If you showed me the headline without the country, I think my honest best-guesses would have been China, Russia, North Korea, and perhaps Saudi Arabia. That seems bad.
There's nothing new in this. US had always been there, operating at a grand, global scale. The only difference is that its allies wilfully subjugated themselves to the US. Read the book 'Underground Empire'.
There is US precedence for this, for example IBM. They didn't have cheap genetic testing back then, but they made do with the technology they had.
And yet, “If approved, this policy would apply to all visitors who currently travel without a visa.”
This is obviously very troubling, but I do wonder what the actual technical mechanisms are for "turning over your social media." Do you ....
- Give them your user names and (when possible) the government subpoenas the companies?
- Give them your user names and they just see what's publicly available?
- Require you to give them your passwords?
- Hook your phone up to some device that steals data on the device?
- Something else?
Does anyone know? I'm also interested in the case where you legitimately don't have social media. Does anyone know what happens then? I understand that can look suspicious, but what if you had to travel to the US unexpectedly? You can't go back in time and build 5 years of social media so you don't look suspicious. (on principle, I wouldn't do this anyway.)
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And what if your social media is Chinese and private? They just can't do anything then.
I don't know how it would work for people who can travel visa free, but for people on K-1, F-, M- and J-visas, as well as for people on work visas, you're required to set your social media visibility to public between the time when you apply for the visa and the time when a decision is made on it.
>to set your social media visibility to public between the time when you apply for the visa and the time when a decision is made on it.
That's absolutely crazy, thanks for sharing. We're entering a pretty dark time here. It's easy to imagine that authorities won't really care if you don't have social media and will just deny you out of convenience. If this gets even more entrenched, then social media gets closer to being a requirement. (and a requirement that is quite a personal detriment)
TFA says they want a 10 year span of email addresses, so any system they have a back-end adapter for in this Post Snowden show.
When every service I use has its own email address, that makes it a pain for me to travel and be truthful on the form. I wonder how their AI deals sarcasm: Entry denied, funny-boy!
I would worry about them not liking the (true in my case at least) answer of "I don't have social media".
Isn't your Hackernews account a "Social Media" account? Maybe it is, maybe it's not. We have no idea what the Governments definition of a Social Media Account is.
I would say this is a forum. Is a forum social media?
It is just a matter of time before they will actually mean "anything you've posted on the internet, ever" when they'll say "social media"
I always assumed "social media" is something tied to your real-life identity. For me, HN would not be social media.
But there are people here that give their entire life story in their profile, I would say that, for those people, HN is social media.
Though, the Trump regime may see things differently.
:(
I'd be even more worried about their reaction to me only using tumblr and mastodon, I'm sure I'd be placed on a list for being a "political extremist" solely because of the general vibes there
Now that I think about it, not having mainstream social media or a smart phone would also put you on that list
American citizen living abroad for almost 20 years here. This happens to me ever so often when entering the US. Last under Biden, when I had been living in Jordan for a few years. I got pulled aside for a secondary inspection and the guy asked for all my phone numbers and social media accounts, and was surprised I didn't have Facebook—I just said I was a computer scientist and didn't like Zuckerberg. I gotta give him credit for being patient as he asked for all my addresses abroad etc. But this has been happening before Trump.
Yes, secondary inspection has a lot more checks, this has been true a long time and is true for many countries.
This is not what TFA is about though.
TFA is about collecting this information through the ESTA for all visitors of countries part of the visa-waiver program, before the visitor even arrives at the border.
You can decline to answer these questions if you're re-entering as a USC correct?
Technically, yes. You have an absolute right - as a US citizen - to enter the country. You have a right to silence - beyond identity/citizenship and possibly travel history - and legal representation as well. They can ask you questions about politics, religion, social media, etc. but there is no legal precedent for them not allowing admittance based on refusal to engage on those topics.
Of course this is all true to the extent that you don't mind spending hours or days in "secondary" since the government does have the right to submit you to inspection at the border. It is also limited by your willingness to pursue your rights, and the government's willingness to abide by court rulings.
Same.
Regular people give me weird looks when I claim not to use social media.
Easy. Create several accounts with the most unhinged, regular post of the most racist MAGA themes, praising of the great orange leader. Just follow Stephen Miller for inspiration...
