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US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

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Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#321

Post by macintux »

everythingspun wrote: post #60
WayneBro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The faces change, but the game stays the same. That's the salient point here IMO. Why is that? Who is behind it?

The DHS under the direction of the President. Are you suggesting that the US needs looser border controls and screening?

> Are you suggesting that the US needs looser border controls and screening?

I would suggest that, yes. If a gay man wishes to come to the US to prostitute himself, I think that's a fair trade-off for not forcing everyone to bend over for the digital equivalent of a rectal exam.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#322

Post by Veen »

WildUtah wrote: post #269
extra88 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one flight from Latin America to east Asia Are the countries on the continent of South America not generally considered a part of Latin America? Because there are other options from Santiago, Sao Paolo, Rio, etc. to Tokyo. Some of the options are on Air Canada, with a stop in Toronto which avoids U.S. airports but presumably not U.S. airspace so there may still be some additional scrutiny at departure. You don't ac…

Are the countries on the continent of South America not generally considered a part of Latin America? Technically, every country in South America is considered a part of Latin America except British Guyana, Suriname, and France. Not including islands like the Malvinas or the ABC islands, of course. --- I should have specified one single flight. Of course you can fly to Dubai from São Paulo and then to Seoul or to Syd…

In case anyone is confused, the Malvinas are correctly referred to as the Falkland Islands.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#323

Post by TACIXAT »

ohstopitu wrote: post #310

I've always wanted to visit the US. I grew up in India and UAE and viewed US as the ultimate place to be. It was my lifelong dream to get a job and settle in the US (and have an American way of life). The more time goes by, the more the US is moving away from that pedestal I had put it on.(privacy is getting eroded, cops are killing people, the govt. does not trust it's own citizens etc. - and no it's got nothing to…

Don't let the doomsayers dissuade you. Life is still very good here. Violent crime is near record lows. The air is much cleaner in cities than it used to be. You can find amazing salaries. We are making progress on social issues with same-sex marriage being a legal right.

I have the ability to move anywhere in the world and, all things considered, I'm staying in the US. It is not without it's problems, as you mention, privacy and a militarized police force are high on the list, but also keep in mind the positives. I think they still outweigh the negatives by a lot.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#324

Post by burkaman »

FusilliGary wrote: post #96

Can we acknowledge that this specific event happened last October, before Trump was elected? I am 100% not a Trump supporter, but the article is definitely trying to have people infer that it has to do with Trump's travel ban when it does not.

Trump actually doesn't appear at all in this article.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#325

Post by theandrewbailey »

dromen wrote: post #202
tempestn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And besides, it still wouldn't help. They could hand you a device and tell you to log into your social media accounts. If you say you don't have the passwords because of whatever technical measures you cooked up to make them temporarily inaccessible, you're back to, "Don't do that next time. You're not entering today."

What if you don't have social media accounts? Reports like this tend to trigger a Google search for my own name and correspondence with all sites that show up, "please delete all my shit". Finally deleted my Facebook account last week, too. Maybe we need a religion that forbids using social media, or more broadly, your real identity online?

> Maybe we need a religion that forbids using social media, or more broadly, your real identity online?

Good idea. You'll get bonus social points for being a persecuted religious minority when you're turned away and it's publicized.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#326

Post by coldpie »

moftz wrote: post #309
tempestn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently they do it intentionally to throw people off, supposedly making it easier to spot if they're hiding something. It doesn't really hold water with me, but that's the rationalization I've heard fwiw.

I was on a school trip flying out of IAD and the TSA guy standing near security looks at me and asks me if I'm feeling ok because I look nervous. I've flown probably over a dozen times in my life at that point and everything up until that question had been a very routine day at the airport so I wouldn't have had any reason to be so. I just looked at him and said no, and he replies back that he was just checking. I th…

Probably part of the "behavior detection" program that costs $200M per year and has exactly zero effectiveness: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/tsa-sp...

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#327

Post by jcranmer »

dpark wrote: post #287
WildUtah wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the countries on the continent of South America not generally considered a part of Latin America? Technically, every country in South America is considered a part of Latin America except British Guyana, Suriname, and France. Not including islands like the Malvinas or the ABC islands, of course. --- I should have specified one single flight. Of course you can fly to Dubai from São Paulo and then to Seoul or to Syd…

> France French Guiana?

France can be divided into Metropolitan France (the main hexagon of France, along with Corsica), Départements d'outre-mer (including Martinique, Guyana, and others), and Collectivités d'outre-mer (such as Saint Martin). In terms of US geography, the rough equivalents are the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii, and unincorporated territories of the US (like Puerto Rico). If you don't understand the latter term, think of it as a fancy term for colony.

Well, sort of. Looking briefly at many maps of France (in French), the inclusion of the DOMs are relatively rare, in contrast to the inclusion of Alaska and Hawaii on most US maps. Corsica is about as prevalent as Alaska and Hawaii (probably more so), while Guyana and the other DOMs are about as prevalent as Puerto Rico.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#328

Post by maxerickson »

BinaryWaves wrote: post #274
kennywinker wrote: post #49

Everyone proposing clever technical solutions. Burner phones and encrypted cloud data etc... you are solving the wrong problem. Instead of engineering a way for the few people who care deeply to avoid this at great effort, engineer a way for this to not be legal. Write your congressperson, donate time and money to political parties, make privacy at the border for ALL (not just citizens) a priority in every election.

Since when has going through proper govt channels ever worked?

A lot of the biggest successes of US civil rights movements have used proper government channels.

For example, women's suffrage was a constitutional amendment.

Or the Civil Rights Act. It didn't by any means fix all the problems in the US, but it represented real progress.

And then there are the thousands and thousands of lawsuits filed by groups like the ACLU.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#329

Post by coldpie »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #295
smsm42 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has very strong political opposition to denying services to illegal immigrants in many states. Given how many there are, in is understandable - if you have 10 million population, you can not just deny them all healthcare or access to housing. That'd create tons of problems. It could be done if tightening the rules is combined with finding solution for having so many illegal immigrants, one way or another (in vario…

I think you and parent are talking about separate things. They say, "housing assistance," and you say, "access to housing." Housing assistance is a government service. Access to housing would mean controlling the private housing market, I guess. Those are very different ideas in terms of feasibility, morality, economics, etc.

Housing assistance often is, in these economic classes, synonymous with access to the housing market. You can't suddenly have a few million more homeless people because they didn't wait in the proper lines and fill out the proper paperwork when they crossed the border.

Re: US Customs block Canadian man after reading his Scruff profile

#330

Post by onion2k »

literallycancer wrote: post #312
onion2k wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your profile isn't public and your name is common, they have no way to know it's really your profile. I know of at least one startup that's selling software to list who's browsing a website with links to their social media accounts in real time. The idea that the CBP can't work out exactly who you are on the internet from your passport seems highly improbable.

I guess normal people can't avoid that, true. But many people don't even have social networks except for maybe LinkedIn (especially outside the US).

But many people don't even have social networks except for maybe LinkedIn (especially outside the US).

I have no idea why you think that. Facebook has approximately 1.7 billion users - that's almost a quarter of everyone on Earth. Besides, I suspect that the people who don't have social media accounts are largely the same group of people who don't travel internationally. If you're wealthy enough to be travelling to the US the probability that you have at least one social media account is very high.

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