5 ms·

I deleted my entire social media presence before visiting the US – I'm a citizen

117 points by rntn 1y ago

comrade1234 1y ago
lol. Did the same thing. Deleted WeChat (great for meeting Chinese women traveling and wanting to meet locals), deleted viber and everything else. I have also nuked my hackernews account multiple times in the past and will probably do it again before my next trip.
maxglute 1y ago
What's the process for checking? They ask you to unlock your phone or hook it up to some machine and slurps info out?
lovelearning 1y ago
Why are such articles flagged? And why do only flaggers get a flag vote but there's no unflag vote?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
ranger_danger 1y ago
Isn't this exactly what they want? To quash dissent?
- trump4eva 1y ago
  [flagged]
- santoshalper 1y ago
  Yeah, probably, but you don't have to be a martyr for the cause if it means not being able to go home.
hollywood_court 1y ago
I deleted all of my social media accounts prior to the last presidential election. I didn't wany myself or my family becoming targets of the administration or their sycophants.
- trump4eva 1y ago
  [flagged]
- ranger_danger 1y ago
  not speaking up is exactly what they want...
andrewla 1y ago
[flagged]
- santoshalper 1y ago
  Since the election, we have social and institutional norms be torn down or routed around time and time again. While I agree that I have not seen this specific situation yet, I think you'd be a fool to blithely assume it will not happen soon. It is possible, it is (by some people in power) highly desirable, and those people have made it clear that legality is irrelevant to them. These are not normal times, and your cynicism is not serving you well here. EDIT: I don't believe that the parent post should have been flagged. While I disagree with them, I believe they posted productively and in good faith.
  - andrewla 1y ago
    I was probably flagged for the unnecessary snark at the beginning of my post. I get it -- this isn't reddit and that sort of thing doesn't help. But I do earnestly believe that this is an almost pathological exaggeration of the state of the world.
- fzeroracer 1y ago
  > suing the everlasting shit out of the government when they try to detain you, which they won't, because this is just made up. Two things 1) Suing the US government only works when they say you can sue them (see: Sovereign Immunity). Additionally, the rank-and-file have vastly extended defenses against lawsuits (see: Qualified Immunity). If an customs agent decided to get especially frisky against you, the odds of you succeeding on a lawsuit against either the agent or the US government is close to nil unless it was an extreme violation of your constitutional rights, and even then it's not in your favor. 2) We have multiple recent examples of US citizens being illegally detained by ICE agents despite showing paperwork and evidence of citizenship. If you think you're safe: You're not.
  - andrewla 1y ago
    There are lots of legal carveouts for when you can't sue the government but that is not relevant to this particular discussion. Yes, there are a handful of recent examples of ICE detentions of American citizens suspected of being illegal aliens (although the only deportations I'm aware of are minor natural born citizens deported by request of their birth mother). The majority for obstruction but a handful pending deportation proceedings and held even after documentation of citizenship was produced. You've heard about them for two reasons. 1) There are very few compared to the scale of deportations currently being processed, so each case is exceptional against an incredibly low base rate. And these stories have been happening since 9/11 but journalists didn't give a shit until there was a salient political point to be scored 2) They are all suing the everlasting shit out of the government or have already settled
fundad 1y ago
I did something similar. I knew anything on my accounts was already in the palantir dataset used by DHS. I wanted to at least remove presence local on my phone, I didn't bring a computer abroad with me. I went through my history and deleted twitter, x and bluesky (I didn't and still don't read them via their apps). Probably should have deleted any mastadon links that I viewed in case any were not loyal enough. I deleted stored passwords for all social media. Deleting SMS was tedious, if you donate, they sell you number to every campaign that is considered the "enemy of the people" by the establishment. The best I could do was search for "campaign" and "Trump" and delete the SMS messages out of the Messages app. Of course my luck was better than I expected. All I did at immigration was point out one of my kids was really tired (he was quite sick on the plane-ride home). The CBP agent said something about "I'll get you out of here soon" and that was true without a single question. I suppose my toddler makes me look like less of a risk to national security than when I would return from solo overseas travel. I'm not going to get too comfortable though.
- codyb 1y ago
  I mean... just get a burner phone and transfer the number over for your travel duration and call it a day seems easier than all this. Cheapo iPhone Mini on one of the refurb sites'll run you a couple hundred bucks. Not too too bad if you just need something to connect to Wi-Fi and access maps and email with.
wetpaws 1y ago
[dead]
pembrook 1y ago
[flagged]
- janalsncm 1y ago
