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U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#71

Post by diggan »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #56
musha68k wrote: post #9

As much as I’ve always loved to come to the US and as fascinating as some US conferences are (e.g. StrangeLoop might be my personal fav) – no international attendee or speaker can be expected to put up with this ever expanding amount of bullshit anymore. If the science community or “our industry” really want to encourage and unlock the magic of diversity we need new venues for a whole lot of conferences either in Can…

At this point in time i still wonder why people physically move from one part of the world to another to hear somebody speak. What is wrong with live streaming? (and record, download and re-play)

Not sure about others but I don't go to conferences mainly to hear somebody speak but everything around, meeting people and hearing all wonderful ideas from random people and more.

So live streaming doesn't really solve that.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#72

Post by zimpenfish »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #60
paradite wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also implemented for visitors, in fact earlier than this. http://fortune.com/2017/06/01/u-s-border-social-media/

don't forget the classic: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Buntin...

To be honest, as an English person, I'd be quite happy for the US to have kept both of them along with anyone else who uses "destroy" in that context.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#73

Post by brentm »

saimiam wrote: post #14
brentm wrote: post #3

It's hard to see how this will do anything besides generate a ton of false positives.

Or null results. What's to stop anyone from creating a secret profile and using a VPN (to avoid linking the terrorist persona's IP address with their main persona's IP address) just to talk to fellow terrorists? Terrorists could even force every recruit to use a common, shared profile or just avoid popular social media altogether when needing to discuss terrorist acts.

I agree with you. Actual bad actors are not going to attempt to enter the US with sympathetic ISIS (etc) posts on their public Facebook page. What will happen though is many immigrants will end up having entry denied based on an immigration officers interpretation of a post they made on Twitter 3 years ago.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#74

Post by joering2 »

kbart wrote: post #8
brentm wrote: post #3

It's hard to see how this will do anything besides generate a ton of false positives.

Call me a cynic, but I doubt anyone really cares. What this really will be useful is as a database of people of selected race, origin and views to help appear for certain agencies to be working and generate headlines like: "50 suspected terrorists were deported", "terrorists bombing plot stopped" (of course, dummy bomb was provided by the same secret service) to justify even more mass surveillance in near future.

I would like to upvote you, but I am genuinely afraid at some point HN is requested to share users' data, and someone at US GOV will ask me why did I sympathize with your message.

Am I the only one this paranoid??

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#75

Post by thinkMOAR »

legulere wrote: post #61
thinkMOAR wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in time i still wonder why people physically move from one part of the world to another to hear somebody speak. What is wrong with live streaming? (and record, download and re-play)

That’s true for the talks, but there’s a lot going on around the talks.

That might be, and some might run back to the hotel room right after the seminar/conference is finished. Though primary reason of traveling for a conference is to hear that person speak at the conference, anything extra before/after talks that happens is bonus, not primary reason of travel.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#76

Post by katastic »

Uh... isn't that the entire point of a background check? To see if people are dangerous before they get in?

If I get a gun permit, should the cops not look at every public aspect of my history? Should we make it easier for people to have guns? Now the next snarky comment will say "guns aren't people." Yeah. But a background check is a background check.

What happens when a terrorist gets in (surely that'll never happen again!) and we find out their social media history was full of death threats? Will everyone feel the same way?

It seems like we've gotten to a point of public debate in this country where people completely live in fantasy worlds where they can lop off anything that happens in the real world that damages their arguments. Terrorism exists. Blame whoever you want but it does exist. And publicly posted information should be the #2 (after criminal record) thing to search. I mean... we WANT to catch the bad guys, right? Are we pretending that bad people don't exist?

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#77

Post by jawilson2 »

cr1895 wrote: post #28
sverige wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 50 should be the upper bound. I'm in my fifties and have never had any sort of social media account. Many of my high school and college classmates are similarly situated. None of the major social media platforms were founded before I was in my mid-forties, which is why there was never any incentive to start any accounts. I enjoy getting older. It spares me a lot of drama.

>Maybe 50 should be the upper bound. I'm in my fifties and have never had any sort of social media account. Are you not posting here?

Hacker news is a short stone's throw from AOL chat rooms and IRC, powered by contemporaneous technology.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#78

Post by oedenfield »

While I don't like any government collecting more data then they absolutely NEED - many businesses (including startups) are collecting social media data on us for the purposes of marketing their products/services and no one bats an eye (not many outside the EFF at least). For the record, I'm not a fan of data collection for either purpose.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#79

Post by drderidder »

Some of the comments seem a little disjointed from the details. According to the article, only information that's publicly available online is collected, and specifically for those immigrating to the US, not tourists, conference attendees, etc. There are likely a lot of reasons for many people not to want to travel to the US, but this would probably be low on the list.

Re: U.S. To Collect Social Media Data on All Immigrants Entering Country

#80

Post by vidarh »

verytrivial wrote: post #31

My tentative, loosely held decision to not enter the US for any reason has become surprisingly easier to justify as time goes on.

Yes, I used to visit a lot for business, and would love to go back on holiday too, but at this rate I'm not sure I want to. So far it's mostly been that I don't really have a compelling reason to visit, and it's just been tipping the scales in favor of other vacation locations etc., but the more stuff like this, the less attractive it gets.

It doesn't even need to affect me directly - it just contributes to an overall impression of not being welcome.

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