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I wonder if this is one of those vague "security" problems. It seems like if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they'r

I wonder if this is one of those vague "security" problems. It seems like if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little. But when you get a black mark against you it seems like you get stuck in an administrative blackhole where nobody is authorised to tell you WHY or they themselves don't know. It was the same way with the no-fly list for the longest time too, but because that wound up impacting a few powerful Americans it was eventually sorted so now you can at least fight it a little or do additional background checks to get off of it. The worst part is that these security black marks seem fairly easy to get: family member or friend a "terrorist?" Share a name with someone "bad?" You're now on it. And nobody you can actually talk to can either tell you why or has the authority to remove you. I would blame it on bureaucracy, but that is an easy out for a policy which is partly intentional -- Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores. They have made that abundantly clear over the last ten years.

TylerE 13y ago
It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.
- betterunix 13y ago
  It also has the unfortunate side effect of leaving innocent people completely confused when they get flagged, because they have no idea what they did wrong nor any way to defend themselves. America is not supposed to be a country where people are punished for mysterious reasons, not even foreigners.
- EliRivers 13y ago
  Surely we want them to stop doing bad things? :p
  - TylerE 13y ago
    Yes, but this will stop them from doing EASY TO CATCH bad things. It's like anti-bacterial soap. Think about how badass that 0.1% that ISN'T killed is.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - EliRivers 13y ago
      Ignoring that whooshing noise, so we're breeding a race of super-terrorists? Nice.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  a bit like a government. If it find that doing X is frown upon by its citizen, it better hide it before the citizens make it stop doing X any more. edit: this is obviously false, since by taking the monopole of violence, the government also has to drop some barbaric practices. And this is all due process and defense rights are about, limitations of the government power. Call it unfair, but drones are unfair too.
- jdotjdot 13y ago
  It's only a good practice if X is very, very highly correlated with (and only with) being a terrorist. It's not really that great security practice if you're missing a ton of real terrorists who don't do X, and you're catching a lot of non-terrorists who do do X, and no one can figure out what's going on since no one knows what X is. That's not protecting our methods; at that point, it's really just picking people out randomly.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    We must always remember how rare terrorists are, and what that means for any test you apply to a person. You have a test that flags terrorists 99% of the time, and also flags innocent people 1% of the time. The test flags a person. What are the odds that this person is a terrorist? Answer: roughly one in a million, depending exactly on the terrorist:non-terrorist ratio in your sample population. Since there are millions of normal people for each terrorist, a small false positive rate still grabs so many people as to make the test nearly useless. And of course it goes well beyond this. Since actual terrorists are so rare, you can never confidently state that a test will flag terrorists 99% of the time. You can easily measure the false positive rate, but it's basically impossible to measure the true positive rate with any accuracy. You can guess and extrapolate, but when it comes to actually measuring performance in the real world, you'll have a very difficult time distinguishing between a test that flags 99% of terrorists, and a test that flags 1% of terrorists.
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  The fellow had been in the country for years. If he hadn't crossed the border he would now have his PhD, and would be doing what he had been doing before. No one is safer because they turned him away at the border. It's either a false positive (that's most likely, considering how few terrorists there actually are), or a subtle hint to discourage his associates from ... doing things.
  - agilebyte 13y ago
    At least he has the PhD now. Imagine if academia were academia and his school insisted on having viva in person.
- VLM 13y ago
  If, by X, you mean "go thru airport security". Luckily our borders are an impermeable wall stronger than the cold war era berlin wall, so there's no alternative method for bad guy to enter the country. This is the comedy of the whole security theater system. In the old days generals always prepared to refight the last war, in the fatherland security era its about the same concept. The next attack will not come from a properly documented airline passenger, it'll come from "rio grande swimmer number 50 million and one". May as well just let them fly even if we know they're bad guys, if they're going to get here anyway, one way or another, at least we'll make a profit off the ticket and its easier to track their actions at an airport than some desert out west. Even worse, they're better off letting all the bad guys thru to boost budgets, and stop only good guys because its safer/less confrontational and makes good theater. If I know that, they probably figured it out a long time earlier, and almost surely implemented it. Its also a bad tactical move. Lets say he was in fact a bad guy. The obvious standing order for a bad guy would be if you get caught, yet are not drone attacked or sent to the concentration camp in cuba, then being busted should be the immediate signal to enter our completely porous and open borders via non-traditional routes, and "do your thing" since you're obviously of no further use undercover. The mere fact this dude did nothing for over a year using this logic proves his innocence. If he was a bad guy then he would have "sneaked" in, gotten on campus as quickly as possible while his intel is still current, and (done something tragic)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- Jacqued 13y ago
