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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

#381

Post by kennywinker »

LordKano wrote: post #363
kennywinker wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought tech people liked hard problems ;) Please, by all means use whatever technical measures you want at the border. My criticism was of hn commenters armchair quarterbacking, as thought the ability to bypass these checks (at great effort) makes it ok that you have no expectation of privacy.

Tech people like hard tech problems. We notoriously hate hard people problems. I have mixed feelings on the matter. At an international border, non-citizens shouldn't have an expectation of privacy. At the same time, this man's private sexual preferences shouldn't be used to evaluate his fitness to enter the country.

Does violating the privacy of travellers routinely actually make you safer?

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

#382

Post by schoen »

fortytw2 wrote: post #212
dbg31415 wrote: post #63

Here's what I want: A way to hit a button and have the contents of my laptop or phone encrypted locally, shipped off to some secure cloud storage, and then purged from my laptop. I'll take the empty device through. I can just tell them that it's a gift for a friend, or something work asked me to bring over to a co-worker. Then when I'm on the other side, I hit the button... download, decrypt, and restore my stuff --…

this doesn't help at all - in this scenario, if a gov't body wants you data, they lock you up in some room and beat you until you give them all of the passwords to the encrypted data...

Where did this "and beat you" part come from? I often hear this in this context, but I've never heard of any case in the U.S. where this has actually happened. (I'm working on a guide to help people protect their data from searches at the U.S. border, and have worked on court cases related to government attempts to force people to help access encrypted data.)

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

#383

Post by WildUtah »

dpark wrote: post #354
jcranmer wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I guess I find the phrasing really odd. It seems to imply that there is an independent country named France in Latin America. It would be similarly odd to hear someone refer to the country of the United States in the Caribbean. I also don't know that excluding French Guiana from "Latin America" is actually correct anyway. French is a romance language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America

The most prestigious university in Latin America is McGill University in Montreal.

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

#384

Post by b3lvedere »

misingnoglic wrote: post #258
pjc50 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a shame this; as a white Brit, I found that America is already great on the individual level. It's just the institutional and political side that's a mess, as well as the dark side that one doesn't see as a tourist. Unless you run into an obstreperous border guard.

That's funny, that's the same thing that Americans say about Iran.

Indeed. I've been to several countries and in most of them it's the same thing: Nice people, bad politics.

Makes you wonder why the people keep having bad politicians. Maybe it's time they taught themselves that system a little bit better.

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

#385

Post by dpark »

WildUtah wrote: post #383
dpark wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I find the phrasing really odd. It seems to imply that there is an independent country named France in Latin America. It would be similarly odd to hear someone refer to the country of the United States in the Caribbean. I also don't know that excluding French Guiana from "Latin America" is actually correct anyway. French is a romance language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America

The most prestigious university in Latin America is McGill University in Montreal.

Is this your way of saying that the term "Latin America" does not include French-speaking nations? Because the French apparently created the term and it included French Guiana.

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

#386

Post by LordKano »

kennywinker wrote: post #381
LordKano wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people like hard tech problems. We notoriously hate hard people problems. I have mixed feelings on the matter. At an international border, non-citizens shouldn't have an expectation of privacy. At the same time, this man's private sexual preferences shouldn't be used to evaluate his fitness to enter the country.

Does violating the privacy of travellers routinely actually make you safer?

It most likely does not but what you're overlooking is that it makes some people "feel" safer.

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

#387

Post by angry_octet »

Buge wrote: post #379
angry_octet wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true about Canada. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13665021 And the Kiwi's might ask, but only to find out if you are violating quarantine regulations.

That comment does not disprove mine. The guy did face up to 1 year in prison. He took a guilty plea instead of trying his luck in trial. As for New Zealand: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Her name is Miss Torrent! ROTFL

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

#388

Post by macintux »

everythingspun wrote: post #359
macintux wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

These procedures were put in place to prevent terrorism. You're OK with human trafficking, but are you OK with terrorism? My point is that some people are worked up about what you equate to a "rectal exam," but don't you think there's good reason for these procedures? If not, how would you prevent terrorists from entering? That is, what if your male prostitute is a terrorist?

"Won't someone think of the children?!"

There are terrorists who slip into the country. There are terrorists who are born here. Most school mass shootings are white American males. Why don't we put all of them into detention cells and demand their passwords?

Arbitrarily violating the privacy of non-citizens makes it easier to do so to citizens, and also makes it more likely it'll be done to US citizens when they travel abroad. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that bad people will do bad things.

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

#389

Post by kazinator »

b6 wrote: post #32
kazinator wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can promise at the border that your head doesn't contain anything either. That would look like a clumsy "I'm just like you" attempt at building personal rapport.

It's funny, but I don't think it does much good to think of somebody as dumb. If you or I were actually them, we would be doing the same job. Everyone is getting swept up and used by processes that are too big for them to see.

I can't speak for you the way you think you can speak for me, but I wouldn't be one of them.

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

#390

Post by Eridrus »

stolsvik wrote: post #375
Eridrus wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI/ML conferences are talking about either avoiding the US, potentially with some livestream for people stuck in the US. This year's schedule is probably set already, but 2018 may be different.

Completely off topic, but which conferences are that? Any recommendations? I'm looking to go into that field.

There's a lot of conferences that overlap.

The biggest ML conferences are ICML and NIPS. ICLR is a new one focused on deep learning that is also very good, but smaller. AAAI seems to be the big general AI conference, but I haven't really seen much talk about it. KDD seems semi-popular, but not a top-tier conference.

There are also application-specific conferences like ACL & EMNLP for language & CVPR for computer vision.

I'm not an academic, but I went to ICML last year since it was in NYC, and it was definitely worth it.

This wikipedia page has a list of some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_confe...

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