
US 'extreme vetting' kicks in forcing visitors to hand over social media details - whalabi
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/travel/2019/06/us-extreme-vetting-kicks-in-forcing-visitors-to-hand-over-social-media-details.html
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merricksb
Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142)

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leetrout
This is both frightening and disheartening.

We've not been the home of the brave for a while now and I think we're pretty
far from the land of the free to the outside world. This is the next level of
"papers please" and I bet if this remains and is enforced will be used against
citzens as well. May or may not be as bad as China's social credit system.

I want to say this feels "un-American" but I'm not sure we'll ever come back
from over-reaching moves like this and TSA.

~~~
ajross
So... this is a bad policy, but let's not hyperbolize.

The fourth amendment is still a thing, and it protects non-citizens and
citizens alike.

The demand here isn't for your social media history, it's for your account
IDs. If they want your (non-public) posts, they still have to get a warrant
from a judge and show cause, just like they do now.

The feature they're demanding is to know who you are, so they know where to
target that warrant request. And that's arguably bad, and a slippery slope.

 _BUT IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT LIKE THE PRC 'S SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM_. Stop it.

~~~
50656E6973
The fourth amendment is _not_ "a thing" if you're anywhere near (within 100
miles) of the border.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception)

~~~
gruez
Read the article again.

>it was held that the Border Patrol's routine stopping of a vehicle at a
permanent checkpoint located on a major highway away from the Mexican border
for brief questioning of the vehicle's occupants is consistent with the Fourth
Amendment

>However, searches of automobiles without a warrant by roving patrols have
been deemed unconstitutional

Yes, the 100mile exception exists. No, you don't lose all 4th amendment
rights.

~~~
50656E6973
Read the fourth amendment again. What practical protection does it provide if
the requirement for a warrant/probable cause are deemed null and void?

Claiming that is "consistent with the Fourth Amendment" is just mental
gymnastics, like saying a corporation is a literal person.

~~~
gruez
>What practical protection does it provide if the requirement for a
warrant/probable cause are deemed null and void?

I'm not defending the 100 mile exception. I'm only clarifying that the extent
of the infringement (as far as courts have ruled) is limited to permanent
checkpoints.

In the context of the parent comments however, I don't think the 4th amendment
is relevant. The demand is for your account identifiers. Unless you have it
written down on a piece of paper or an unecrypted device, it's the 5th
amendment protecting you. Should you give them your account identifiers, it's
going to be a stretch for them to use the border search exception to compel
facebook (or any other service) to give up their records on you.

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qlm
Will I be considered suspicious because I don't have a
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram account?

~~~
zxcb1
Why can't they match your passport to your Facebook profile?

~~~
mxcrossb
Maybe this is overly cynical, but I think they can. Otherwise everyone could
just claim they don’t have an account. But this kind of policy deters people
from wanting to visit or immigrate to the US, which is this administrations
real goal.

~~~
zxcb1
They have the data. Maybe they want to catch liars instead of just an
algorithmic risk score?

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colanderman
How can US citizens fight this? It's not unconstitutional, since non-citizens
aren't covered by the Bill of Rights. Do we just hope & pray that the next
administration is gracious enough to revert a policy decision that has no
negative impact on themselves or their constituents?

~~~
roywiggins
That's not quite right, the bill of rights applies to everyone with a foot on
American soil, not just citizens.

~~~
ap3
This is a requirement for a visa application- how many people applying for a
US visa are on American soil?

~~~
roywiggins
Quite a few I should think, people do change their visa status, renew visas,
swap between different types of visas depending on their work/student/marital
status.

~~~
pandaman
Visas and statuses are different things. Visa is essentially an approval of an
application for a status. You get it from a US consulate. There are no US
consulates on the US soil.

Your status is granted (or denied) by a border agent, based on your visa, when
you cross into the country. Changing one can be done on the US soil and the
process does not require a visa. But if you want a visa stamp for a new status
then you have to visit a US consulate and that requires leaving the US.

