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US Visitors May Have to Hand Over Social Media Passwords: DHS (nbcnews.com)
People who want to visit the United States could be asked to hand over their social-media passwords to officials as part of enhanced security checks, the country's top domestic security chief said. From a report on NBC: Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told Congress on Tuesday the measure was one of several being considered to vet refugees and visa applicants from seven Muslim-majority countries. "We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?" he told the House Homeland Security Committee. "If they don't want to cooperate then you don't come in."
That seems to be the least of the problems. Even if you assume good faith (and you can't... too many stories of individual immigration officers, possibly with the encouragement of higher ups, acting inhumanely towards would-be immigrants), the request doesn't make sense: if I say I don't have a Twitter or Facebook account, are they going to believe me? What are the chances I have one if I live in a part of the world with no Internet?
And if I do, and I'm actually using my Facebook account to meet up with terrorists, preparing to be the first person ever from any of those seven countries to commit an act of terrorism in the US, what makes you think I'd use the same account for that as I do talking with friends and family? I mean, having one account used for both seems like it'd be asking for trouble. Guess which password you'd end up with...
What a waste of time and resources, and a completely unnecessary invasion of privacy.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Next up on the hit series "'Murica: Hell yeah!", the orange prez makes a scandalous law - all students are to get daily cavity searches.
While glove manufacturer stock prices are soaring, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly tells worried students "If you don't want your rectum searched for contraband, just stay at home.
God-damn the news are getting entertaining.
You're so close to realizing this will eventually become mandatory unfettered read-only API calls for the gubmint.
Better also keep an eye on them for domestic dissidents too. Maybe we can come up with a catchy name for it like COINTELPRO.
Me too, except "blowing up" in the sense of suddenly having lots of new account signups. I imagine a desk at airports, with public computer everyone uses to sign up for accounts on these websites, in order to have a password to hand over.
"Uh, yeah, my account is throwaway12345@gmail.com. My password is 12345."
This isn't for purposes of finding evidence. It's for theater. Someone got the idea that American voters want visitors to be humiliated and insulted, and this is their idea for how to best do it.
How the idea of anal pattern photographs got shot down, I have no idea. Cowards!!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This screening requires judgment to figure out who the person coming in is.
Sorting between a friendly, harmless wacko and a risky one is not always easy.
If the DHS didn't know they were screening the President, I wonder how the test would turn out.
Its simple, more and more people are now avoiding the USA.
If I need to fly to Europe from New Zealand I now go through Hong Kong or one of the other non-us routes. This is now the preferred method for all staff as the risks of IT devices (computers/phones/etc) being compromised at the US boarder is now considered too high.
There is also a growing preference for equipment from the EU as any training will be outside of the US too.
The US is slowly but surely shitting in its own nest.
I know personally, for family holidays we will no longer consider the USA, there is a great big world out there to see, and currently the USA and its policies places it a long way down the list of places to visit.
No terrorist could possibly fake a social media profile. Or have two or 100. And it's impossible that an innocent person could just not have a social media profile.
Exactly this. It would take minimal effort for a would-be terrorist to make a "clean" Facebook account. Have it only friend pro-US people and be completely innocuous - not even discussing US politics, but discussing which pop band is the best and the results of "Which Hogwarts House Am I In" quizzes. A clever terrorist organization could even have a whole division dedicated to maintaining these accounts for years before handing them over to the would-be-terrorist. DHS gets the clean Facebook account and doesn't see the secondary account where he's liked every anti-US Facebook post there is. This won't protect us from terrorists (except, maybe extremely stupid ones), will weaken the security of people entering the US, and will lead to abuse.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Rules of evidence don't apply in this case unless they try to prosecute you for something. Denial of entry does not require the same standards as criminal prosecution.
It's also against the 4th amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."
I would argue that an on-line account is an effect of a person (actually in both definitions of the word) and the constitution does not exclude non citizens.
Just disgraceful what my country has done to it's charter document.
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You make it sound like that is a bad thing. If people who don't like the US avoid the US, that's one of the desirable outcomes, the attempts of Dem AGs notwithstanding.
You're not on trial. They are trying to find evidence that's in your favor, not evidence against you. If they don't want to admit you, they don't have to bother planting evidence, they just stamp "denied" on your visa application.
Ahh, I see. So the plan is to make the US such a terrible place that no-one will want to go there? Now it finally makes sense.
Just a heads up, you might want to look into Somalia, they appear to have attempted a similar approach.
