
Want to come to the US? Be prepared to hand over your passwords - cryo
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/08/dhs_wants_enhanced_digital_vetting/
======
merricksb
Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600704)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598505)

------
pjc50
Does _any other_ country do this? Are they going to start now that the US is
doing it?

It's definitely put me right off traveling to the US with a smartphone or a
computer.

The strange thing is: don't they already _have_ quite a lot of this
information? Isn't that what the whole fight with the NSA is about? Is this
just a very high profile way of intimidating dissidents?

e.g. [https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-
bo...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-
stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu)

~~~
gambiting
It's normalizing the invasion of privacy. If you subject everyone to it, then
it becomes the new normal.

My parents grew up in a communist republic, and every phone call would begin
with "this conversation is being monitored" said by the operator(and yes, the
operator would listen in and report you to the secret police if you said
something suspicious). Initially people were upset and then they didn't care,
because you couldn't call anyone in any other way, so you had to accept that
every conversation was being listened to.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
But we are only doing it to catch serious criminals!!!
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7369543.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7369543.stm)

------
thesehands
I wonder how long before social media services begin to offer a dead man
switch equivalent whereby all private communication is deleted given a user
defined 'wrong' password that grants access to the account?

~~~
krapp
Given that most American social media and telecom companies seem to go above
and beyond to cooperate with US intelligence and law enforcement (Room 641A,
PRISM, etc.) I think it's more likely that there will be a switch that dumps
all private communication directly to an NSA server on demand.

------
CM30
Depressingly, it seems this idea was originally proposed around June 2016,
with the scheme only just being made mandatory instead of optional:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-
custom...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-customs-
border-protection-social-media-accounts-facebook-twitter)

So it's not purely tied to the recent political changes. The US Department of
Homeland Security has wanted this for a while.

Either way, it's terrible. It goes against the terms of service for almost all
online service providers, it opens up another avenue for customs to frame you
by using your account to post messages/view controversial content, it's a
massive privacy risk and it mostly punishes people who are both small time
enough and honest enough to only have one account per service to hand over.

~~~
gpvos
Back then there were no plans to ask for passwords, just the names/URLs of the
accounts.

------
riffic
You would violate the terms of service for sharing your passwords with a
third-party.

Facebook for example:
[https://www.facebook.com/terms](https://www.facebook.com/terms) Section 4,
number 8:

"You will not share your password (or in the case of developers, your secret
key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might
jeopardize the security of your account."

~~~
amelius
This is useless, legally speaking, since the law overrides any ToS from any
company.

~~~
pjc50
The request from the immigration officers isn't actually a legal obligation,
it's just that they can make it a condition of entry.

------
csomar
This is the first step and after that putting your online passwords will be a
mandatory step of accessing the US whether you need a Visa or not.

The next step will be a mandatory access of all your online accounts (emails,
social media, etc) by the government for US Citizens.

I'm not a US citizen and I don't live there. But if you can't see this coming,
then you have been successfully frightened by the system and sold on
"terrorism".

~~~
secfirstmd
As we mentioned in our trainings. In some contexts and threat models it might
be worth certain individuals building their fake secondary social media
presence profiles and creating a pattern of life for them, for just this
reason.

~~~
gambiting
It doesn't help though, because the form will ask for all online social media
accounts, so if you fail to mention your real one it will either get you in
trouble straight away, or at some undefined point in the future. Say you go to
US for work, give them a fake account, then 10 years later you want to apply
for citizenship and you can't, because 10 years earlier you lied on your entry
form.

~~~
csomar
Maybe, then, if you are a real terrorist you hold on from publishing your
photos/videos of beheading people on social media accounts with your name?

~~~
pjc50
What about hiding your ACLU work? [https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-
freely/flying-home-abroad-bo...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-
freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-
work-aclu)

------
skzo
Nope, not planning on ever going to the US again.

~~~
facetube
We're planning on emigrating away from the US.

We're out of stocks entirely, and are doing as much as we can to avoid
directing money to the US government while these serial liars have it in their
grasp. We're not buying things unless we absolutely need them.

The United State has begun a long, downward spiral at the hands of the
comically-unqualified Mr. Trump. Every day that America refuses to reckon with
this problem – Mr. Trump's serial lying, his nepotism, his increasingly-eratic
behavior, and the dangerous Lenninist "destroy everything" views of his
surrogate Bannon – the harder it becomes to undo.

