
US may tie social media to visa applications - Sami_Lehtinen
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43601557
======
janoc
I think it is long past the date when the EU should have started to apply
reciprocally onerous standards to the US citizens traveling to Europe. Unless
the US travelers start raising fuss at home about their treatment abroad, this
BS will continue.

I am pretty sure that this nonsense would change very fast the moment CEOs of
big US companies get a proper interrogation on arrival at Heathrow or
Frankfurt and/or get denied entry for arbitrary and undisclosed reasons (as is
common in the US).

(before someone jumps on me that the article is about visas and not ESTA
applying to EU countries - well, the ESTA questionnaire is pretty much
identical to the visa one, including the "have you been a member of a
terrorist organization?" questions. Just you normally don't need to go to an
embassy interview and it can be handled online as long as you don't get
flagged for some reason).

~~~
esbranson
The EU did consider reciprocally onerous standards. The European Commission
decided against revoking visa-free travel privileges to Americans in March
2017.

European Parliament resolution:
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2017-0060)

European Commission response: [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/AUTO/?uri=CELEX:52...](http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/AUTO/?uri=CELEX:52017DC0227)

European Commission press release: [http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-17-1148_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-17-1148_en.htm)

Social media reporting only applies to visa applications. Most EU states have
visa-free travel privileges to the US, so this is not applicable to them.
However, the US _would_ require social media disclosure for Bulgaria, Croatia,
Cyprus, Poland and Romania nationals under this proposal. The US does not need
social media information from most EU citizens. We get this from their
interior ministries, who do a much better job. (Nationals' own domestic spy
agencies are the likely source of these "arbitrary" reasons for detention and
denial of admittance.)

------
anotheryou
I don't know the user handles of 90% of my accounts of the past 5 years. I use
a different email for every service I use. Most of my profiles use fake names.
My phone number has not changed in 5 years, but by a quirk in the system I
would have been going through about 4 temporary phone numbers while switching
providers.

It will be fun times.

------
vinni2
> They would have to disclose all social media identities used in the past
> five years.

> Applicants would also be asked for five years of their telephone numbers,
> email addresses and travel history.

I wonder how they would find out if some details are omitted. It is not an
easy task to link/resolve people's current online identities let alone past
(deleted ones). There is a ton of research centered around this but they are
not so effective in practice! I know this because we tried to implement this
for a research project on entity resolution.

~~~
jaclaz
>I wonder how they would find out if some details are omitted. It is not an
easy task to link/resolve people's current online identities let alone past
(deleted ones). There is a ton of research centered around this but they are
not so effective in practice! I know this because we tried to implement this
for a research project on entity resolution.

I suspect - I may well be wrong of course - that they won't actually check
anything on most people/visa requests, BUT they will have a signed legal
document where you declare something, and when/if for _any_ reason you will
become a target and they will actually look at that, if they can find the
omission they will treat it as a false statement and use that to negate the
Visa or to prevent future entries to the country or worse.

~~~
tenpies
Agree. It's also worth noting that while they may not have the capability to
do much with the information today, they probably will in the future.

I could very much see a future where with just a couple of profile names they
can reasonably extrapolate which user names you would have selected in the
past. Or a quick scan of your current social media content reveals your
writing fingerprint and it becomes trivial to tell which accounts/posts were
yours with a high degree of confidence.

