
Author of curl and libcurl denied entry to U.S. with no explanation - cantrevealname
http://gizmodo.com/mozilla-employee-denied-entry-to-the-united-states-1796465566
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jaredsohn
Previous post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643467)

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ryancnelson
Are we taking bets? I'd put a $5 on "somebody saw his domain name (haxx.se) on
screen, and overreacted."

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flashman
What workflow ends up with a Customs and Border Patrol officer connecting that
domain name to Stenberg's ESTA application?

Here's a guess: some blacklisted piece of software uses curl and credited
"daniel@haxx.se" as required by its licence[1]. Daniel was then mistaken as a
creator of that software, and his email address flagged for any ESTA
applications that use it.

edit: apparently I'm not the first to think this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643525)

[1][https://curl.haxx.se/docs/copyright.html](https://curl.haxx.se/docs/copyright.html)

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harshreality
People have been getting wrongly denied entry to the U.S. for bad/factually-
incorrect reasons for decades, probably ever since we had an immigration
system.

Obviously immigration should do a better job on their false positive rates,
and not just their false negative rates, but these are never going to go to
zero. Someone probably made a clear mistake in this particular case, but
without details who knows. For all we know there's some social media or blog
post of his with something like a joke about harming he-who-shall-not-be-
named.

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zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
The problem isn't the mistakes, the problem is the kafkaesque process.
Decisions are made that affect an individual, but the individual has no chance
to correct mistaken assumptions about them in the decision making process.

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TazeTSchnitzel
…wait, their last name doesn't contain an “i”?

I've been reading it as “Steinberg” all this time. Oops.

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simongray
Steinberg is German spelling, while Stenberg is Scandinavian.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Of course. I think the problem is I've just not seen the latter before outside
of this person's surname… I think.