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ravenstine
How can they possibly require people who don't have social media profiles to
hand such details over? Where's the proof that someone has or hasn't a social
media profile? If they can verify that someone who claimed not to have a
Facebook account _indeed does_ , then why ask the question at all?

And if the US government is going to rely on Facebook and Google for identify
vetting, then we've really entered an overtly "CorpGov" era, to steal a term
from Yippies. Even if this is only a problem for visa applicants at the
moment, who's to say what the next step will be?

~~~
superkuh
Cory Doctorow wrote a short story on this (google search information and
online postings being searched at airport customs) back in the early 2000s
called, "Scroogled":
[http://superkuh.com/scroogled.html](http://superkuh.com/scroogled.html)

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jon-wood
I did an ESTA application a few weeks ago and was wondering why anyone in
their right mind would fill in the section where you can optionally provide
social media details. Guess this answers that question.

~~~
dontbenebby
Is this going on ESTA, or is it for more long term visas?

I thought ESTA was the basically almost-not-a-visa they use for EU et al that
basically just checks you're not a felon or a terrorist

~~~
ephimetheus
That question has been there for a while. I opted out of answering it (it is
optional, and I read it still is), and didn’t have problems in January. Will
test this again in a couple of weeks...

~~~
dontbenebby
Good luck! I think it's a shitty policy, and I hope you publicly shame them if
they won't let you in for trying to keep your privacy.

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bluefox
Tourism-wise, US has been dead to me since 9-11, so I don't mind posting this
comment.

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alistairSH
So, won't terrorists simply maintain 2 media profiles, one public for the TSA
and one private for planning their next mission?

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CydeWeys
This article is short on details. What does "social media details" mean? Is
that username and password, or just username? The former is much worse than
the latter.

I'm very wary of what I share publicly, so if you only see my public posts
then I'm not too worried. But I sure as hell wouldn't be compromising my
security and privacy and giving out my passwords. I would sooner choose a new
random password, write it down, and then travel, and simply not use (or even
be able to log in to, or disclose the passwords of) my social media accounts
while traveling. What would they do then?

~~~
rdl
It's public handles only. They specifically say they do not want your
passwords. They also will not circumvent any security, so if you have a
twitter account locked, or fb posts to friends-only, they are not included.
This is explicitly about public postings and public information.

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Retric
An extreme waste of resources from an anti terrorism perspective. But,
occasionally useful when looking for people lying about their reasons to enter
the US.

~~~
enjo
Which will come at the cost of billions of tourist dollars when people stop
coming in because the entry lines are so long dealing with all of this
nonsense.

So I’m not sure it’s much of a win.

~~~
Retric
As odd as it sounds, the US has seen a significant uptick in tourism despite
similar policies.

[https://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2017-I-001/documents/US%20Vi...](https://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2017-I-001/documents/US%20Visits%20Trend%20Line.xlsx)

So, while their is likely some backlash, people seem to just accept with
things.

~~~
ttul
I’d argue that thriving tourism has more to do with a booming global economy
than anything else.

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fredgrott
Thinking cap on, Why?

NSA and by extension CIA already have this data as its unencrypted and flowing
through the telecom taps they do.

I think it implies that certain tech solutions by a certain founder are not
performing as gov was led to expect.

So basically visitors basically being told legally hey out yourself as far as
public social messages because we the US gov have some tech problems with
tracking dow3n that social message keyword stuff.

~~~
50656E6973
It's not unencrypted (except DNS and UDP) if it's https, right?

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ebilodeau
Headline potentially misleading as I believe this policy applies only to
people applying for visas, and not to all visitors to the US.

[https://www.apnews.com/c96a215355b242e58107c2125c18fc4a](https://www.apnews.com/c96a215355b242e58107c2125c18fc4a)

