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Trump Administration Approves Tougher Visa Vetting, Including Social Media Checks (reuters.com)
The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years. From a report: The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period. Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States. Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.
Like they did their ethics waviers:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/336038-white-house-may-have-broke-ethics-rule-with-retroactive-waiver-report
This is related to civil travel, not with optional and voluntary career choices that have predicable requirements.
So now the proper functioning of my company is jeopardized?
Thank god these nefarious terrorists have social media profiles under their real names, and have no clue about meta-data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne7DnmdilEg
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Having been to the US a number of times we as a family have made the choice not to go there again, its simply not worth the aggravation.
We can fly to Europe via Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and other transit stops, there is no need to go via the US or even near the US. International flights may end up shifting to Canada/Mexico to attract customers.
This of course also means flying on non-US airlines.
It means we spend our money else where. We, outside the USA, get to vote with our wallets, and we are.
Become isolationist, build your walls, hell even shoot yourself in the other foot, we are no longer worried, the real harm is to the US, not us.
this won't impact the new People's Democratic Republic of California, will it?
Do you understand the impact of traffic volume on a system? What works at low levels does not work at higher levels. Airports become warehouses faster than anything when traffic is interrupted, and delays cost millions of dollars very quickly. Security theater is not just useless and counterproductive, it is actively destructive.
Travel and entering another nation is something another nation grants. Any nation can control who enters, why and how long they stay for.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
People with normal, valid paperwork wanting to enter the USA for any normal reason should have no issues.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Do you understand the impact of traffic volume on a system? What works at low levels does not work at higher levels. Airports become warehouses faster than anything when traffic is interrupted, and delays cost millions of dollars very quickly. Security theater is not just useless and counterproductive, it is actively destructive.
The checks are done well before a passenger flies. This obviates the airport jams you envision. Those who do not comply with
the checks won't even be permitted to board a flight which is traveling to the US.
I don't know what field you might have skills in, but it's not anything to do with this discussion, that is painfully obvious. Your comments
are the sort of thing I'd expect from a teenager who has little knowledge of such matters. Of course maybe you ARE a teenager who has
little knowledge of such matters. In any case, I'm not wasting any more of my time on you and your amateur attempt at pretending to be a security expert.
Why don't you go play a video game or do something else more productive and quit pretending to know about stuff you don't know
about.
It really won't change much. As you said, a chunk of people will simply lie or jump the border.
The rest will be able to simply skip the requirement. Eg: Because of my line of work and the country I came from, even though I half assed my green card application and didn't submit half of the crap they asked for, I got approved super quickly anyway. They have a huge amount of discretion in what they can overlook.
It would be way better if they didn't. Some people from certain countries will get overlooked on purpose, some people won't even try to apply when we'd love to have them...but a lot of people will go through just fine without handing over any extra info, too.
yes an by making that travel overly complex with excessively onerous requirements it has economic knockon effects to tourism, business and diplomatic relations. For a president supposedly focused on jobs this is a very anti jobs approach.
Precisely! Discouraging travel is how you sabotage trade and the productivity of a country. Trump is your worst enemy as an American - every day he does more to damage the standing of the USA and empower other nations to fill that gap.
JFK has over 30 million passengers through each year.
That means 82,191 passengers need vetting each day.
Assuming they each take one hour (e.g. each person can do 8 per day) and you have 3 8 hour shifts, you would need 3,424 people just to handle the traffic at JFK.
And we dont even account for holidays,sick days, etc, etc. Then there will be the supervisors, computer support, Managers, payroll, etc etc etc so lets take that to 4,000 people.
Now, Where is the money to pay them coming from ?
Make them pay you say, OK fine, that will mean competing airports in Canada and Mexico will see a rise in passenger numbers because costs are lower and thats on top of all those people who are choosing to avoid the USA anyway now. This will see thousands of people jobless in the Tourism industry, tens of BILLIONS in lost overseas revenue.
How do I know this, because I am one of a growing number who are choosing to avoid the US.
So go ahead break your country. There is absolutely no law that says the US can not become a failure.
"request all prior passport numbers"
That is great for people who have laundered their past by getting some new state to become their only "travel" document after a few years of entry and telling a good story.
A new passport granted by some easy third party nation will not be able to cover for past issues on another travel document.