  > Nothing has changed legally If the law doesn’t change but the enforcement of it does, that counts as a legal change in my view.
- xdennis 1y ago
  I sympathize with some of the authors views, but deleting your accounts and going to press to brag about it seems kinda incongruent. It's like a chain smoker going to the liqueur store and bragging that he quit smoking. No one who has 300,000 tweets has a healthy relation with social media. Not even Musk has that many! He'll be back on ~~crack~~ social media in a month, tops.
nudgeOrnurture 1y ago
someone just checked the incogni database, ... you didn't delete anything
- VoidWhisperer 1y ago
  Isn't someone doing something like this the exact opposite of what incogni would want considering their whole business is to 'help people remove their data' from data brokers?
  - nudgeOrnurture 1y ago
    'help people remove their data from all other data brokers'
ripped_britches 1y ago
I am also deleted from socials from many years (besides anon HN), so I hear the perspective, but isn’t a bit dramatic to relate it to border reentry for an American citizen? Or is there some absurd news story I missed?
- josefresco 1y ago
  > is there some absurd news story I missed? You've missed several, here's a good summary (while it's still online): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_American_citizens_in_the_second_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...
  - xdennis 1y ago
    > Stephen Miller [...] ordered American security forces to arrest at least 3,000 humans per day nationwide. What a bizarre article! It always refers to illegal immigrants as "humans" as if that's the crime. Is this a new trend in the euphemism treadmill? Have we moved from "undocumented immigrant" to "human"?
    - 542354234235 1y ago
      The article says "people", not humans. And whichever term it is using, it is not referring to undocumented immigrants, it is referring to people, regardless of documentation. "Trump's 'border czar', Tom Homan, has stated ICE does not need probable cause to detain people based on their physical appearance. Homan confirmed ICE has made what he described as 'collateral arrests' of 'many' American citizens". The goal is to arrest at least 3,000 brown people, many of which will end up being US citizens, but that is just collateral damage to them.
      - everybodyknows 1y ago
        It says "people" now. Half an hour ago it said "human". See edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2600:4040:5491:9200:7C45:9CB1:F0C4:C3E6 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2600:4... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_and_deportation_of_American_citizens_in_the_second_Trump_administration&diff=prev&oldid=1301789812 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_and_d...
Quarrelsome 1y ago
I think a non-citizen should take a burner phone or clean phone and set all their social media to private before going. The risk is considerable and being placed into a holding cell for weeks or months, even when having a ticket home (as has happened to some) is a truamatic outcome. A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk. With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin. For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o [1] https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-tourist-denied-entry-cbp-ice/ https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-touris...
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  > The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin. My understanding is that he was stopped for other reasons, and that meme was questioned while he was being already detained. However, there's NO doubt this is not the America I grew up in.
- mcv 1y ago
  My solution is simply to not go to the US. I'm sorry. I know it used to be a great country, and there are still many great people living there, but I'm afraid the US dropped below China on the list of countries I'd like to visit. There are a hundred countries I'd feel safer.
- moelf 1y ago
mahirsaid 1y ago
Reddit as well.
asdfasvea 1y ago
My pity and my respect are mutually exclusive. This author seemingly wants both and gets neither. People like this are worse than the bullies. Either be brave enough to stand up for what you believe in or shut up and do your capitulation in silence.
tempodox 1y ago
If you ever made a social media account under your own name, the game's over. I'll assume the alphabet agencies will be able to see even “deleted” accounts.
seydor 1y ago
Is there someone aggregating information about these incidents? Would be nice to know if i should avoid visiting next year. But also i can't help but feel sorry and mad about all the people who used their real names online for political activism. How have you not learned these lessons from history? Did you think you re special?
- JohnTHaller 1y ago
  ICE now uses Mobile Fortify that does instant facial recognition and fingerprint scanning against hundreds of millions of images that looks up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases. It can then do a "Super Query" that can hit multiple databases on individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms. LexisNexis will be added in the near future. They also use Clearview AI which does facial recognition against social media and the web.
AlexandrB 1y ago
I was way ahead of all the people deleting their social media by not posting anything to social media since ~2015 or so. I'm still shocked that people put up with the abuses of Meta, Twitter, and all the rest.
