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German NSA Critic Denied Entry To the US
An anonymous reader writes "Major newspapers in Germany (FAZ, Die Welt, SZ, ...) and the Huffington Post report that the author Ilja Trojanow has been prevented from boarding a plane from Salvador da Bahia to the U.S. where he was invited to attend a conference. He had ESTA documents showing that his visit was approved as part of the Visa Waiver Program and was last year given a visa to teach at the university of Saint Louis. Trojanow was one of the initiators of an open letter (Google translation to English) urging Chancellor Merkel to take actions against NSA surveillance in Germany."
This pretty much blows away the "trust the government - it would never abuse its power" argument the apologists like to trot out so readily.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Has America reached the point where criticizing the shit you do is grounds to deny entry when you don't pose a threat?
Enjoy it kids, your country has jumped the shark and is continuing its decline into a paranoid police state.
America is pretty much fucked at this point unless this can be fixed.
Freedom is slavery, bitches.
The ones left over from when they imprisoned Americans of Japanese ancestry?
No one is claiming he has a "right" to enter the US.
Quite a few of us are wondering what is happening to our land of the free, however. This guy was coming to attend an academic conference.
That said, TFA is not really journalism, and fails to even mention an attempt to contact American authorities for an explanation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Since when
Until this guy was stopped. We are the country that hosts the damn UN. What the heck are we afraid of? This guy is totally non-violent.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Since when does a foreign citizen who actively works AGAINST the interests of the US government allowed freedoms to enter the United States?"
Freedom means just that, allowing disagreements, if you let only people have freedom who agree with you, that's not freedom.
The NSA works against the interest of the US, since it makes millions of customer move their online business to Non-US entities.
Since when does a foreign citizen who actively works AGAINST the interests of the US government allowed freedoms to enter the United States?
since you allowed dissident opinions. you used to. are you trying to argue that anyone who visits usa should be an active traitor to their own country in order to gain access? you got any idea how fucked up that sounds between supposedly friendly nations? you really want to lose all international business, all international relevance as being a hub for conferences?
that's why UN is in the USA among other things. of course it can also be easily argued that what the NSA is doing isn't in the best interest of USA government, it's becoming increasingly easily to argue that USA government isn't doing things in the interest of USA government or even USA.
that being an NSA critic has turned into being the same as having a communist party membership in the '50's is quite telling of how your nsa-stasi is running and ruining your country. their gathering for intelligence is increasingly aimed at just keeping their agency going. welfare? "fuck that, as long as we can keep tabs on who is complaining about lack of welfare".
and now you just bomb people with dissident opinion even if they don't enter USA - along with whoever has to associate themselves with people having those opinions. go sit in the corner in shame.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yeah, it's really horrible that he doesn't want his own country spied on.
A real bad actor, this guy.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
there is no right to enter the USA unless you are a citizen
That's factually wrong - "resident aliens" to use the US governments description have a right to enter the US. This was the only reason I got a green card when living in the US because my job required travel to academic conferences and after one incident where I was almost denied entry with my J-1 visa simply because I was married to an American we applied for a green card because then it was impossible for them to refuse me entry and my job depended on being able to return.
However it also misses the point which is that your government thinks it is fine to exclude people from the US who disagree with its policies. If it is willing to do that to foreigners coming for rational academic debate how much longer do you think it will be before they find a way to silence your criticisms too?
He is also actively working for the freedom of the US population, but I guess you consider that unamerican.
Since when does a foreign citizen who actively works AGAINST the interests of the US government allowed freedoms to enter the United States?
If he was encouraging people to make bombing attacks on US soil, or encouraging the southern states to take another crack at secession, I'd concede your point but this guy is being denied entry for exercising freedom of speech. If another country, your ally, is spying on you, surely you are well within your rights to petition your own leader to do something about it? Or perhaps you think that it would be acceptable for the UK government to deny entry to any US citizen who criticized BP over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? This is a clear case of sore-loser syndrome.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"Since when does a foreign citizen who actively works AGAINST the interests of the US government allowed freedoms to enter the United States?"
Also, this is a very dangerous statement to make. Just because someone accepting this line could assume that every visitor and citizen of the US is willing to spy on another country (which in case you don't know it is illegal and punishable by the highest punishment in every country). It opens the door to preemptive deny of freedoms (which is actually the topic of discussion).
FTA:
"The woman told me curtly and without emotion that entry to the United States was being denied to me - without giving any reason," Trojanow told the German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday.
It then later says that his co-author CLAIMS he was denied entry for his views. At no point does the article state why he was denied entry. Tying it to the NSA is the European Media trying to make a story out of nothing. It is largely an opinion piece based on very little evidence.
As for the Huffington Post article - well, it IS the Huffington Post. Whether you trust them or not is really more of where your personal views stand.
There just really is not enough information given. He was denied entry. That is all we know. Everything else is circumstancial evidence.
1. Working against the interests of the US government may be working IN the interests of a lot of us. 2. Denying this guy entry to the US is revealing how weak and unsure of themselves they are. You only use police methods when you can't win the argument.
Dear AC,
Thank you for immediately hijacking the conversation away from anything useful and steering it towards partisan politics. This is, of course, by design. Still, without people like you, the plan would fail from time to time, and real change might happen. Wouldn't want that! Divide and conquer works best when there is a innate DESIRE to be divided, when the subject WANTS to fight itself rather uniting to do anything productive. We really appreciate your efforts to keep our program safe. Keep up the good work!
Reguards,
The NSA
One wonders where the Constitution specifically allows political parties to deny entrance to invited guests purely for speech reasons. Probably the same part of the Constitution that grants the government the power to search citizens' papers witbout permission as you enter.
Let these be lessons of wisdom at how quickly freedom would evaporate inside the country were it not for the Amendments. All done "for The People".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Precisely. The amount of personal authority given to border personnel in the U.S.A. is utterly absurd, such that even the slightest notion in the person's mind towards denying entry is sufficient grounds to bar a person for life, all in a matter of seconds, with no oversight, no due process, nor any recourse to appeals nor review. It has become a situation of "little Hitlers" at the U.S. border.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Right now, the Republicans are actively working against the interests of the united states. We don't just let them stay here, but we let them vote in congress as well. In fact, they shut down the country over a law they don't like. This should be considered terrorism and a denial-of-service attack (Liberal version)
Right now, the Democrats are actively working against the interests of the united states. We don't just let them stay here, but we let them vote in congress as well. They are socializing our United States. (Conservative version)
Either way, participation in a a dialog is natural discourse and should not be grounds for non-admittance.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Oh, you mean like Castro, Ahmajinedad, and Gaddafi, right? Oops, must have been someone else.
Just another day in Paradise
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the whole FREEDOM thing pertain to the citizens specifically?
You are wrong. Freedom is endowed by our creator, not by the US government. Therefore, everyone is inherently free, not just Americans.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number