"five years' worth of social media handles"
That will allow for a deeper understanding of a persons politics, who they fund, support, like and who their friends are.
Lots of images in a nation few people can get into? Why is that person in that nation over the years?
Posing under a banned groups banner, flag? A photo with a banned group?
No bringing a banned groups supporters into the USA.
"biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history"
That shows a person has a job, can support themselves while they are in the USA, what study they did. What they present is a real not a fictional story to get travel paperwork from their own nation or created to be given new paperwork from a third nation.
Lie to the USA and no visa application. Why should a person of interest be able to lie, omit, hide support for groups of interest or friends who support groups of interest to the USA?
Real people with any education, a normal work history and a normal life should have no issues with any of the questions.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
simple question should be sufficient: are you a terrorist?
re "impact of traffic volume on a system?"
That will all be done before a person is accepted for travel into the USA. A person will apply to be allowed to enter the USA. After all that work is done, they will have documents that will allow a person to travel to the USA.
Further questions might be asked if new information has been found or if a person tries to lie about anything as they enter the USA.
If anything is found to be wrong they will not be allowed to enter the USA.
Dont lie, don't support or fund banned groups and a persons holiday, visit, stay, further education or work in the USA will be as normal.
Other nations can do this without any issues and most nations did this very well over many decades.
The volume problem is spread back over the applicants different nations and they have to wait a while.
Once their documents are found to be valid the US will keep working on granting access to the USA for some reason.
The "delays cost millions of dollars very quickly" won't be an issue for people who are not trying to lie as they will be waiting in their own nations until the needed travel documents are ready.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That's still fantasy at scale. Get ready to subsidize your airports for lost traffic and equipment non-use. What, did you think an airplane sitting on a runway was free?
Trump has already imposed travel restrictions that have been estimated to cost more than $7B annually in lost tourism spending. These new restrictions will add to that.
More than 14 million American work in the tourism industry. That is about 200 times more than the number of coal miners.
so they'll come here because they have to to keep their jobs. And so the Global Race to the Bottom (tm) continues. Second Dark Ages here we come.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Another thing, never personify a country. That's how bureaucrats sleep at night.
And we will lock up every single one of the people who do what you describe, in a prison which will make them wish
they'd never tried it. There'a always room in prison, especially when you are housed in a 5 x 10 foot solitary cell.
So go ahead, motherfucker. We will be happy to show you some American hospitality.
for people who think this is stupid, it is. you can't just lock up people in solitary for that and in the amounts he describes and furthermore some people don't even know the name of some town 15 years ago they lived in for a little while that got then bombed to shit and would need to know the county it was in and shit.
but whats scary is that cia does that randomly.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The "airplane" will arrive with people having the correct paperwork to enter the USA as expected as every other normal nation expects.
No paperwork for the USA, no entering the "airplane" and getting to the USA. Flying people around with fake or no paperwork is not a good policy and most airlines try not to do that. Governments tend to notice on a lack of documents on both ends of the flight.
Further questions might be asked if a person is interesting or lies but most nations have worked out how to guide people from the airplane, to the area to present valid documents and then out of the airport.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Worse, what impact do you think it will have on business travel?
It's even worse if other countries start imposing reciprocal restrictions on travelers from the USA. What do you think will happen to global businesses that need to be able to send people around the world, if/when it becomes a nightmare to travel to and from the U.S.? All of a sudden it starts to become a lot more attractive to move your headquarters and any international operations to Europe or Asia, and reduce the U.S. to a subsidiary that handles only domestic business.
Lol Jzanu doesn't understand how an entry visa works.
Some random coward doesn't understand operations management.
Most EU nations are visa waiver with the US, meaning you don't need a visa to come over for tourism or business if you are a citizen in those countries (and vice versa for US citizens). Basically all of the EU has visa waiver status with the US, as well as a few other places (there are 38 countries total). So given that this is all about changes to the visa program, it doesn't affect you if you are from a VWP country (or Canada, which is completely visa exempt to the US, and Palu, Marshall Islands and Micronesia which have a compact of free association so their citizens can just move to the US any time they like).
Now if you were coming over for a long period of time, more than 90 days, or were coming over as a student you'd need a visa and then this shit would apply. But just normal business travel from the EU won't change.