Donald Trump is a serial liar, a bully, a probable sex offender, and carries
with him a following of christian dominionists who are (a) in possession of
nuclear weapons and (b) desperately want a war with a billions-strong religion
they've decided to wage was on, via the doctrine of collective punishment.

Labor is a type of capital. Trumpism, meet capital flight.

~~~
tdkl
If you think this spiral began with Trump, you're living in a fairy tale.

~~~
facetube
Never said it did.

However, Trump brings dangerous aspects with him that other leaders have
lacked:

(i) he's willing to engage in direct personal attacks against the media, the
judicial system, and electorate as a whole (i.e. "check out sex tape"), going
as far as to tell the entire fourth estate to "be quiet for a while".

(ii) he has repeatedly cast nuclear weapons as a tool not just of mutual
assured destruction, but as a potentially useful first-strike tool as well –
"the power, the devastation, is very important to [him]". [1] The implications
for this in Iran should be troubling – Tehran alone has 78 million civilian
men, women, and children who don't want to die.

(iii) he had the gall to ask for Russia's support in securing opposition
research against his political opponent, during a live news conference on July
17th, 2016. Russia remains under US sanction for its role in the MH17 disaster
and the well-documented programs aimed at interfering with the 2016 US
election [2]. "Russia, if you're listening..." [3]. The American public needs
to know the extent of the preexisting relationship between Trump, his
associates, and Putin's administration.

(iv) He has yet to eliminate basic conflicts of interest within his
administration (e.g. Kushner, a son-in-law prohibited under 5 USC § 3110 in
normal circumstances). He had yet to place his business holdings – which
continue to fall afoul of the constitution's emoluments clause, e.g. in the
GSA situation – into a true family-undirected blind trust.

(v) He has a long trend of loudly and publicly denigrating judges, jurists,
the legislative bench as a whole, an entire department store, criminal
suspects cleared of wrongdoing, and wounded prisoners of war who still serve
the country today. He appears to have no civics-101 level set of knowledge
with which to navigate the legislative or judicial process.

(vi) Trump openly used white supremacist imagery and symbolism ("88 generals,
fourteen three-star or higher") throughout his campaign. [4][5][6] Noted
white-supremacist website Stormfront celebrated the release of his September
6th, 2016 press release depicting multiple white-supermacist symbols.

(vii) Trump refuses to accept conclusions of scientific fact, especially those
related to the impact of man on the climate of planet Earth.

(viii) Trump does not appear to have the technical competence for the job of
president: he repeatedly fails to understand constitutional limits, and
frequently does not seek out any substantive analysis of existing precedent
and case law before issuing orders. This causes predictable chaos (as we
witnessed during his immigration order).

(ix) Trump goes out of his way to harass and defame peaceful protests. When
there is an isolated violent act at an existing peaceful protest, Trump
follows the doctrine of collective punishment and holds the whole protest
group responsible.

(x) We've never seen mass internet adoption at this level during a
presidential campaign, and we've never also been the target of a state-
sponsored disinformation campaign (see [2]). There are new forces at work
here.

If you want to go further: Steve Bannon, sometimes-president but full-time
National Security Council member, is a board member of Cambridge Analytica,
the company that manipulated social graph relationship data to determine which
clusters of people (sorry, "Influencers") to microtarget. [7]

1:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSrP1KSR0H4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSrP1KSR0H4)

2:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Sta...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Statement_on_Declassified_Intelligence_Community_Assessment_of_Russian_Activities_and_Intentions_in_Recent_U.S._Elections.pdf)

3: [https://youtu.be/ZnY7D4M4k68?t=20s](https://youtu.be/ZnY7D4M4k68?t=20s)

4: [https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-
releases/88-retired-u.s.-...](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-
releases/88-retired-u.s.-generals-and-admirals-endorse-trump)

5: [http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-
display/c/88.html](http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-
display/c/88.html)

6: [http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-
display/c/14-words...](http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-
display/c/14-words.html)

7: [http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-
cruncher...](http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers-
who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/)

~~~
cancancan
> (vi) Trump openly used white supremacist imagery and symbolism ("88
> generals, fourteen three-star or higher") throughout his campaign. [4][5][6]
> Noted white-supremacist website Stormfront celebrated the release of his
> September 6th, 2016 press release depicting multiple white-supermacist
> symbols.

White supremacist with a Jewish son in law and adviser. I'm sorry, now you're
just being ridiculous.

