETA.
ivan_gammel 2y ago
At least in some countries in Schengen area they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia („You don’t seem to have Russian visa, do you have another passport?“) However, you don’t have to be very smart and sophisticated to simply choose another route and use connection in Istanbul to avoid this check…
- mmsc 2y ago
  > they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia Who is "they"? If "they" is the airline, then physically show them the Russian passport: they don't record this information, they only need to see it to confirm that they won't have to fly you back (for free?) to your departing location. If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    >Who is "they"? Narva is a pedestrian and car crossing. EU has a border with Russia/Belarus. > If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works. FYI in many places (not everywhere, rarely in Europe) border control will look at your boarding pass too.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Using the passport to book the ticket, and using the passport to go through immigration are completely distinct though. When travelling we can book with whatever passport, but we need to be more careful during immigration.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what? I feel that there was a huge loss of competence - our security services are far too busy chasing around lone terrorists with low-tech tools and no op-sec. The military industrial complex is so deep in grift it can only produce enough weapons to fight third world countries with minimal losses
mistermann 2y ago
> “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques
ericol 2y ago
I think what this means is that she used her Czech passport when leaving a country, and used the Russian passport when entering Russia (Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national). That's far from "sophisticated tradecaft" though. For instance a large % of Argentinians have double nationality (Myself included) and we do this all the time when travelling to Europe.
- immibis 2y ago
  That's what any sane dual citizen would do. Use your Schengen country passport within Schengen and your home country passport when entering your home country. Maybe you wouldn't go to the lengths of using two different passports on one flight (you'd show your Russian passport when boarding a flight to Russia) but if you did, it wouldn't be that weird...
- pvaldes 2y ago
  > Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national Computer systems of face recognition deployed everywhere would want to say something about that bright plan
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lmm 2y ago
> It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from. It's not generally illegal. Some countries have that requirement but those are generally countries that are particularly strict (e.g. you mentioned Germany and Argentina but they're both countries famous for unusually strict nationality laws; Germany generally strips people of their nationality if they acquire a foreign nationality, Argentina on the other side makes it impossible to renounce your citizenship at all).

by mmsc 2y ago

chatmasta 2y ago

Many (most?) countries do not require you to show any passport when exiting the country. (But if you’re traveling by air, then the next country you enter will likely share your passport details with the country you just departed.)

ivan_gammel 2y ago
Can you give an example? Sounds strange to me. Even within Schengen area there can be temporary border checks and you usually need to identify yourself when leaving it.
- askonomm 2y ago
  In-shengen border controls are extremely easy to bypass, and if you travel a lot you know exactly where they are (especially since it is quite rare). Baltic countries have no checks at all at the borders, so you can go Sweden to Finland, Finland to Estonia, Estonia all the way down to Poland without any checks at all, easy. I know there's often a check at the France / Spain border, but I also know they only check busses and rarely any cars, so you can just either drive through with a rental car or just walk over (I once got my ID stolen and could not get over with a bus, so I hitchhicked / walked from Nice to Barcelona).
  - mmsc 2y ago
    Those in-Schengen checks for buses and so on are largely just "do you have a valid passport?" and I'm not aware of any real checks of visa status, overstay checks, etc. If you get caught without a passport, you get detained though. If you've forgotten your passport somewhere, someone else can take it to an airport (or a physical border) and the border control at the airport can then confirm your identity.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      You only need to show an id, not a passport, right?
      - askonomm 2y ago
        Either is fine, yeah.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    > In-shengen border controls… I‘m talking about temporary border controls that any country within the area may implement in certain circumstances according to the agreement. They are not the norm, Schengen is supposed to have only an external border.
  - anthk 2y ago
    You can trivially head from Irun to Hendaye.
  - Moto7451 2y ago
    No one checked my passport going from Germany to Poland or Poland to France this past week by air. Per the EU’s website, Romania and Bulgaria don’t check when flying between them. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-citizen/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-c...
FabHK 2y ago
Examples/source? According to this stack overflow question, the US is (fairly) unique in not having immigration exit checks. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/122289/why-don-t-some-countries-notably-usa-have-exit-immigration https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/122289/why-don-t-...
- llmllmllm 2y ago
  The UK doesn't have exit checks.
  - mmsc 2y ago
    Of the ~50 countries I've been to in the past 10 years, The UK is the only one I remember which I did not need to show any ID when leaving. I thought it was strange because this is just one way countries catch overstays.
    - zarzavat 2y ago
      They get the records from the airlines. They don’t need to pay someone to stamp passports at the border to know who is overstaying.
      - mmsc 2y ago
        Sure (and I'm not sure if that's actually how it works), but the border control also physically stops someone from leaving after they've overstayed. If someone has overstayed, they just go to the airport and hop on a plane with no consequences.
        zarzavat 2y ago
        Some countries do fine overstayers, but UK is quite happy for people to leave with no penalty, it just doesn’t want them to come back again afterwards. If someone overstays without a good reason then they are probably not entering the UK again for a long time. The consequences are almost worse without the exit controls because overstayers will waste money on a flight only to get turned around at the border - assuming they don’t need a visa or ETA.

ivan_gammel 2y ago

At least in some countries in Schengen area they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia („You don’t seem to have Russian visa, do you have another passport?“) However, you don’t have to be very smart and sophisticated to simply choose another route and use connection in Istanbul to avoid this check…

mmsc 2y ago
> they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia Who is "they"? If "they" is the airline, then physically show them the Russian passport: they don't record this information, they only need to see it to confirm that they won't have to fly you back (for free?) to your departing location. If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  >Who is "they"? Narva is a pedestrian and car crossing. EU has a border with Russia/Belarus. > If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works. FYI in many places (not everywhere, rarely in Europe) border control will look at your boarding pass too.
Aeolun 2y ago
Using the passport to book the ticket, and using the passport to go through immigration are completely distinct though. When travelling we can book with whatever passport, but we need to be more careful during immigration.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

> “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what? I feel that there was a huge loss of competence - our security services are far too busy chasing around lone terrorists with low-tech tools and no op-sec. The military industrial complex is so deep in grift it can only produce enough weapons to fight third world countries with minimal losses

mistermann 2y ago

> “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques

ericol 2y ago

I think what this means is that she used her Czech passport when leaving a country, and used the Russian passport when entering Russia (Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national). That's far from "sophisticated tradecaft" though. For instance a large % of Argentinians have double nationality (Myself included) and we do this all the time when travelling to Europe.

immibis 2y ago
That's what any sane dual citizen would do. Use your Schengen country passport within Schengen and your home country passport when entering your home country. Maybe you wouldn't go to the lengths of using two different passports on one flight (you'd show your Russian passport when boarding a flight to Russia) but if you did, it wouldn't be that weird...
pvaldes 2y ago
> Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national Computer systems of face recognition deployed everywhere would want to say something about that bright plan

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lmm 2y ago

> It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from. It's not generally illegal. Some countries have that requirement but those are generally countries that are particularly strict (e.g. you mentioned Germany and Argentina but they're both countries famous for unusually strict nationality laws; Germany generally strips people of their nationality if they acquire a foreign nationality, Argentina on the other side makes it impossible to renounce your citizenship at all).