So when's the impeachment of the POTUS coming? I don't think anyone in their right mind in the US appreciates the fact that Trump has been actively sabotaging the US economy ever since his inauguration.
Why should a more elaborate visa application result in extra delays at the airport ? You get your visa before you travel.
That means 82,191 passengers need vetting each day. Assuming they each take one hour
It doesn't take any longer than it does now. If they have a valid visa, then you let them in. If they don't, you send them back, just like now. All the vetting has already been done during visa application.
People with normal passports don't create 'turnaround time" in most normal nations.
The flights land, take off, depart, connect, people make their flights just fine.
Domestic and international travel has worked well for most normal people in most other normal nations that have valid travel documents over many decades.
Wealthy and poor nations have counted every person, in and out, and looked at every issued travel document.
A normal person entering the USA for a visit, education, to stay, for work is expected given US embassy work and can be moved around as needed without slowing down all other scheduled flights.
US embassy workers in other nations have done their work, passengers then arrive into the USA with correct paperwork.
They don't have 'turnaround time" issues as they have allowed time to looked at all the documents in an out of their nations.
Ports, airports, rail, most nations don't have 'turnaround time" problems, as they have allowed time to look at all documents.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
51) Have you ever touched a veiled Muslim?
52) If yes, did you enjoy it?
53) Do you eat your snot?
54) Do you pose as a creepy clown on weekends?
55) Did you vote for any creepy clowns?
Table-ized A.I.
Olympiad is actually the time between the Olympic Games so that would be the least of the US problems right now.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The past passport numbers would fill in most of a normal persons past world travel.
Having an interesting person on file in another nation when they should have been in their own nation or moving around some other nation would show:
Dual citizen with a passport they did not mention. Thats a lie.
Another travel document they did not mention.
Sharing or the use of fake documents.
People made mistakes in the 1960-90's thinking no database would ever reconnect be created and show their past support or movements to interesting nations.
That the only passport they had to consider is the one they use now.
Most normal nations have taken a lot of time and effort on every document they allowed in and out of their nation over the decades.
Every passport number, every face, all the details stayed on file. Now the databases are linked for all other nations, past decades and not just people who are wanted or passports that have been revoked.
All details are now shared, not just who is wanted or who has no passport.
No spelling errors, no issues with fonts, languages, translation. Every name can be fully considered rather than just trying to match a few names of interest.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Meh, tourists are a pain in the arse, always demand access to the best locations, driving out the locals and seasonal employment never really provides economic stability. Always remember no matter where you go, people there are wanting to leave and visit some place else, you are not special no matter how badgered hotel staff treat you, you can holiday at home for a year for what holidaying overseas costs you in a month, tourism is one of the biggest marketing scams of all.
Asking for social media information is a really bad idea, it's like asking about hobbies, what the fuck business of the United States government is it, social media is not factual media, it is an illusion people present. How about if you don't play social media, do you become a suspicious person, how about if you get it wrong, various places you signed up to and forgot, do they send you to prison for getting it wrong. How about if they claim you do, when you claim you don't, do they let in country only to lock you up in a for profit prison whilst they sort out the case for years, instead of just giving you the option to leave.
I understand the US is pretty fucked up when it comes to deportation, needed to lock you up in for profit prisons for some time, rather than just putting you on a plane and sending you back as soon as possible and sending the bill to your countries government.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
In USSR privacy protects you?
Pass passport numbers? Who the fuck keeps that data? Will I have to bug my burocrates to provide me with history of my passport numbers, so I can go to fasist state? No ty. :)
No one cares WHEN the vetting is done, it still HAS to be done and it still takes the same amount of work no matter when it is done.
It DOES take longer simply because the vetting is going to be in more depth, i.e. checking their Facebook and other pages.
The only way this does not take longer is that no checking is actually done.
It's a bit more elaborate because if you need a visa (citizens of some countries can get visa waivers) at application time you MIGHT be asked to give up all this extra information if they deem it necessary. It's not clear that every visa application will force the applicant to cough up all this information right away or only if you trigger some extra checks required tripwire (e.g. "name contains non-even number of letters, full information required"). Also note this presumably happens once per visa so if your visa lasts a year and you were pressured into having to do this you'll have done it once for that year even though you may fly many times...