~~~
alistairSH
Everybody traveling to the US needs a VISA, unless they have a waiver, which
requires an ESTA, which requires some personal contact information. I don't
know if the social media info will be added to the ESTA application, but it
wouldn't surprise me. The visa waiver program also only applies to about 35-40
nations (there are 190 or so in the UN).

~~~
ephimetheus
There has been a section on social media accounts on the ESTA application for
a while, but it was optional at least up to now.

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yasp
Queue other countries responding in kind to US citizens.

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refurb
My question is - what does DHS do with this info?

Considering the workload on visa reviewers, I highly doubt they are perusing
through people’s social media and making a judgement.

I’m assuming DHS already has a list of flagged handles and just comparing the
two against each other. I also assume handles are stored so if flagged at a
later date, a visa could be revoked.

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SN76477
I want to know why.

What business is it of anyone's? What do they think they are going to find?

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inherentFloyd
Let's do a little experiment:

>"As we've seen around the world in recent years, social media can be a major
forum for terrorist sentiment and activity. This will be a vital tool to
screen out terrorists, public safety threats, and other dangerous individuals
from gaining immigration benefits and setting foot on US soil."

Now, we do some very simple replacement:

>"As we've seen around the world in recent years, social media can be a major
forum for communist sentiment and activity. This will be a vital tool to
screen out communists, public safety threats, and other dangerous individuals
from gaining immigration benefits and setting foot on US soil."

If it's good enough for McCarthy, it's good enough for me.

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whymeiask
.

~~~
ravenstine
I think because it's now going to be a required question? It's one thing if
you're putting information about yourself for the public to see and having the
government research it independently, but it's another for it to be expected
that you hand over your account handles to social media accounts that might
not even be publicly visible in the first place. Even worse that the
government would be essentially using multinational corporations as de facto
identity vetting.

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zxcb1
"Freedom" vetting? What are they afraid of?

~~~
zxcb1
Clarification to downvoters: "Freedom" implies corruption of language, as in
the concept of freedom has a specific meaning and suggests an overall trend.
Fear implies that you can not trust others, instead the striving for absolute
control and transparency, resulting in the violation of rights. The question
is honest, what merits these extreme measures? The downvoting without comment
is dishonest. You did not understand or did not care enough to parse it and
respond properly.

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rdl
Obviously, being granted a visa to visit a country as a foreign person is a
privilege under law; this is totally different from restrictions placed on
citizens (or persons legally present in the country). This would be terrible
if applied to citizens in a LE/IC context.

For visas, there are some serious potential negatives to this (it might be
used to target those critical of the US Government or specific Presidents, it
might be used as a proxy for religion or sexual orientation or some other
protected status).

It also has positives: aside from catching incredibly stupid terrorists or
other undesirable aliens who post a lot of clearly indicative content and then
report, it also allows an easy rejection for a person who fails to report a
known bad account already connected to him. It's a mistake to assume all
terrorists or undesirable aliens have perfect OPSEC.

The one corner case where it's probably exceptionally useful is if there's
someone like circa-2015 Anjem Choudary who hasn't yet been convicted of a
crime, but is recruiting for IS using various social media handles. He's a
known individual and more effective as a recruiter due to his public status.
He then has to choose either to not report (and thus be banned), to report
(and thus be banned), or to delegate US recruiting to someone else (who will
be less effective).

I'd prefer we collect all this data and then ALSO have a more transparent
process for processing visas. It should be clear why one is being rejected,
and an opportunity to appeal. There should be reporting of aggregate
statistics. The thing I'm most worried about would be a covert policy, of,
say, "no redheaded people" which was actually enforced by marking every
redhead as an IRA member and rejecting as a terrorist, but that is something
which could be addressed. There are probably also explicit policies which
people find objectionable and could be addressed through public
pressure/voting/etc. (right now I think the ESTA bars for people who visit
specific countries might be bad, although I don't know how much worse non-ESTA
visa process is if you're from an ESTA country.)

USG (and commercial sources) already have increasingly-complete
name/passport/etc. to social media identifier and activity databases, so the
main point here is to go from xx% to a higher level, and then to set up a "you
lied on the form" opportunity for rejection or deportation.

On balance, I think this is a good policy change.

