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German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

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Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#71
post #53

It's unclear to me who provided the print-out of Jana's private messages. Obviously it seems much more likely that Jana provided the messages, not Homeland Security. I hired a Canadian once under a TN NAFTA "visa" and he had to bring some correspondence from me to the border. We had to be very careful to word things correctly and not to use specific words that could prevent him from coming to the US. It seems that th…

Data acquisition methods in order of highest probability: 1. ^ This. 2. Was actually public information; story details lost in transmission or translation. 3. Her phone was still logged into Facebook. 4. They gained access to Facebook via links in e-mail. [...] 10. Normal federal law enforcement powers. 11. Special federal law enforcement powers, e.g. Patriot Act. [...] 100. NSA data that requires TS/SAP + full-scope…

They probably have a semi-automatic data collection system where you can type in a name, and it collects all sorts of public data in real time. To a non-technical person, this can look like they have a file on you, when in reality this crawler just compiled all the data in a few minutes.

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#72

It's unclear to me who provided the print-out of Jana's private messages. Obviously it seems much more likely that Jana provided the messages, not Homeland Security. I hired a Canadian once under a TN NAFTA "visa" and he had to bring some correspondence from me to the border. We had to be very careful to word things correctly and not to use specific words that could prevent him from coming to the US. It seems that th…

> Obviously it seems much more likely that Jana provided the messages, not Homeland Security.

No, according to the article the printouts were provided by the US immigration officials. In fact, the article draws the inference that the US authorities may have been reading her private Facebook messages for weeks.

I'm a native speaker of German; there really isn't any ambiguity here.

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#73

It's unclear to me who provided the print-out of Jana's private messages. Obviously it seems much more likely that Jana provided the messages, not Homeland Security. I hired a Canadian once under a TN NAFTA "visa" and he had to bring some correspondence from me to the border. We had to be very careful to word things correctly and not to use specific words that could prevent him from coming to the US. It seems that th…

Indeed. The only thing scarier than the US monitoring 95% of internet traffic is the US deciding the best use of its super-secret super-powerful internet surveillance is to keep illegal au pairs out of the country. But I doubt they're actually that foolish.

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#74
post #15

And here's the flip side of Google Translate. German doesn't react well to n-gram statistics; too many long-distance dependencies. Also translating the city of "Essen" as "Food" is hilarious.

I prefer the transpation of "Würzburg" as "peppering castle" that babelfish did when the web was still young...

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#75

When my partner (who is from the EU) got to the US this most recent time (she visits here for 90 days at a time, as allowed under VWP rules), immigration pulled her aside with a printout of (public-facing) facebook pages on their desk. Interesting only in that her face book is not under her official name. They had pages and pages of printouts that they thought proved she wasn't simple a tourist, and that she was work…

Interesting. Any theories on how they linked that FB profile to her real name? Maybe through the WHOIS record of her website, that got linked from that Facebook page often enough to imply a relationship?

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#77
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data acquisition methods in order of highest probability: 1. ^ This. 2. Was actually public information; story details lost in transmission or translation. 3. Her phone was still logged into Facebook. 4. They gained access to Facebook via links in e-mail. [...] 10. Normal federal law enforcement powers. 11. Special federal law enforcement powers, e.g. Patriot Act. [...] 100. NSA data that requires TS/SAP + full-scope…

They probably have a semi-automatic data collection system where you can type in a name, and it collects all sorts of public data in real time. To a non-technical person, this can look like they have a file on you, when in reality this crawler just compiled all the data in a few minutes.

I use one of those tools at work. It's called Google :)

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably have a semi-automatic data collection system where you can type in a name, and it collects all sorts of public data in real time. To a non-technical person, this can look like they have a file on you, when in reality this crawler just compiled all the data in a few minutes.

I use one of those tools at work. It's called Google :)

Right... It's probably more sophisticated like that. Similar to what many HR departments use to screen future employees.

Re: German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use one of those tools at work. It's called Google :)

Right... It's probably more sophisticated like that. Similar to what many HR departments use to screen future employees.

HR departments just use Google...
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