~~~
facetube
Recall: this is a populist campaign that sustained itself on a "deplorable"
sad frog meme. Symbolism in politics is not irrelevant, especially when the
symbols belong to groups that consider themselves to be marginalized (N.B.
many white supremacists do, and will fully admit it if you hand around enough
of them for long enough).

You can find the threads celebrating his announcement on Stormfront. They're
real.

------
dandelion_lover
By the way, EFF seeks stories about digital border searches:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/invasive-digital-
borde...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/invasive-digital-border-
searches-tell-eff-your-story)

------
ploggingdev
It's already happening, even to people who are not from the 7 blacklisted
countries :
[https://twitter.com/wirehead2501/status/829559451610931200](https://twitter.com/wirehead2501/status/829559451610931200)

------
cesarb
Giving a third-party access to your passwords is worse than merely a privacy
invasion. It gives said third-party the ability not only to read, but also to
write. It's even worse if your account has elevated privileges.

And, like others, I wonder how they deal with 2FA.

------
reachtarunhere
Makes me feel RMS is not crazy afterall.

~~~
verytrivial
It is a bit sad that someone is often (jokingly) referred to as crazy because
of consistent application application of a defensible moral position.

I think people get stuck on the idea that it is difficult for users to get as
good an experience with free-only software, or that it is difficult to make
money creating that software. That's a different problem and not an argument
he engages with his zeal. Choosing to defend freedom and not support tyranny
is a moral decision not a purely economic calculation.

Edit: I just R'd the FA and speaking as a non-US citizen, I will not visit
that country for the foreseeable future.

------
dragonbonheur
Setting up an IFTTT recipe to post from RSS feeds to Social media accounts is
child's play. Anyone can create a fake social media footprint while they
sleep, so it's pointless to demand passwords to social media accounts.

Can't expect much intelligence or common sense from an Idiocracy.

------
greens231
wow. reposting my comment from another article here: till last year i was
thinking of getting a visa and trying my luck in the valley. now it seems
(having learned more about america) that a significant part of the population
thinks science is a liberal hoax, thinks the government and media is
constantly lying, carries assault rifles and believes shit like pizzagate is
not only plausible but true.

~~~
song
To be fair, apart from carrying guns (which is a bit of an American
specificity), a significant percentage of the population of any country is
quite stupid, easily manipulated and tend to vote for populist types that
cater to their low intelligence.

For examples in Europe, see Brexit, Berlusconi, the rise of Lepen in France,
the Freedom Party of Austria and a lot of examples... The problem is that this
time, in the US, those people have actually been able to vote for a candidate
that represent their values (and it's not the second time, Bush was already a
good example of that)

~~~
guitarbill
I think you're spot on, it's so dangerous to think this can't happen anywhere
else. Stupid laws get ratified in every country. For the US, one difference is
the media coverage is good, and the debate is widely publicised. Whereas in
e.g. the UK, everybody just shrugs [0]. Apathy is far more dangerous than
outrage.

[0] e.g. being compelled to hand over passwords in "terror" or "national
security" matters, or be jailed otherwise

------
benevol
This country is pretty obviously on a downward spiral for some time now. And
things only seem to accelerate. It's just sad to see things go backwards
again. Especially given the influence the country has on the entire World.
Let's stop this madness.

------
laaph
I took Turkish airways from San Francisco to Istanbul. It was packed, though
most were transferring to places further. Now I'm on the return trip, and the
airplane is half full. I'm wondering if all the Indians and south Asians will
be coming back to the US, or did I catch a slow day back to the US?

Perhaps this is the wrong place to wonder of all the effects of US immigration
policies, but even here people are saying they won't go to the US.

~~~
lucaspiller
I spent a few weeks in India last month, and talking to local techies I didn't
get the impression that the Indian 'American Dream' has lost any interest. The
Western media is reporting otherwise though, so read into this as you like.

~~~
aedron
People in India and the rest of the third world all want to go to Europe or
the U.S. It is the rest of us you have to worry about.

As an engineer in Europe who has often toyed with the idea of going to
America, that idea is all but dead, mostly because I would have to enter a
legal no man's land (U.S. border security) where anything I have ever said
might be used to hold me in custody and/or expel me from the country
(including a comment like this one, were I dumb enough to post it on a forum
tied to my real name).

For people who have a choice, America is looking less attractive by the day.