No one cares WHEN the vetting is done, it still HAS to be done and it still takes the same amount of work no matter when it is done.
It's not that hard. You make a one-time database of all social media accounts, passport numbers, and e-mail addresses, and flag everyone that you consider suspicious (they probably already have that). When a visa applicant comes in, you run their history through the database. Add the data to their existing risk profile, and continue with standard procedures. Maybe you'll spend a bit more time on persons that are flagged, but in return you can afford to spend less time on people that aren't.
If they don't like it, it'll free slots and jobs for US citizens.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Mod parent up insightful please, someone. Loads of people talking about tourism here, but very few acknowledging that this will also have a *huge* and negative impact on business travel -- and that's more likely than not going to result in some business going to other countries instead of us, in the long run.
This is just more that will isolate the US from the leftists in the pseudoscience community.
Everyone else will just lie as much as necessary, and give either partial lists or entirely fake curated profile.
That's the easiest path out of the country, but not the quickest. Advanced technology, along with sources and methods developed by willing and able individuals, will pick apart lies. At some point, you will have to tell the truth and not the unbelievably clean version.
Your admission into the US as a non-citizen is not a right, but a privilege.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...tourist industry. At least the hotel chains won't no longer have to worry about Booking.com and Tripadvisor.com.
Uh, thanks. At least I know where I won't have my next vacations.
They still ask you for your social media accounts with a visa waiver. It was still optional a couple of months ago when I last needs to apply for a visa wavier.
...but my usual rights, freedoms and respectful treatment must be temporarily trampled on.
There's also that bit of being treated like visiting the US is some sort of special privilege that I must go through this demeaning shit.
Dear US, your empire is falling apart in front of your eyes. When you calm down don't bother to let us know. We've moved on.
As someone who have been traveling to the states 3 times a year on vacation, I think it is time to say goodbye for now.
I was already somewhat reluctant about our upcoming trip this fall because of the laptop/electronics ban as carry-on, which got cancelled but now there's talks about it again. I am not putting expensive laptops and camera gear in checked.
The house has already been rented, but it will be cancelled tonight.
It's a shame, I liked to book the premium seats at Norwegian which enabled me to sleep or at least relax all the 10 hours on the flight, then one night after landing in Las Vegas and then driving to Arizona to go mountain biking, although the roads these days seems to have been deteriorating too much to be driving a Corvette, Mustang or Camaro. I liked renting american cars so that was a part of the "package".
It was good fun, but I guess I will just spend my money within Europe.
When I visit other countries, including the US, I often buy a SIM card, get a temporary phone number, now some orange dingbat in the US tells me I was supposed to have remembered all those phone numbers I've had over the past 5 years.
Oh, and I design VOIP hardware and software .... do you want ALL those numbers too? I can't remember them, is it a big form? lots of room
Don't you guys have an NSA or something to keep track of all this stuff for us
That's not how visas work. You can still get sent back despite having a perfectly valid visa.
Wow, you really drank the authoritarian kool-aid didnt you?
Meanwhile, people can just walk in at the North and South of your country.
The delay, arrogance and ignorance of US border officials is well known, and the economic consequences will continue to get worse, tourism is collapsing currently.
All of this, because you are scared of the remote possibility of a terrorist attack, you are literally in more danger of dying falling out of bed than by terrorism, you are even in far more danger from your own armed fellow citizens.
A brave nation does not give the terrorists exactly what they want.
Its sad to see a nation once respected world wide for its courage and intellect descend into a cowardly uneducated rabble.
The US, the only empire to go from rise to fall without an intervening period of civillisation.
What do you think will happen to global businesses that need to be able to send people around the world.
Less air travel = less climate change. Trump is simply attempting to reverse the effects of withdrawing from the Paris Accord.
Supporting or funding a banned group and then wanting to enter the another nation is not something that should go undetected.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ignoring what Jzanu said for a moment, how do you propose for the border agency to actually find undeclared social media accounts and email addresses? At least without giving the government the power to read every single email stored in the US on the pretext of looking for aliases?
Last time I visited the US I went through JFK. Took about 3 hours to get into the country. What I saw reminded me when I traveled to East-Berlin by car. The same mindless stares of the people. Some just sitting on a chair doing nothing. The inefficiency was amazing.