- trump4eva 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 1y ago
    Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
greatwhitenorth 1y ago
[flagged]
chank 1y ago
> In 2025, social media has moved from self-expression to self-entrapment I sort of feel if you're only figuring this out now you've been willfully/woefully ignorant.
newsclues 1y ago
Deleting your social media accounts right before travel could be regarded as suspicious and not effective as your account data may not really be deleted.
oldpersonintx2 1y ago
[dead]
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
From the article: Remember the year: 2025 was when it all changed. When socials transformed from self-expression to entrapment. I have to disagree with the 2025 part of this. While this admin has made the 100mi Constitution Free Zone even more hostile, practices like leveraging SM accounts against us have been ramping up for most of a decade. refs: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agency-is-planning-demanding-foreigners-social-media-account-passwords/ https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agenc... https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-harassment-intrusive-device-searches-are-common-occurrence-us-borders/ https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-haras... https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-device-search-program-is-undersupervised-catastrophe/ https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-devic...
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  While it's possibly a valid point, those articles are all from the last iteration of this specific administration.
  - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
    It is my experience that every administration massively ramps-up Bush era bulk surveillance.
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      Then I would expect a number of articles from 2020-2024 as well.
      - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        > Then I would expect a number of articles from 2020-2024 as well. I wish. For some &%*# reason, news orgs natural instinct is to defer to LEO/IC agencies - to rarely-if-ever vet agency PR and immediately forget every lie told by agency leadership. For LEO/IC in republican admins, the press will sometimes do their jobs and hold these agencies somewhat accountable (and thereby honor press' extra 1A protections).
namlem 1y ago
This is just more nonsensical fear-mongering for clicks.
zenmac 1y ago
When FB first came out someone work in finance said "this is personal file, but the intellgency agencies has just made it fashionable and making money for us to maintain our own personal files" This is even worse then the Stasi. At least at that time people didn't see it as something operasive, but now we see it as fashionable. It is more important to NOT have your personal data on the some else's hardware.
- blindriver 1y ago
  Facebook has made it impossible for a generation of people to become spies and undercover cops, because their parents have uploaded an entire childhoods worth of photos and identifying information onto there. They have been doxxed before they even knew they wanted to be spies. Every nation state has spies in all the big tech companies.
mrtksn 1y ago
What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? I would imagine that if I was an activist on social media or if I was expressing strong views not liked by somebody I would definitely not tell that somebody if they are in a position to make my life harder. Is this maybe like the "Are you planning to do a terrorist attack" question in the visa application form or maybe like the one that asks you if you committed a genocide or war crimes? My bet is actually that it is intended to silence anyone who is NOT hostile to USA but has grievances with the current administration, i.e. someone who is smart and actually admires USA and aspires to visit/study/work in USA but wants USA to be better. I.e someone smart who has a chance to get into a prestigious US University and aspire to actually make the world a better place by someday make a huge contribution to science and wishes that USA was ethical country so their life work was put in a good use and not just some financial/political gain. I'm pretty certain that USA will have a change in profile of the people they attract and that's probably the intention but I don't think that it will be good for America and the humanity. The message is clear, if you aspire to make the world a more fair place or a place that the humanity as a whole gets elevated then don't come, this place is about maximizing the power of the politicians and the profits of the shareholders.
- square_usual 1y ago
  > What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? The State Department is fully capable of finding social media accounts that you haven't listed: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/reddit-user-shares-us-embassy-sent-him-back-over-social-media-account-told-your-account-is-not-/articleshow/122559526.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/red... And given that they're working hard on gathering data on citizens too, this will soon apply to you too?
  - mrtksn 1y ago
    I imagine that if I was a political activist or something I would have op-sec. That's why, IMHO, this is just an attempt of inducing self censorship among those who aspire to come to US for something productive.

117 points by rntn 1y ago

lol. Did the same thing. Deleted WeChat (great for meeting Chinese women traveling and wanting to meet locals), deleted viber and everything else. I have also nuked my hackernews account multiple times in the past and will probably do it again before my next trip.

maxglute 1y ago

What's the process for checking? They ask you to unlock your phone or hook it up to some machine and slurps info out?

lovelearning 1y ago

Why are such articles flagged? And why do only flaggers get a flag vote but there's no unflag vote?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

ranger_danger 1y ago

Isn't this exactly what they want? To quash dissent?

trump4eva 1y ago
[flagged]
santoshalper 1y ago
Yeah, probably, but you don't have to be a martyr for the cause if it means not being able to go home.

hollywood_court 1y ago

I deleted all of my social media accounts prior to the last presidential election. I didn't wany myself or my family becoming targets of the administration or their sycophants.

trump4eva 1y ago
[flagged]
ranger_danger 1y ago
not speaking up is exactly what they want...

andrewla 1y ago

[flagged]

santoshalper 1y ago
Since the election, we have social and institutional norms be torn down or routed around time and time again. While I agree that I have not seen this specific situation yet, I think you'd be a fool to blithely assume it will not happen soon. It is possible, it is (by some people in power) highly desirable, and those people have made it clear that legality is irrelevant to them. These are not normal times, and your cynicism is not serving you well here. EDIT: I don't believe that the parent post should have been flagged. While I disagree with them, I believe they posted productively and in good faith.
- andrewla 1y ago
  I was probably flagged for the unnecessary snark at the beginning of my post. I get it -- this isn't reddit and that sort of thing doesn't help. But I do earnestly believe that this is an almost pathological exaggeration of the state of the world.
fzeroracer 1y ago
> suing the everlasting shit out of the government when they try to detain you, which they won't, because this is just made up. Two things 1) Suing the US government only works when they say you can sue them (see: Sovereign Immunity). Additionally, the rank-and-file have vastly extended defenses against lawsuits (see: Qualified Immunity). If an customs agent decided to get especially frisky against you, the odds of you succeeding on a lawsuit against either the agent or the US government is close to nil unless it was an extreme violation of your constitutional rights, and even then it's not in your favor. 2) We have multiple recent examples of US citizens being illegally detained by ICE agents despite showing paperwork and evidence of citizenship. If you think you're safe: You're not.
- andrewla 1y ago
  There are lots of legal carveouts for when you can't sue the government but that is not relevant to this particular discussion. Yes, there are a handful of recent examples of ICE detentions of American citizens suspected of being illegal aliens (although the only deportations I'm aware of are minor natural born citizens deported by request of their birth mother). The majority for obstruction but a handful pending deportation proceedings and held even after documentation of citizenship was produced. You've heard about them for two reasons. 1) There are very few compared to the scale of deportations currently being processed, so each case is exceptional against an incredibly low base rate. And these stories have been happening since 9/11 but journalists didn't give a shit until there was a salient political point to be scored 2) They are all suing the everlasting shit out of the government or have already settled

fundad 1y ago

I did something similar. I knew anything on my accounts was already in the palantir dataset used by DHS. I wanted to at least remove presence local on my phone, I didn't bring a computer abroad with me. I went through my history and deleted twitter, x and bluesky (I didn't and still don't read them via their apps). Probably should have deleted any mastadon links that I viewed in case any were not loyal enough. I deleted stored passwords for all social media. Deleting SMS was tedious, if you donate, they sell you number to every campaign that is considered the "enemy of the people" by the establishment. The best I could do was search for "campaign" and "Trump" and delete the SMS messages out of the Messages app. Of course my luck was better than I expected. All I did at immigration was point out one of my kids was really tired (he was quite sick on the plane-ride home). The CBP agent said something about "I'll get you out of here soon" and that was true without a single question. I suppose my toddler makes me look like less of a risk to national security than when I would return from solo overseas travel. I'm not going to get too comfortable though.

