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Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

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Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#91
post #76

Its easy to speculate that if the feds wanted to speak to him on something computer-related he'd be let travel to the US and interviewed on arrive. The "Do Not Fly" list is usually for suspected terrorists. Perhaps it was just a name-match? The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List says: > Many individuals were "caught in the system" as a result of sharing the exact or similar name of another pe…

First of all, there's no reason to think that it's a "Do Not Fly" list. He says that he did the US border control checks in his local airport. That is quite common (at least in Europe) when flying to the US and just means that they check your visa (or visa-waiver in this case) at home instead of after physically getting to the US[0] I live in Ireland and at almost every (all?) flight from Dublin to the US you do the…

Sweden currently does not have any pre-clearance airports (which is what you describe for Dublin). The check here was most likely only done by the airline itself using a system supplied by the US authorities for checking ESTA validity.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#92

The no explanation is the worst part for anything like this. Impossible to determine what to do or what reason they had, just denied. It's not just the government either, look at how some tech companies have a policy of providing no explanation for interview rejections too. It's a lack of respect for anyone but oneself.

> no explanation for interview rejections too. It's a lack of respect for anyone but oneself. Nothing personal Ajeet, but: for the love of God, can this trope please die? It has been widely, extensively, repeatedly, incessantly established every single time this comes up: they do it because of the unreasonably high risk of being sued. If the cards are stacked against you, the wisest move is not to play. This has noth…

Not personal at all, I don't for the most part need to participate in the 'game' anymore thankfully, but I still think in specific situations, perhaps a junior dev failing a technical white board interview, if they ask for feedback it should be given, otherwise they have no way of knowing what went wrong or how to improve. It takes five minutes. Being afraid of being sued is a lame excuse. I know 15 years ago it would have accelerated my career, nowadays it doesn't matter.

Don't you think Daniel Stenberg should have a way of determining on what grounds he was denied and what he can do about it?

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#93

The no explanation is the worst part for anything like this. Impossible to determine what to do or what reason they had, just denied. It's not just the government either, look at how some tech companies have a policy of providing no explanation for interview rejections too. It's a lack of respect for anyone but oneself.

> no explanation for interview rejections too. It's a lack of respect for anyone but oneself. Nothing personal Ajeet, but: for the love of God, can this trope please die? It has been widely, extensively, repeatedly, incessantly established every single time this comes up: they do it because of the unreasonably high risk of being sued. If the cards are stacked against you, the wisest move is not to play. This has noth…

Your rebuttal isn't mutually exclusive.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#94
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cURL has been used extensively for bad purposes What?! Sources please.

I mean, I've personally used it to access APIs from shell scripts that would have been far more maintainable in a proper Python script.

You monster!

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#95
post #62

What puzzles me is that the ESTA application was approved in the first place. If they were going to deny him entry, why approve it? Could there be a more benign explanation for this issue? For example: his ESTA approval expired (it's valid for two years), or the data entered on the ESTA form did not exactly match his passport data (special characters, middle names, etc.)

>why approve it? It is automatic, there is no human oversight to it as far as i know.

What is the point of it then?

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#96

This may be unpopular on an US-centric site like HN, but the US looks more and more like they want to isolate themselves from the rest of the world: very strict immigration policy, travelers molested by TSA on airports, ... These conferences where people around the world meet should start to be hosted somewhere else. Not in the USA anymore. Somewhere in a country that welcomes people instead of treating all of them l…

Montreal and the rest of Canada would love to have you as well!

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#97
post #47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it says in the terms that they can deny it for any reason with no questions Same goes for any visa.

But in the case of a normal Visa, a certain amount of vetting is done beforehand, although you can still be denied entry. To get a J1 I had to deliver quite a few documents and go the local US embassy to do an interview there. An ESTA you can do literally 10 minutes before checking in (I did it once), I doubt anything else than a few basic automatic checks are done.

I believe the border control personnel act as if that vetting hasn't been done at all. All in all, I think this path is worse, since you get denied to entry after a long flight, and you have to flight back...

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#98
post #46
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was at his local airport in Sweden. To quote some tweets: "They denied me entry on ESTA with no explanation. Already at check-in in Sweden. =( or rather instead of check-in" "I only got to the airport locally. My passport was flagged somehow so the airline wouldn't let me check in, called to ask why... So they say" Edit: ESTA is this: https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ So the DHS denied him for some reason.

but when you apply for an ESTA you get told you've been 'approved' - you use this as a basis for booking a flight and travelling, if they're going to take it back without telling you (they have your email address) that really sucks, kind of passive aggressive

ESTA does not tell you you're "approved" -- it simply tells you whether or not you are in one of the eligible populations for visa-free entry to the US. Nothing in ESTA guarantees you'll be allowed into the US, or even to board your plane.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#99
post #68

Just to balance the narrative here a bit, I have traveled into and out of the US many times per year for around 15 years with no problems on an ESTA. I only recently switched to a visa. After a long flight having to deal with the delay and hassle of immigration seems much worse than it is. I really hate it, and the comments here suggest others do too, but if you look at what we have to deal with objectively it's not…

> cURL has been used extensively for bad purposes What?! Sources please.

I presume the author of the comment is refferring to incidents such as https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2010/12/23/hacking-me/

If you write a general-purpose utility and it gets included in some kind of bad software, the people writing the 'bad' parts aren't likely to include their details, but if your 'good' code has your details....

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#100
People suggesting to move conferences to other countries like France or Germany are wrong: you can't guarantee that your country is not going to turn into a US-like isolationist in the future. The US wasn't and your country is also only 1-government away from being one.

What we probably need is a new form of portable conferences where the location doesn't matter and/or is flexible and/or regime-proof. We should stop taking democracy and openness for granted.

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