They will wave you trough the fast trail...
Honestly this actually seems like a pretty smart hedge
They wouldn't allow you in, then they'd deport you to Guantanamo Bay for being a terrorist. Probably. I assume.
They specifically ask to make profiles public, which is a terrible idea for a lot of people (stalkers and so forth):
> To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.”
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
You presumably also have the option to just delete them
I don't think you can presume that. That's basically deleting evidence in this context.
I currently go to the USA about once a year to visit friends.
If this comes to pass I'll probably not do that anymore.
Headlines like this are inversely proportional to how cheap flights into the US are right now, it's almost as if no-one wants to travel there.
My country has already cut complete routes into the US due to a lack of demand.
How easy to persuade officer that you truly don't have any social media accounts?
Depends if they can Google your name or any identifier you gave them and find something. Not just Google, but also their internal tools. They can ask Facebook: is this email address associated with any Facebook account? How about this phone number? Those are two things you need to provide on your visa application.
Funny, but my e-mail address IS associated with Facebook account, but it is not my account. My e-mail address is very popular among some demographic who doesn't understand concept of e-mail, and, as a result, associated with tons of accounts on all services which don't check e-mail with code or link. booking.com, for example, but it is only most visible and funny :-)
Does the ESTA not already require social media? I recall having to provide stuff like that when I applied for mine a few months back
I filled one out a few weeks ago, think it was still optional. I just put linkedin
... though having said that I have a very google-able name so if someone wants to find my facebook profile it's not very difficult
I put my Linkedin and my Twitter, don't bother with politicking on my Twitter and my LinkedIn is a hollow sad looking profile. Didn't realise it was optional and just put it in.
Can't wait to get turned away at the border when flying there in a few months for a new job for liking something years ago.
Last time I filled it out it was optional. Nor sure if that changed in the last year.
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Yes, but it's optional
Will all of that, forcing you to install apps to complete the esta and forcing you to install the CBP app to track your movement in and out of US looks totally wide to me.
That would be a hard pass for me entering any country.
I almost want them to pass it through before the FIFA World Cup kicks off in July, and see how that affects visitor numbers. I'd like to think it would absolute tank the event (good, because also fuck FIFA, especially after their "peace prize" bullshit), but honestly I don't have faith in most people to consider this a deal-breaker for them.
My parents live in the US, they are aware (and accept) this would be a reason I wouldn't be able to visit them and instead we'd have to meet somewhere else.
That seems like gross overreach.
Bye bye US tourism industry
It already went away when they detained tourists for months.
There is a lot of room for it to get a lot worse than it already has.
I am just so incredibly sad for the children who will inherit this shit after I'm gone. Who among us is brave enough to try and stop this? I had my free and fun life... hopefully you can have the same.
> Who among us is brave enough to try and stop this?
Alex Pretti and Renee Good are two that come immediately to mind.
> Who among us is brave enough to try and stop this?
That could be you. And it would be a great thing to do if you worried for the future generations.
We have so much power. This is all fundamentally based on this grotesque consumer society and the never ending competition to be better than others. In addition to protesting loudly on the streets, let’s quit the consumer lifestyle. Starve the billionaires. They’ll lose their shit if we just didn’t care about them anymore.
The bot brigade doesn’t tolerate such thoughts. Think more carefully next time about how your words reflect on the current administration, citizen.
travel without a phone. or use a burner. simple.
prints and eyescans in china for 10-15 years now.
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Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK all routinely ask for this and search your devices.
False.
I am not sure if you are confused about what the US is attempting to do, or are confused about what other countries are already doing.
For Canada's eTA application (equivalent to the US ESTA), there is no social media field, no fields for 10 years of phone numbers, no fields for family member information, no biometrics collection, no "likeness checks" with photos and geolocation, and it can all be done on a website.
It's Canada, so it's kind of like walking into a club meeting, nobody is going to say anything overt, but iether you figure things out quickly, or as we say, nature takes it's course, unless you have money, and then the process is optimsed with lots of friendlyness
It's not fascist until we're speaking Italian.
Otherwise it's just sparkling authoritarianism.
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They just need to see your comments and how many stars you have on you *hub.com account.