  It's actually bad security practice, because terrorists do not exist. I mean, there are so few of them that they are basically irrelevant. Yes, every few years a terrorist event will occur somewhere in a western country, and that is quite unfortunate. However it is very minor and I don't believe it is worth the effort to fight it with a significant part of the nation's budget. Even less so to restrict civil liberties. This whole narrative that there is a prevalent terrorist threat against our western countries is both a product of irrational fear and general government megalomania. I'm not even sure there's malevolence behind it. Osama Bin Laden really won the very first time the terms "War on terror" were pronounced - I don't think he could ever have dreamed of such a wide and lasting success
- nijk 13y ago
  Well if they told people what terrorism technically means, maybe people would stop being terrorists. Imagine if you got busted for speeding, but the speed limit was secret, because cops didn't want you avoiding detection by... Not speeding.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X What terrorists? Good security practice is making a system that is usable, because otherwise the best practice would be to seal the boarder completely.
sp332 13y ago
The worst one I know of was when they wouldn't let Nelson Mandela into the country because some computer had flagged him as having ties to terrorist groups. Condoleezza Rice personally went to the airport to wave him through security. She was so mad, she might have single-handedly taken the teeth out of that system. Edit: more info, and some evidence that I was right :) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchlist_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchli...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- nashequilibrium 13y ago
  The reason Nelson Mandela and the whole ANC party who fought apartheid were on the no fly list is because they were labelled as a terrorist group. Nobody bothered to adjust this until a couple of embarrassing moments like this. It is kind of funny that the apartheid government were never denied entry to any country, yet the people fighting an oppressive government were labelled as terrorist. It is also surprising that the countries that helped the ANC were so called communist countries, the world seems more like the Soprano's than countries guided by principles, love and life.
  - Spearchucker 13y ago
    ...the people fighting an oppressive government were labelled as terrorist... Not surprising at all. Dig into the history of the ANC a little. Specifically, look for Umkhonto we Sizwe after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. While in no way [edit] trivialising the abhorrent and often vicious apartheid regime of the time, the ANC (and Mandela) haven't exactly been angles, either.
    - fnbr 13y ago
      Hey, just an FYI, to denigrate means "to criticize," so although I understood what you meant, you might want to reword that (not to be pedantic, I just know that if I misused a word, I'd want someone to tell me).
VLM 13y ago
"But when you get a black mark against you" There are better, more accurate literary and historical analogies than "black marks". Things like yellow stars, scarlet letters, that kind of thing. aka reason number 235135 not to be proud to be an American.
jbooth 13y ago
I agree, blaming it on "bureaucracy" or "big government" is the least insightful thing someone can add to the conversation. Of course it's executed by a bureaucracy -- what else would we expect, Batman's going to manage the program? The assumption that it's going to be executed by a bureaucracy should be part of the reasoning when setting policy. Either this was an expected outcome (in the collateral damage sense or in the "good keep him out" sense), or it should have been and people should have known better.
pseut 13y ago
"if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little." I think this is true when the person is in the country but when they're not they can't enter when it's being worked out, even if there are no security issues. (but I'm a US citizen and don't have any direct experience)
robomartin 13y ago
> Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores. This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US.
- betterunix 13y ago
  At the same time, though, foreigners are discouraged from studying certain topics. The security engineering group at my school lost a student a few years ago, because he was Chinese and the US government would not allow him to reenter the country due to his thesis topic (computer security). It took an assurance from the school that he would not be permitted to do any further work with his adviser and that he would switch research topics for him to be permitted entry to this country. The incredible stupidity here is that there is no classified research done by that group, nor by my own research group (cryptography). Everything is published in publicly available conferences and journals.
- sarabellumac 13y ago
  I have direct experience with an international academic conference that at one time rotated between being hosted in the USA and "abroad". The conference now avoids hosting in the USA because it is too difficult for academic phds to get travel visas. So much for your theory
- 46Bit 13y ago
  > This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US. If anything I've been surprised at how consistently keen Americans are for high-skill immigration.
  - zero_intp 13y ago
peterwwillis 13y ago
Every year I meet more expats working or studying here from 6 months to several years in order to build skills to take back home. Since I live close to JHU, most of them are scientists. But yes, an economic depression causes political pressure on immigrants due to the lack of work/school for native citizens.
cunac 13y ago
I am not US citizen but visa policy is virtually same for any issuing country. Getting visa (any kind) is privilege not right. Government has full discretionary right to refuse entry to anybody whom is not citizen. Not saying it is fair system but it is what it is. Except full open border policy I don't see how you can fix system.