codyb 1y ago
I mean... just get a burner phone and transfer the number over for your travel duration and call it a day seems easier than all this. Cheapo iPhone Mini on one of the refurb sites'll run you a couple hundred bucks. Not too too bad if you just need something to connect to Wi-Fi and access maps and email with.

wetpaws 1y ago

[dead]

pembrook 1y ago

[flagged]

janalsncm 1y ago
> Nothing has changed legally If the law doesn’t change but the enforcement of it does, that counts as a legal change in my view.
xdennis 1y ago
I sympathize with some of the authors views, but deleting your accounts and going to press to brag about it seems kinda incongruent. It's like a chain smoker going to the liqueur store and bragging that he quit smoking. No one who has 300,000 tweets has a healthy relation with social media. Not even Musk has that many! He'll be back on ~~crack~~ social media in a month, tops.

nudgeOrnurture 1y ago

someone just checked the incogni database, ... you didn't delete anything

VoidWhisperer 1y ago
Isn't someone doing something like this the exact opposite of what incogni would want considering their whole business is to 'help people remove their data' from data brokers?
- nudgeOrnurture 1y ago
  'help people remove their data from all other data brokers'

ripped_britches 1y ago

I am also deleted from socials from many years (besides anon HN), so I hear the perspective, but isn’t a bit dramatic to relate it to border reentry for an American citizen? Or is there some absurd news story I missed?

josefresco 1y ago
> is there some absurd news story I missed? You've missed several, here's a good summary (while it's still online): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_American_citizens_in_the_second_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...
- xdennis 1y ago
  > Stephen Miller [...] ordered American security forces to arrest at least 3,000 humans per day nationwide. What a bizarre article! It always refers to illegal immigrants as "humans" as if that's the crime. Is this a new trend in the euphemism treadmill? Have we moved from "undocumented immigrant" to "human"?
  - 542354234235 1y ago
    The article says "people", not humans. And whichever term it is using, it is not referring to undocumented immigrants, it is referring to people, regardless of documentation. "Trump's 'border czar', Tom Homan, has stated ICE does not need probable cause to detain people based on their physical appearance. Homan confirmed ICE has made what he described as 'collateral arrests' of 'many' American citizens". The goal is to arrest at least 3,000 brown people, many of which will end up being US citizens, but that is just collateral damage to them.
    - everybodyknows 1y ago
      It says "people" now. Half an hour ago it said "human". See edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2600:4040:5491:9200:7C45:9CB1:F0C4:C3E6 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2600:4... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_and_deportation_of_American_citizens_in_the_second_Trump_administration&diff=prev&oldid=1301789812 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_and_d...

Quarrelsome 1y ago

I think a non-citizen should take a burner phone or clean phone and set all their social media to private before going. The risk is considerable and being placed into a holding cell for weeks or months, even when having a ticket home (as has happened to some) is a truamatic outcome. A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk. With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin. For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o [1] https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-tourist-denied-entry-cbp-ice/ https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-touris...

IAmBroom 1y ago
> The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin. My understanding is that he was stopped for other reasons, and that meme was questioned while he was being already detained. However, there's NO doubt this is not the America I grew up in.
mcv 1y ago
My solution is simply to not go to the US. I'm sorry. I know it used to be a great country, and there are still many great people living there, but I'm afraid the US dropped below China on the list of countries I'd like to visit. There are a hundred countries I'd feel safer.
moelf 1y ago

mahirsaid 1y ago

Reddit as well.

asdfasvea 1y ago

My pity and my respect are mutually exclusive. This author seemingly wants both and gets neither. People like this are worse than the bullies. Either be brave enough to stand up for what you believe in or shut up and do your capitulation in silence.

tempodox 1y ago

If you ever made a social media account under your own name, the game's over. I'll assume the alphabet agencies will be able to see even “deleted” accounts.

seydor 1y ago

Is there someone aggregating information about these incidents? Would be nice to know if i should avoid visiting next year. But also i can't help but feel sorry and mad about all the people who used their real names online for political activism. How have you not learned these lessons from history? Did you think you re special?

JohnTHaller 1y ago
ICE now uses Mobile Fortify that does instant facial recognition and fingerprint scanning against hundreds of millions of images that looks up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases. It can then do a "Super Query" that can hit multiple databases on individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms. LexisNexis will be added in the near future. They also use Clearview AI which does facial recognition against social media and the web.