TOS has about as much legal strength as a wet paper bag. TOS is a company saying "this is what we want, if you don't do what we want we are taking our toys and you can't play with them anymore". TOS are often in violation of laws, and guess which one wins out in court.
Laws and federal government action is an armed man putting a gun in your face and saying: "do this or else." All government action is action by force, just consider the final consequence of violating any law and ignoring the consequence of that violation. You will eventually have armed men coming after you to incarcerate you. If you ignore them and resist, you may very well get shot.
In order to receive the massive privilege of entering the US (and it is a privilege), potential visitors need to sacrifice their privacy, so we can know who they are. This is not new or news, it has been this way for decades, but with the advent of FB, Twitter and other social media, the vetting process needs to catch up with technology.
Getting a visa for the US is like someone asking to come live in your house. You would want to get to know that person, do a criminal background check on them etc. You would want to know, for example, if they belonged to the ISIS or some other radical group. It is the same with immigration to the US, we don't want certain radicals coming into our collective house, especially the ones who want to kill the infidel and hurt the great satan...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
They can implement POTS (parent over the shoulder) password too. Log in using that password, everything would be seemingly normal, with write access and everything. But only portions that you had declared "safe" using earlier regular full access password sessions would be visible.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...What a waste of time and resources, and a completely unnecessary invasion of privacy.
Your assertion is based on the premise that the people behind this policy actually give a rat's ass about the safety and/or privacy of the average American.
A friend once made the insightful comment that having to stand in line at an airport waiting to take your shoes off has nothing to do with thwarting terrorism - its purpose is to make obedience to authority reflexive and habitual. As far as I'm concerned this is more of the same - and don't be surprised when, a few years down the road, America citizens are also forced to give up their social media passwords at the border.
Once upon a time I thought the people who talk about governments of ostensibly 'free' nations having their citizens chipped or bar-coded was the fantasy of conspiracy theorists. These days I'm not sure they're wrong.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The word "free" (as in "Land of the Free") is dangerously undefined. Free from what? Free to do what? Not free to do what? The answers to the second and third questions would run to thousands of pages.
To assert that one country is "free" while another is "not free" is ridiculous. It doesn't even make much sense to say that one country is "freer" than another. So in Country A you are allowed to do X but forbidden to do Y; whereas in Country B it is the other way round. Presumably which country you prefer is a function of whether you prefer X to Y.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
No, the plan is to tell Americans they are safe by banning people who have no record of doing naughty things in America, and that do not have Trump properties in their homelands.
One thing you have to consider when observing this Administration, nothing is connected. One policy might yang the yin out of some issue, another might yin the yang out of the same issue.
Also, knock-on effects are not considered because there's no way the head guys can keep two ideas in their heads at the same time. Case in point, the last Yemen raid by American Special Forces. The previous administration tried to think through the effects if something went wrong. The current administration would rather shoot first and aim later. The result: Yemen said no more of those.
Another case in point: American ban on Iraqis coming to the U.S. Iraq's Parliament is considering legislation banning Americans, and the Iraqis fighting and dying to attack Daesh are looking at the Americans and wondering why they should bother. Trumpets blaring about taking Iraqi oil tell them that the American administration has no respect for Iraqis. End result, decreased cooperation against Daesh, and possibly support for aggression against the U.S. after Daesh goes down the rat hole.
And the Administration rhetoric has given that little twit Ayatollah running Iran a gift claiming the Administration is showing America's true face.
Wanting to put China in its place, they did the opposite of rally Asian nations against China hegemony by pulling out of TPP thus pushing those countries closer to China. And whining about cheap Mexican labor and labor standards, they decided pulling out of the TPP would be a good idea, however it would have increased wages and standards for Mexicans.
Claiming the Mexican hordes are climbing over the borders (they aren't), they give every indication of starting a trade war with Mexico thus lowering the Mexican economy and making it likely to increase the pressure on Mexicans to squirrel under the new stupid wall to get into the U.S.
Umm... You realize you are posting on a social media platform, using a social media account, right?
I'm pretty sure the bill of rights doesn't say 'love it or leave it' where 'it' is the crazy current administration policy.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It's not an appeal to authority, it's an appeal to reality.
The US has long talked a good talk of championing personal freedoms, but usually does a bad job of actually respecting them. In just about every stage of our nation's history, there has been some threatening group of the day who has had its freedoms sharply curtailed, where the response has been more "meh," or at least "maybe this isn't great, but we're under attack or under threat."