TylerE 13y ago

It's actually good security practice. If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X, now they know not to do X any more.

betterunix 13y ago
It also has the unfortunate side effect of leaving innocent people completely confused when they get flagged, because they have no idea what they did wrong nor any way to defend themselves. America is not supposed to be a country where people are punished for mysterious reasons, not even foreigners.
EliRivers 13y ago
Surely we want them to stop doing bad things? :p
- TylerE 13y ago
  Yes, but this will stop them from doing EASY TO CATCH bad things. It's like anti-bacterial soap. Think about how badass that 0.1% that ISN'T killed is.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    Ignoring that whooshing noise, so we're breeding a race of super-terrorists? Nice.
nraynaud 13y ago
a bit like a government. If it find that doing X is frown upon by its citizen, it better hide it before the citizens make it stop doing X any more. edit: this is obviously false, since by taking the monopole of violence, the government also has to drop some barbaric practices. And this is all due process and defense rights are about, limitations of the government power. Call it unfair, but drones are unfair too.
jdotjdot 13y ago
It's only a good practice if X is very, very highly correlated with (and only with) being a terrorist. It's not really that great security practice if you're missing a ton of real terrorists who don't do X, and you're catching a lot of non-terrorists who do do X, and no one can figure out what's going on since no one knows what X is. That's not protecting our methods; at that point, it's really just picking people out randomly.
- mikeash 13y ago
  We must always remember how rare terrorists are, and what that means for any test you apply to a person. You have a test that flags terrorists 99% of the time, and also flags innocent people 1% of the time. The test flags a person. What are the odds that this person is a terrorist? Answer: roughly one in a million, depending exactly on the terrorist:non-terrorist ratio in your sample population. Since there are millions of normal people for each terrorist, a small false positive rate still grabs so many people as to make the test nearly useless. And of course it goes well beyond this. Since actual terrorists are so rare, you can never confidently state that a test will flag terrorists 99% of the time. You can easily measure the false positive rate, but it's basically impossible to measure the true positive rate with any accuracy. You can guess and extrapolate, but when it comes to actually measuring performance in the real world, you'll have a very difficult time distinguishing between a test that flags 99% of terrorists, and a test that flags 1% of terrorists.
HarryHirsch 13y ago
The fellow had been in the country for years. If he hadn't crossed the border he would now have his PhD, and would be doing what he had been doing before. No one is safer because they turned him away at the border. It's either a false positive (that's most likely, considering how few terrorists there actually are), or a subtle hint to discourage his associates from ... doing things.
- agilebyte 13y ago
  At least he has the PhD now. Imagine if academia were academia and his school insisted on having viva in person.
VLM 13y ago
If, by X, you mean "go thru airport security". Luckily our borders are an impermeable wall stronger than the cold war era berlin wall, so there's no alternative method for bad guy to enter the country. This is the comedy of the whole security theater system. In the old days generals always prepared to refight the last war, in the fatherland security era its about the same concept. The next attack will not come from a properly documented airline passenger, it'll come from "rio grande swimmer number 50 million and one". May as well just let them fly even if we know they're bad guys, if they're going to get here anyway, one way or another, at least we'll make a profit off the ticket and its easier to track their actions at an airport than some desert out west. Even worse, they're better off letting all the bad guys thru to boost budgets, and stop only good guys because its safer/less confrontational and makes good theater. If I know that, they probably figured it out a long time earlier, and almost surely implemented it. Its also a bad tactical move. Lets say he was in fact a bad guy. The obvious standing order for a bad guy would be if you get caught, yet are not drone attacked or sent to the concentration camp in cuba, then being busted should be the immediate signal to enter our completely porous and open borders via non-traditional routes, and "do your thing" since you're obviously of no further use undercover. The mere fact this dude did nothing for over a year using this logic proves his innocence. If he was a bad guy then he would have "sneaked" in, gotten on campus as quickly as possible while his intel is still current, and (done something tragic)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Jacqued 13y ago
It's actually bad security practice, because terrorists do not exist. I mean, there are so few of them that they are basically irrelevant. Yes, every few years a terrorist event will occur somewhere in a western country, and that is quite unfortunate. However it is very minor and I don't believe it is worth the effort to fight it with a significant part of the nation's budget. Even less so to restrict civil liberties. This whole narrative that there is a prevalent terrorist threat against our western countries is both a product of irrational fear and general government megalomania. I'm not even sure there's malevolence behind it. Osama Bin Laden really won the very first time the terms "War on terror" were pronounced - I don't think he could ever have dreamed of such a wide and lasting success
nijk 13y ago
Well if they told people what terrorism technically means, maybe people would stop being terrorists. Imagine if you got busted for speeding, but the speed limit was secret, because cops didn't want you avoiding detection by... Not speeding.
darkarmani 13y ago
> If the terrorist's find out they got flagged because of X What terrorists? Good security practice is making a system that is usable, because otherwise the best practice would be to seal the boarder completely.