~~~
bobosha
> People in India and the rest of the third world all want to go to Europe or
> the U.S. It is the rest of us you have to worry about.

I would challenge that notion. The Indian community is now in a reverse
immigration, that the population is reaching an equilibrium (~3 million).
While the students continue to flock to US univs, many are choosing to return.
And this was before Trump. I suspect this would be even more now given the h1b
visas and other challenges.

------
devoply
Sorry don't have any passwords to share, they are in my password keeper and I
left that file at home.

~~~
DrJokepu
And then the CBP officer will put you on the next flight back. You don't have
to hand over your password, they don't have to admit you to the United States.

~~~
aedron
The travel info airport websites now says that if you are traveling to the
U.S., please make sure all your electronic devices are charged with a full
battery.

------
Nugem_
And who is to say whether or not someone has a Facebook account? 1 Billion FB
users, 7 Billion people on earth (guessing, didn't look up numbers)

And what about criminals that know about this possible boarder check and will
have dummy padded pro American social media accounts?

~~~
onion2k
FB claims almost 1.9 billion users, with 1.7 billion active at least once a
month. Still some way off _everyone_ , but for the right demographic (between
20 and 40, lives in a city, in a country with communications infrastructure)
it's not unreasonable to see not having a FB account as _really_ unusual.

------
nogbit
Just setup dual boot to auto load some lame duck OS with some lame duck user
activity, for laptops anyway. Any attempt to load the other boot without some
special password results in a "drive not found"...ahem, yah...not found.
Encrypted drives of course, the people doing the inspections don't have a
clue. Worried about phones, you are pwned already, hell, Intel ME pwned all of
us!

------
dbg31415
How do they store your passwords? Wouldn't the liability of having all those
financial account passwords be enough reason not to do something this moronic?
Furthermore, what if my account requires 2FA? How do they prove I even have an
account? This is pure dipshitery.

------
Overtonwindow
Why couldn't they create fake accounts?

------
known
Fascism?

------
cbeach
If the UK had been able to read the rants of Omar Bakri Muhammad beforehand,
we could have avoided him immigrating from Syria.

Once here, he fostered the notorious Hizb Ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun
movements. Both these movements have made this country a less safe place to
be.

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

Sadly in these times, and from a handful of nations - we do need to consider
who we're letting in, and what their real attitude is toward the West.

In the countries that Trump wants to vet, there were spontaneous street
parties to celebrate 9/11\. Let's not be naive here.

~~~
pabloski
As if under Obama there was no TSA. I am starting to really despise this "fake
news" machines called mass media.

They are trying to show that Trump is the Antichrist while they choose to
forget how Obama has destroyed half of Middle East and setted up a police
State through NSA, secret laws, secret courts, indiscriminate droning of
innocent people.

Hypocrites at its best, this is what the mass media have become.

Oh right, Trump hasn't received the Nobel prize for peace!

~~~
p49k
This is classic Whataboutism[1]. The startup community has been criticizing
Obama on many of these issues for the past eight years as well.

That Obama engaged in such activity doesn't suddenly mean that Trump's
administration is justified, nor does it mean that things won't get much worse
with Trump.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

~~~
fennecfoxen
Writing it off as "whataboutism" is a way to avoid uncomfortable lines of
questioning, so I will make these questions explicit here:

Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these
government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically?

Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting the
cause for petty power games?

Can you really trust their judgement in the Fight Against Tyranny?

Can you trust them to push for durable reform against tyranny, or are they
merely interested in install their own tyrant?

~~~
p49k
_Writing it off as "whataboutism" is a way to avoid uncomfortable lines of
questioning_

No it's not, it's to point out a clear logical fallacy in OP's post.

 _Why exactly did so many people magically become dead-set against all these
government abuses on Jan 20, 2017, specifically?_

They didn't; this is false. The same people who are angry at specific abuses
after Jan 20 were also angry before. See the _thousands_ of articles posted on
HN about these issues over the past eight years. This is also true from major
news sources - even the liberal ones haven't failed to criticize Obama over
these issues.

That having been said, it should be expected that a president who is more
severe in abusing his power would provoke more anger. It's not black and
white.

 _Are they really here to help the fight for $CAUSE, or are they exploiting
the cause for petty power games?_

For the rest of your post, can you explain what you mean by "they", by "the
fight for $CAUSE" and the "Fight Against Tyranny"? Also, can you give specific
examples? This is too ambiguous to respond to.