Get in line, wait for three hours. Have people read the paper you filled out. They look at it as if they understand what it says. Look at you passport and make it look important. Get a paper, with a stamp on it. Walk 10 meters (30 feet) and hand over the paper to somebody else who reads it as if I where able to falsify it somehow in those 10 meters.
"Yes, but there are sooo many people arriving in JFK". No, there where not. We where the only plane at that time. Luckily I did not have a connecting flight, because I would have missed it.
The sole reason was inefficiency.
On top of that, what social media should I now avoid to be connected with? Is /. social media? Is Usenet social media? Is Imgur.com?
The nice thing is that If I ever decide to go, I need to fear that I forgot something and they can deny me entry based on that.
Perhaps this is their way to refuse journalists to the cuntry (Not a spelling mistake)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No, I don't agree with the concept of asking for this information when crossing borders (mainly because I don't see it as an effective deterrent), but it appears that everyone is really pissed off and offended about people asking for their social media associations, as if you're really making an effort to hide yourself online.
Pro tip; It's not really difficult to figure out it's you based on the 927 selfies you posted last month as "InstaWhore69".
The irony of a generation of social media narcissists wanting to label their online associations as private and sensitive information while they do their best to get the most clicks, likes, looks, and e-friends on the planet fucking kills me.
The form estimates it will take 60 minutes to fill in. Only a very parochial American, like Trump, could find out all their travel, passport, and social media details within 60 minutes.
Anyone who travels for work, or lives in a smaller country near other countries, or likes personal travel, will take 60 minutes to find their travel history for the past year, or less. It would take days of work to collect 15 years of details.
I estimate that most of my work colleagues would find it impossible to collect travel details for 15 years, or social media handles for 15 years. They might not even remember where they lived 15 years ago.
This is an impossible task to complete precisely for most people. It is also impossible for the US government to verify that the person has submitted all the information asked for. Therefore it is both unreasonable for the applicant and wasteful for the US government.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Yes, it falls especially fast when tourists feel like they're being treated like crap.P Self-fulfilling prophecy much?
That's not how visas work. You can still get sent back despite having a perfectly valid visa
Sure, I simplified the process a bit, but that's irrelevant. The point is that they aren't going to spend an hour at the immigration desk going through your social media status, because that's already been processed.
You're missing the point.
The "hour" that's been mentioned is a rough estimate for the amount of work that would need to be done to handle the visa application. It's not an estimated increase of the amount of time that it will take for passengers to travel through an airport.
There will be a significant increase in bureaucracy required to process all these visa applications, which has a significant cost associated with it.
As a potential visitor, having to deal with a more complicated visa application process is hassle, and not appealing. When the application process is draconian and unnecessarily invasive of the privacy of the applicant it is even less appealing.
How will they know if you're telling the truth?
I know how to make an all-inclusive list of all you passport numbers: generate a complete list of all combinations of characters, that form valid passport numbers in the relevant countries. They didn't say the list had to be limited to only yours, did they?
"Have you travelled to any country (otherthan your country of residence) in the last 15 years? Ifyes, provide details for each trip, including locations visited, date visited, source of funds, and length of stay."
:)
:)
:) 15 years worth of employment history? :) Really :) Nice. I'd like to see a 30-40 years old senior tech worker fill out such an application :)
Now, I do realize there are lots of people on this planet that do not travel much, some never even leave their country. My question is, realistically speaking, who in the US govt. thinks many of such people will apply for a US visa? Since even when talking about regular people, 15 years is a long time during which very very many travels can be done. And then there are some people, who the US probably wants - or should want - like scientists, researchers, engineers, etc. some or most of which might travel dozens (or even more) times PER YEAR. Now, just for a moment think about gathering information for 100+ travels for a visa application... Geez, I mean: GEEZ!
"Have you ever held a passport other than the passport listed in your visa application? If yes, provide the following information"
Well, I don't know how many passports people usually have during their life. Up to now, I have had a total of 3, from 2 separate countries (they do expire you know). Personally, I don't know the details of one from those three (I don't have it anymore, not even a copy) and it would be practically impossible to find out that data. Thankfully I don't need a US visa - well, not yet... this administration can seemingly have some fun with regulations
Another favorite
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Your calculations are *waaay* off. Most of those people will be US citizens, which won't require a visa. The majority of the rest I would expect will travel on the ESTA visa-waiver programme, which doesn't require a visa.