sp332 13y ago

The worst one I know of was when they wouldn't let Nelson Mandela into the country because some computer had flagged him as having ties to terrorist groups. Condoleezza Rice personally went to the airport to wave him through security. She was so mad, she might have single-handedly taken the teeth out of that system. Edit: more info, and some evidence that I was right :) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchlist_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchli...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nashequilibrium 13y ago
The reason Nelson Mandela and the whole ANC party who fought apartheid were on the no fly list is because they were labelled as a terrorist group. Nobody bothered to adjust this until a couple of embarrassing moments like this. It is kind of funny that the apartheid government were never denied entry to any country, yet the people fighting an oppressive government were labelled as terrorist. It is also surprising that the countries that helped the ANC were so called communist countries, the world seems more like the Soprano's than countries guided by principles, love and life.
- Spearchucker 13y ago
  ...the people fighting an oppressive government were labelled as terrorist... Not surprising at all. Dig into the history of the ANC a little. Specifically, look for Umkhonto we Sizwe after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. While in no way [edit] trivialising the abhorrent and often vicious apartheid regime of the time, the ANC (and Mandela) haven't exactly been angles, either.
  - fnbr 13y ago
    Hey, just an FYI, to denigrate means "to criticize," so although I understood what you meant, you might want to reword that (not to be pedantic, I just know that if I misused a word, I'd want someone to tell me).

VLM 13y ago

"But when you get a black mark against you" There are better, more accurate literary and historical analogies than "black marks". Things like yellow stars, scarlet letters, that kind of thing. aka reason number 235135 not to be proud to be an American.

jbooth 13y ago

I agree, blaming it on "bureaucracy" or "big government" is the least insightful thing someone can add to the conversation. Of course it's executed by a bureaucracy -- what else would we expect, Batman's going to manage the program? The assumption that it's going to be executed by a bureaucracy should be part of the reasoning when setting policy. Either this was an expected outcome (in the collateral damage sense or in the "good keep him out" sense), or it should have been and people should have known better.

pseut 13y ago

"if people get denied for normal stuff (overstaying, violating their visas, etc) they're told and can at least fight it a little." I think this is true when the person is in the country but when they're not they can't enter when it's being worked out, even if there are no security issues. (but I'm a US citizen and don't have any direct experience)

robomartin 13y ago

> Americans don't want people visiting, working, or studying on their shores. This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US.

betterunix 13y ago
At the same time, though, foreigners are discouraged from studying certain topics. The security engineering group at my school lost a student a few years ago, because he was Chinese and the US government would not allow him to reenter the country due to his thesis topic (computer security). It took an assurance from the school that he would not be permitted to do any further work with his adviser and that he would switch research topics for him to be permitted entry to this country. The incredible stupidity here is that there is no classified research done by that group, nor by my own research group (cryptography). Everything is published in publicly available conferences and journals.
sarabellumac 13y ago
I have direct experience with an international academic conference that at one time rotated between being hosted in the USA and "abroad". The conference now avoids hosting in the USA because it is too difficult for academic phds to get travel visas. So much for your theory
46Bit 13y ago
> This is utterly false and unfair. Please don't lump the entire US population with a few ignorant morons who have not seen the world five miles outside their home town. A quick look at our universities is proof enough that what you are saying is incorrect. The last time I visited MIT it almost felt like I was outside the US. If anything I've been surprised at how consistently keen Americans are for high-skill immigration.
- zero_intp 13y ago

peterwwillis 13y ago

Every year I meet more expats working or studying here from 6 months to several years in order to build skills to take back home. Since I live close to JHU, most of them are scientists. But yes, an economic depression causes political pressure on immigrants due to the lack of work/school for native citizens.

cunac 13y ago

I am not US citizen but visa policy is virtually same for any issuing country. Getting visa (any kind) is privilege not right. Government has full discretionary right to refuse entry to anybody whom is not citizen. Not saying it is fair system but it is what it is. Except full open border policy I don't see how you can fix system.