
Daniel Stenberg: Now at 134 days since visa application - sohkamyung
https://twitter.com/bagder/status/1034749430799499264
======
zaroth
I don’t think I could successfully list every country I’ve been in the last 15
years. Not without _considerable_ effort going through work records.

What’s most amazing is filling out the “form”. This doesn’t sound like a
standardized document with any kind of control act designation. I would
imagine you would have leeway to specify “work trips, various” and then a
paragraph on the employer and nature of the trips, and approximate countries
visited.

A definitive answer should have been given long ago. At the very least an
update on the reasoning?

Even if there was an active investigation they would grant the visa and meet
you at the airport. So this is just administrative hell, and it’s lame. The
really sad thing is 134 days is probably just getting started.

~~~
amaccuish
Russia requires the last 10 years. The people at the visa centre just told me
to make up the dates if I couldn't remember them.

~~~
cafard
Actually, Russia also wants to know where you have worked for the last _n_ ( >
10) years. A job I held within that window was at a company then owned by an
industrial-equipment manufacturer; they later sold it to General Dynamics, and
I have no idea what GD then did with it. I filled in the name of the company,
and the most plausible address Google turned up for it.

------
dorfsmay
Even more relevant, is the irony here:

[https://twitter.com/bagder/status/1032528721348100096](https://twitter.com/bagder/status/1032528721348100096)

Not only does the Department of Homeland Security trust Daniel Stenberg enough
to use the software he has written, but theyactually trust him enough to ask
question about it directly to him, but not enough to give him a Visa!

------
patrickdavey
> Among other things it requires me to provide info

> about all trips abroad (with dates and duration)

> I've done over the last 15 years. What aliases

> I use on social media sites (hello mr US visa

> agent, how do you like this post so far?),

> every physical address I've lived at in

> the last 15 years, information about all

> my employers the last 15 years and

> every email address I've used during

> the last 5 years.

I hope I never get this... I use unique email addresses for most domains I
sign up for... I'd never be going to the US again.

What a total administrative black hole... I hope they get this sorted0.

* Also, it seems I have no idea how to do quoting properly on this site ;)

------
wilkystyle
I'm out of the loop, here. Is there any context beyond this tweet?

~~~
viraptor
[https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/07/28/administrative-
purgat...](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/07/28/administrative-purgatory/)

~~~
mirimir
> 1\. I'm the main author of curl ...

> 2\. I'm the main author of libcurl ...

> 3\. I use the name haxx.se for ... email address ...

I'm betting on #3. Is there _that_ much hate for curl?

~~~
cryptonector
It's almost certainly not hate for curl. It's just some silliness somewhere,
probably about "haxx". My consulting company's name got me into some minor
trouble where I had to explain to my corporation's bank some "detected
activity" that turned out to be just the business' name. Apparently when
Treasury started cracking down on cryptocurrency businesses someone got the
bright idea to search for "crypto" and use that as an indication that whatever
matches is related to cryptocurrencies. I don't know if that someone was
someone at the particular bank or someone at Treasury. I wrote a lengthy
letter explaining all of my activity (much of which the bank itself could
confirm on its own) and the source of the company's name, and I never heard
from them again. I had to guess that this was the reason, and get an very
indirect confirmation from a bank agent on the phone...

My guess is that Daniel Stenberg needs to at least explain away his domain's
name.

BTW, if they are going to verify 15 years' worth of personal information,
that's probably going to take time, time during which more pressing things
will come up to take the time of whoever is doing the review. 100 days is
probably nothing in that context.

~~~
viraptor
> It's just some silliness somewhere, probably about "haxx".

I'm not sure why people keep saying that. We've got no information to confirm
that. People have been denied travel before just because they shared the name
with someone on a no-fly list. There can be lots of different reasons for the
rejection.

~~~
cryptonector
I gave an example where something like that definitely happened. It's just an
example. It might have nothing to do with Stenberg's case, but here's the
thing: simplistic filters are a thing, and they are not useless, so I think we
should suspect that they are in use.

I gave my bank an earful about how silly it was of them to use a search for
"crypto" to find money services businesses, and if it was someone at my bank
who came up with that, then "silly" is quite right.

But what if it was someone at Treasury who told my (and other) bank to do
this? Then it's not so silly.

Suppose this dragnet netted 1,000 non-MSBs and three MSBs two of which were in
violation of Treasury regulations... Then from the perspective of Treasury a
simple request to the banks netted two violators at almost zero cost to
Treasury! What would be silly for my bank to do would be _brilliant_ for
Treasury to ask them to do. For me both are equally annoying, but I can't deny
that a very simplistic filter can be brilliant for a bureaucrat to apply, not
if I look at it from their perspective.

Now, the Administration has been on about extreme vetting for visas. We can
assume it's not just for Iraq and friends, but across the board. What does
"extreme vetting" mean? Well, asking an applicant for 15 years' worth of
travel and other information sure is extreme, will discourage the applicant,
and if they continue they will likely make mistakes (they may not even have
old passports whose entry/exit stamps to look at to make a list of all foreign
travel!). The key for State bureaucrats is to have filters tuned such that
they {plausibly claim to be doing extreme vetting, or actually be doing
extreme vetting} but also such that the impact on legitimate business is not
so bad as to cause members of Congress to be ringing State's phones off their
hooks!

How many non-black-hat "hackers" are being caught in a silly dragnet cast by a
bureaucrat who has no idea what they are doing? It depends on the specifics of
the dragnet, but I bet you the bureaucrat has the tools to tune it so that it
catches hundreds not thousands, or whatever.

And that brings me to an obvious piece of advice: Mozilla should talk to their
Representative and Senators and put some pressure on State in order to resolve
this issue. After all, while Stenberg has personal interests in visiting the
U.S., Mozilla has a _business_ interest in Stenberg visiting the U.S., and
business almost certainly trumps the personal as far as State goes.

------
fmajid
Trump has diverted visa-processing staff on a witch hunt to find green card
holders and naturalized citizens who can be stripped thereof for errors or
omissions on their applications. Processing times have more than doubled even
for routine operations like green card renewals or naturalizations, and you
can bet special cases like non-visa-waiver visa applications are prioritized
way lower since it's mostly brown people who use them.

Now, if only you were Norwegian instead of Swedish

~~~
wodenokoto
> Now, if only you were Norwegian instead of Swedish

Why?

~~~
extra88
It's a joke, a reference to what Trump infamously said in a meeting, "Why do
we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have
more people from places like Norway."

------
rajacombinator
Surprise! The US govt is stupid and cretinous. Now imagine if you had to deal
with this process for your livelihood.