Not to say that it isn't a terrible idea, but your calculations don't really add to the debate.
The "hour" that's been mentioned is a rough estimate for the amount of work that would need to be done to handle the visa application. It's not an estimated increase of the amount of time that it will take for passengers to travel through an airport.
Ok. I got confused by the example based on JFK airport. But still, there are two wrong assumptions: 30 million passengers are not all foreigners. A lot of them will be travelling on a US passport. And the "hour" is grossly exaggerated, because all you have to do is run the account names through a computer, to see if they are associated with suspicious behavior that has been analyzed previously.
Get a paper, with a stamp on it. Walk 10 meters (30 feet) and hand over the paper to somebody else who reads it as if I where able to falsify it somehow in those 10 meters.
The first check is done by an immigration officer. The second check is customs. Two different jobs with different responsibilities.
So it's actually a jobs programs, like Sarbanes Oxley and OFAC (both of which I'm more familiar with that I would like).
Now we see the wisdom. All of the people in the travel industry can migrate to the travel security industry!
BlameBillCosby.com
Trump has already imposed travel restrictions that have been estimated to cost more than $7B annually in lost tourism spending. These new restrictions will add to that.
More than 14 million American work in the tourism industry. That is about 200 times more than the number of coal miners.
And what's the economic cost of all the Obama regulations that Trump has promised to eliminate?
If the travel restrictions Trump has imposed cost $7 billion, what's the cost of Obama-imposed regulations like Net Neutrality, CFPB, regulations on oil and gas drilling, regulations on electrical power generation, etc.?
And what about Obamacare regulations? How many people work in the THREE FUCKING TRILLION DOLLAR-A-YEAR healthcare industry? If you're bitching about the cost of some travel regulations on the piddly little travel industry, you must be screaming at the top of your lungs for the repeal of Obamacare because of it's economic impact on the tremendously larger healthcare industry. Right. RIGHT? Or maybe you just cherry-pick bullshit to bash Trump?
If Trump's regulations are so damn economically onerous, what the hell should we make of the huge magnitude of Obama's regulations?
Today, Friday the 30th, is the last federal workday of 2016.
And the printed version of the Federal Register, the daily depository of all things regulatory, has topped off at 97,110 pages, by far an all time record.
Skips and blanks will lower the official count a tad later when the National Archives issues final data, but not by much.
That dwarfs last year's count of 80,260 pages, and it shatters the 2010 all-time record of 81,405 by 15,705 pages.
Indeed, the 2010 level was passed November 17, making each day since a new record-breaker.
It's true that the Federal Register is not a great gauge, since it's full of notices and such. But the sheer magnitude of it signals a new era in the Administrative State as opposed to a representative one, and a challenge to new president Donald Trump to do something about a runaway federal government.
We noted here last week that until Obama, ninety-thousand pages was unheard of. Up until this year, the 80,000 page mark shocked, having been passed just three times (in 2010, 2011 and 2015, all by Obama). In fact of the 10 highest-ever counts, Obama holds seven.
Dec. 10, 2015
Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).
Late 2015
British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).
March 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).
March 21
During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).
March 28
Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)
April 27
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).
June
At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).
June 15
A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).
July
At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).
July 7
Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track PageÃs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).
July 11 or 12
Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).
July 18
At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).
Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business, if I did a tenth of what she did," Flynn said, "I would be in jail today" (C-Span, July 18, 2016).
July 22
Wikileaks releases emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (WP, July 22, 2017).
Jul. 27
During his last news conference of the campaign, Trump asks Russia to release emails hacked from Clinton's private server. He later says that he was joking (WP, July, 27, 2016).
Aug. 9
Flynn Intel Group, a consulting firm founded by Flynn, signs a contract with Inovo BV, a firm run by a Turkish businessman close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for more than $500,000 (Daily Caller, Nov. 11, 2016).
Aug. 15
The New York Times reports on secret ledger
Most interesting people have made a lot of mistakes AC.
They pose for images at political events and upload images. They pose for images in nations at war.
