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'Social Media ID, Please?' Proposed US Law Greeted With Anger (computerworld.com)
The U.S. government announced plans to require some foreign travelers to provide their social media account names when entering the country -- and in June requested comments. Now the plan is being called "ludicrous," an "all-around bad idea," "blatant overreach," "desperate, paranoid heavy-handedness," "preposterous," "appalling," and "un-American," reports Slashdot reader dcblogs:
That's just a sampling of the outrage. Some 800 responded to the U.S. request for comments about a proposed rule affecting people traveling from "visa waiver" countries to the U.S., where a visa is not required. This includes most of Europe, Singapore, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand... In a little twist of irony, some critics said U.S. President Obama's proposal for foreign travelers is so bad, it must have been hatched by Donald Trump.
"Travelers will be asked to provide their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and whatever other social ID you can imagine to U.S. authorities," reports Computer World. "It's technically an 'optional' request, but since it's the government asking, critics believe travelers will fear consequences if they ignore it..."
"Travelers will be asked to provide their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and whatever other social ID you can imagine to U.S. authorities," reports Computer World. "It's technically an 'optional' request, but since it's the government asking, critics believe travelers will fear consequences if they ignore it..."
Do they really think that if some ISIS guy flies in, he's going to fill out the customs form honestly and say "Yep, my Twitter handle is @jihad4lyfe!" It's preposterous to think this would be effective at gathering any sort of reasonable intelligence.
The combination of social media, open borders in Europe, and the Islamic extremism that is centuries old but whose recent spread was magnified by Bush, Blair, Obama, Merkel, and the other globalists has produced a situation in which very dangerous people are using social media to organize and plot very violent activities and the normal behind-the-scenes government-to-government info exchanges about travellers are not working. The countries from which many travellers are originating these days know very little about them since they are recent arrivals there and were generally unscreened while immigrating due to political correctness.
This sort of thing may be distatsteful, but critics need to offer some rational suggestion for somethng better since many of them have been supporters of the very sorts of politics that made the older methods of screening, which mostly narrowly focused on the actual dangerous people, no longer acceptable. If there are arsonists wandering around and you have campaigned to make it politically unacceptable to use fire extinguishers then you cannot be surprised if small fires are put out with big fire hoses that get everybody wet.
If Trump was the one doing this, the left would be screaming that it was obviously racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, ..., but since it's Obama, they'll just look for ways to pretend it's Trump and that he's racist,sexist....
::blink:: Do you not realize, for some reason, that Slashdot is a social media site? And what, precisely, is it that you think makes google+, linkedin, facebook, twitter, or more or less most of the major social media sites..."childish?" Granted, I myself don't have accounts on any but google+, and only that because I've made a few reviews on maps, but..it's 2016. Calling the act of being social online "childish" makes you sound both 80, and out of touch. Especially when the complaint is being made on a social media site.
::blink::
Do you not realize, for some reason, that Slashdot is a social media site?
Are you new here? This is more of an anti-social site.
Actually the credit goes to Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. for introducing this bill - not every proposed unconstitutional rights violation is the fault of the president, even in election season.