It's fair enough to do checks on visitors coming in to your country - and if you so wish this can include social media checks and asking people to turn over their passwords.
However, the way this is currently being done is not ok - if you're going to do these checks they should be done in advance, and with warning so that if visitors don't want to hand over their passwords or information they can choose not to go to the US, or be aware that it's going to happen. At the moment people are turning up to the US and being told that, despite having valid VISAs or other entry permission, they need to hand over their private information or be refused entry. Given that at this point they've organised whatever they were expecting to do while there, and are quite likely on the US end of a long flight, this leaves them with two choices: either be refused entry and incur whatever financial/social losses from that (after spending a substantial amount of time in US border custody) or give up your private information. This is highly morally dubious, to say the least.
In short, if you're going to require info from people get that BEFORE you give them documents saying they're allowed in. To use your analogy, visa's are an invitation to someone to enter the country. In the same way that it would be disrespectful to invite someone to your house who lives 8 hours away and then refuse them entry when they turn up because they won't show you their bank details, don't do that to people crossing the border. Do it before you extend the invitation/give a visa.
A few years ago I used to work in telecomms. We had an old old oscilloscope that we used to use to test connections between our servers if it seemed the wiring could be at fault, but that probably doesn't count in this case.
Actually in use in production - the basis of the software for almost all the products my company sold was the same. These were C components written in the 80s, and not really touched since, so that's the oldest I can think of at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
It's fair enough to do checks on visitors coming in to your country - and if you so wish this can include social media checks and asking people to turn over their passwords.
However, the way this is currently being done is not ok - if you're going to do these checks they should be done in advance, and with warning so that if visitors don't want to hand over their passwords or information they can choose not to go to the US, or be aware that it's going to happen. At the moment people are turning up to the US and being told that, despite having valid VISAs or other entry permission, they need to hand over their private information or be refused entry. Given that at this point they've organised whatever they were expecting to do while there, and are quite likely on the US end of a long flight, this leaves them with two choices: either be refused entry and incur whatever financial/social losses from that (after spending a substantial amount of time in US border custody) or give up your private information. This is highly morally dubious, to say the least.
In short, if you're going to require info from people get that BEFORE you give them documents saying they're allowed in. To use your analogy, visa's are an invitation to someone to enter the country. In the same way that it would be disrespectful to invite someone to your house who lives 8 hours away and then refuse them entry when they turn up because they won't show you their bank details, don't do that to people crossing the border. Do it before you extend the invitation/give a visa.
A few years ago I used to work in telecomms. We had an old old oscilloscope that we used to use to test connections between our servers if it seemed the wiring could be at fault, but that probably doesn't count in this case. Actually in use in production - the basis of the software for almost all the products my company sold was the same. These were C components written in the 80s, and not really touched since, so that's the oldest I can think of at the moment.