Their bank accounts show payments to "charity" groups that are the political side of a banned group.
They like or share or fund or support a banned group online.
Such information was usually collected in real time and can now be used to match a face to a passport been used.
Normal people with "correct travel document" have a bank account thats normal, a face thats not on image supporting banned groups, do not have sets of images online from war zones of interest to the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I really doubt the TSA agent himself/herself looks at a person's phone. If they are, they won't be for long. What is more likely to happen (or soon) is they plug your device into a computer and it "greps" for keywords in unencrypted metadata (or encrypted if there's a hex string pattern they are aware of), so they actually can look through in exported CSV file and various other types of all of your entries in just seconds while you're busy passing through an x-ray. KeePass uses a database file like every thing else these days. Matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the USB "phone chargers" near the waiting areas do more than just charge.
A working example:
And if you're lucky, they don't try " > We'reKeepingThis.txt" at the end. The EXIF data is information your phone stores about each photo that is usually embedded in the photo itself. This includes things like date taken, place taken (GPS), and even the camera used just in case it's a shared file. However, this is why Apple gets so much crap from the FBI; they do not store this information that way by default; there's a separate database file photos pair with. I think you have to be rooted/jailbroken if you want access to those databases using third-party software. And if 3rd party software without needing to root does exists, then I wonder if your consent to search could void an EULA. However, also realize that with cloud computing and storage on the rise, that would explain the push for social media accounts while people don't fully understand the meaning of it. That's what you get for using software that needs an API key rather than a stand-alone. They can just pressure developers to put in a backdoor, to which if you've noticed lately, many countries have been doing just that. There would be no need to grep; all the data they care about could be in plain site. And in case anyone reading this doesn't understand "grep" and thinks there's something advanced to it, realize that it has been around since 1974. Though if you got a time machine, the advanced options wouldn't have existed until the early 1980's. Though, for photos, EXIF didn't exist until 2003. And yes, if it's digital, takes photos, and newer than 2003, those photos contain metadata. Hope you hung-on to your 1990s DSLR and some floppies.
You're right! It's all a plot to make Skype more valuable!
Most 'Obama' regulations, like net neutrality, conservation measures, 'obamacare', etc.were intended to have net positive impacts on the economy in the long run. And most of them would. Unfortunately, it's impossible to do a double-blind study on the effects of legislation and regulation on the economy, so no one will ever be convinced of the viewpoint other than their own.
An e-mail account is not 'social media' in any commonly accepted definition of terms.
It's called "democratic election".
The questionnaire for ESTA has grown to such a volume that is is, de facto, a visa vetting process.
You know that some people travel more than once, right?
Ironically, none of this would be needed if the US could just go ahead w/ Trump's campaign era Muslim ban. All of the fear is of Muslims - original or converts - pulling off a terror attack. But the mere travel ban, which affects not even 10% of Muslims, was sabotaged by judicial runts. Since the US government can't say. 'We couldn't stop this terror attack b'cos these judges stopped us', they are forced to inconvenience everybody who needs/wants to come into the country.
what do we get when Trump gets kicked out? Mike Pence.
Not necessarily. If Trump gets impeached for collusion with an enemy state, there would be grounds for throwing out the entire administration and holding another election.
Wrong. China asks none of that when applying for a visa from the US. Been there done that. Passport, a recent photo, and where will you be staying in China, that's it. Visa is good for 10 years.
... centers for study are quickly going down the rabbit hole where loan sharks and Evangelical Christians rule.
Other countries can fill those gaps.
Bye bye, Miss American Pie.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What does that have to do with my point?
Odd, all the measures mentioned have been in effect if you want to get a work visa for a U.S. Citizen to work in Canada for several years. Why is the media just now noticing that to get a visa for work or education travel you provide years worth of residence information and many more very intrusive hoops to jump through.
90 day tourist visas are easy. But, if you actually want to go to school or go to work; you have to prove you aren't a criminal or nut job.
NRRPT/RCT
Let's see TSA bring out an IBM Series/1 Computer. At least we will know where the nuke maintainers work when not at the DoD.
Most normal nations have taken a lot of time and effort on every document they allowed in and out of their nation over the decades
Most nations don't meaningfully track departures.
One example of such is US.