AlexandrB 1y ago

I was way ahead of all the people deleting their social media by not posting anything to social media since ~2015 or so. I'm still shocked that people put up with the abuses of Meta, Twitter, and all the rest.

trump4eva 1y ago
[flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

greatwhitenorth 1y ago

[flagged]

chank 1y ago

> In 2025, social media has moved from self-expression to self-entrapment I sort of feel if you're only figuring this out now you've been willfully/woefully ignorant.

newsclues 1y ago

Deleting your social media accounts right before travel could be regarded as suspicious and not effective as your account data may not really be deleted.

oldpersonintx2 1y ago

[dead]

WarOnPrivacy 1y ago

From the article: Remember the year: 2025 was when it all changed. When socials transformed from self-expression to entrapment. I have to disagree with the 2025 part of this. While this admin has made the 100mi Constitution Free Zone even more hostile, practices like leveraging SM accounts against us have been ramping up for most of a decade. refs: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agency-is-planning-demanding-foreigners-social-media-account-passwords/ https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agenc... https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-harassment-intrusive-device-searches-are-common-occurrence-us-borders/ https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-haras... https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-device-search-program-is-undersupervised-catastrophe/ https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-devic...

SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
While it's possibly a valid point, those articles are all from the last iteration of this specific administration.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  It is my experience that every administration massively ramps-up Bush era bulk surveillance.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    Then I would expect a number of articles from 2020-2024 as well.
    - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
      > Then I would expect a number of articles from 2020-2024 as well. I wish. For some &%*# reason, news orgs natural instinct is to defer to LEO/IC agencies - to rarely-if-ever vet agency PR and immediately forget every lie told by agency leadership. For LEO/IC in republican admins, the press will sometimes do their jobs and hold these agencies somewhat accountable (and thereby honor press' extra 1A protections).

namlem 1y ago

This is just more nonsensical fear-mongering for clicks.

zenmac 1y ago

When FB first came out someone work in finance said "this is personal file, but the intellgency agencies has just made it fashionable and making money for us to maintain our own personal files" This is even worse then the Stasi. At least at that time people didn't see it as something operasive, but now we see it as fashionable. It is more important to NOT have your personal data on the some else's hardware.

blindriver 1y ago
Facebook has made it impossible for a generation of people to become spies and undercover cops, because their parents have uploaded an entire childhoods worth of photos and identifying information onto there. They have been doxxed before they even knew they wanted to be spies. Every nation state has spies in all the big tech companies.

mrtksn 1y ago

What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? I would imagine that if I was an activist on social media or if I was expressing strong views not liked by somebody I would definitely not tell that somebody if they are in a position to make my life harder. Is this maybe like the "Are you planning to do a terrorist attack" question in the visa application form or maybe like the one that asks you if you committed a genocide or war crimes? My bet is actually that it is intended to silence anyone who is NOT hostile to USA but has grievances with the current administration, i.e. someone who is smart and actually admires USA and aspires to visit/study/work in USA but wants USA to be better. I.e someone smart who has a chance to get into a prestigious US University and aspire to actually make the world a better place by someday make a huge contribution to science and wishes that USA was ethical country so their life work was put in a good use and not just some financial/political gain. I'm pretty certain that USA will have a change in profile of the people they attract and that's probably the intention but I don't think that it will be good for America and the humanity. The message is clear, if you aspire to make the world a more fair place or a place that the humanity as a whole gets elevated then don't come, this place is about maximizing the power of the politicians and the profits of the shareholders.

square_usual 1y ago
> What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? The State Department is fully capable of finding social media accounts that you haven't listed: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/reddit-user-shares-us-embassy-sent-him-back-over-social-media-account-told-your-account-is-not-/articleshow/122559526.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/red... And given that they're working hard on gathering data on citizens too, this will soon apply to you too?
- mrtksn 1y ago
  I imagine that if I was a political activist or something I would have op-sec. That's why, IMHO, this is just an attempt of inducing self censorship among those who aspire to come to US for something productive.