Live data from Hacker News

German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

translate.google.com

111–120 of 257 posts

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

#111
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do sometimes ask to see your phone.

Do you recall any specific story where they ask you to unlock it?

Israel regularly makes people log into email and social media accounts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/israel-airport-emai...

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

#112
post #98

Just a note of caution, a friend of mine wanted to send their daughter over to visit the US during the summer before she headed off to college. We were of course happy to let her stay at our place which is a good west coast starting point for things California. Somewhere in correspondence where she was trying to ask nicely if she could stay at our place she said "I could watch the kids or something" and later in that…

What sort of "correspondence" was this?

It was an email thread. In part of it we had given her our address and directions to our house and phone numbers on how to reach us when she got here. She had printed it out and was carrying it with her in her carry on. She allegedly fit the 'profile' and every woman travelling alone on her flight had their bags searched apparently.

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

#113
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do sometimes ask to see your phone.

Do you recall any specific story where they ask you to unlock it?

Once I was looking for the number of the person I was going to stay with in the USA and they asked to have my phone. I said it's okay, I'll find it for you.

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

#114
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't they seem likely? We already know that the NSA had access to private messages from Facebook and other popular sites.

The real reason it seems unlikely is not about whether they were able to access Facebook messages (though the scope of PRISM is still unclear). It is more that it seems unlikely the NSA or other groups who may be able to get access to private messages care about German teenagers attempting to work in America. Alternative explanations (they got it from the host family, it was actually public, etc.) + vague reporting i…

> It is more that it seems unlikely the NSA or other groups who may be able to get access to private messages care about German teenagers attempting to work in America.

Playing devils advocate here; there maybe more to this teenager than we're aware of. She might be an active protester or have left vocal remarks on other locations online that triggered closer inspection.

I'm not trying to say that your explanations are wrong or less plausible though, just that assumptions are being made on both sides of the argument.

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

#116

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?

email address?

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

#117
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't they seem likely? We already know that the NSA had access to private messages from Facebook and other popular sites.

The unlikely part is not that the US government agencies could get the private messages, it's that they'd jeopardize the whole system by letting regular border officers use it directly (instead of, for example, data-mining and send out no-entry-lists) and show proof of its existence to (foreign!) citizens . I mean, I don't know why Snowden bothered to leak the info, if they're just telling any 18-year-old German girl…

To be fair, the NSA outcry was largely over the scale of the monitoring and the lack of warrants. However that doesn't mean that (other) government organisations couldn't approach Facebook with a warrant and request specific data, such as private messages from a suspect.

Assuming for the moment that this story did happen exactly as we're lead to believe (and I'm only making that assumption for the sake of playing devils advocate - I'm firmly on the fence with this story due to how sketchy the details are), then it would be very easy for the NSA to cover up how they had such data: "We'd been investigating her for a few weeks - here's a warrant"

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

#118
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, according to the article the printouts were provided by the US immigration officials. I think the point is that the facts provided by the article don't seem very likely.

Never has there been any dispute that the NSA can freely read what non Americans are doing without any sort of legal authorization. One would assume that access is given to Customs & Dept of Homeland Security too. Some of the NSA leakers think this is wrong, but I have not heard any elected government official state otherwise. Too some extent, this NSA story should be of equal or greater disturbance to non-Americans.…

> Never has there been any dispute that the NSA can freely read what non Americans are doing without any sort of legal authorization. One would assume that access is given to Customs & Dept of Homeland Security too.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

Even if PRISM allowed at-will searches across the FB accounts of would-be au-pairs, there is frankly no way the NSA would be sharing this with low level customs officials. At most there would be a simple flag on her record, at which point she would be shipped back without explanation.

Frankly, the fact that a significant number of commenters in this thread are taking this non-story at face value is bewildering. BS alarms should be going off left right and center, here.

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

#119

Just a note of caution, a friend of mine wanted to send their daughter over to visit the US during the summer before she headed off to college. We were of course happy to let her stay at our place which is a good west coast starting point for things California. Somewhere in correspondence where she was trying to ask nicely if she could stay at our place she said "I could watch the kids or something" and later in that…

The irony is that anybody who's likely to go over to illegally work as an au pair is likely to know this, unless they're very naive. So the USCIS is probably not catching the actual au pairs - only the girls coming to visit legally!

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

#120

Just a note of caution, a friend of mine wanted to send their daughter over to visit the US during the summer before she headed off to college. We were of course happy to let her stay at our place which is a good west coast starting point for things California. Somewhere in correspondence where she was trying to ask nicely if she could stay at our place she said "I could watch the kids or something" and later in that…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN