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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

#131

Post by brown9-2 »

AJ007 wrote: post #99
icebraining wrote: post #84

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.…

One would assume that access is given to Customs & Dept of Homeland Security too. Some of the NSA leakers think this is wrong

Do you have a link to a source on this? What other leakers are you referring to?

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

#132

Post by benaiah »

joonix wrote: post #122
ChuckMcM wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your failure to mention the printout in your original post is deceptive considering we are discussing internet "wiretapping." Of course possessions are searched upon entry, it happens every day in every country. If you're a Malaysian with a visitor visa and show up at customs in Australia with a bag full of resumes, you'll be turned away too.

It's not deceptive - he never indicated that the correspondence was seized, illegally or surreptitiously snooped on, or even that it was electronic until the message where he clarified it was a printed email. Until then, it could have been postcards for all we knew. His point wasn't about the wiretapping or even the search of her luggage - it was on the trivial reason they sent her back. She didn't have anything like a "bag full of resumes".

Your response seems very hostile - apologies if it's not, though in that case you may want to work on your phrasing. Nobody here discloses everything perfectly all the time, and there's no indication the parent was intentionally deceiving anyone.

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

#133

Post by csense »

I've read that laptops can be searched at the border. I wonder if her laptop was suspended with Facebook active, or had saved login cookies to Facebook, allowing customs guys to log onto the machine [1] to see what she's been up to.

I decided long ago, when there was the initial flap about post-9/11 laptop border searches, that if I ever travel internationally, I'll wipe the HD of any laptops I'm taking with me before I cross any national border, and just use scp to transfer files as needed.

If I need to use large files that are too large to upload or download with the time and bandwidth available, this strategy becomes...problematic. But that scenario's pretty unlikely since I'd be going as a software developer/tourist mostly working with Git repos, still photos and short video clips, not a documentary filmmaker producing hours of high-definition video.

[1] Or pop the hard drive out and put it in another machine (assuming it's unencrypted). Which is what they should be doing if these procedures were ever reviewed by a competent lawyer (less chance of accidentally destroying evidence or the user's data this way).

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

#134

Post by brown9-2 »

It's hard to know which depiction of the NSA to believe:

* Amazingly competent agency that is secretly reading all SSL-encrypted Internet traffic and thoroughly concerned with the messageboard postings of average Americans

* Amazingly incompetent agency that develops ground-breaking technology and shares it with low-level Customs officials to bust 18-year old au pairs

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

#135

Post by benaiah »

rieter wrote: post #89
rbehrends wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> the US authorities may have been reading her private Facebook messages for weeks. That's ridiculous and puts the whole article under doubt. Nobody would waste that much time on her.

"reading" doesn't necessarily have to be done by a human. As PRISM has shown, the government has capabilities we weren't aware (or at least sure) of. Would it be that ridiculous that they would have algorithmic scrapers running through all the FB data they have available? They say they aren't, but they've already proven we can't trust them farther than we can throw them. Even if they aren't, she's a foreign national, who they have almost no restrictions on investigating, so they may have been "reading" her messages, even if those of US citizens were left intact (which I personally doubt).

Long story short, it wouldn't necessarily waste much time to go through her records, and it would probably be completely legal.

The part that seems unlikely to me is that they would show their hand by using PRISM for such a small thing, unless there is some bigger reason they want her out of the country. It's hardly a sure argument, though.

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

#136

Post by scott_s »

benaiah wrote: post #132
joonix wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your failure to mention the printout in your original post is deceptive considering we are discussing internet "wiretapping." Of course possessions are searched upon entry, it happens every day in every country. If you're a Malaysian with a visitor visa and show up at customs in Australia with a bag full of resumes, you'll be turned away too.

It's not deceptive - he never indicated that the correspondence was seized, illegally or surreptitiously snooped on, or even that it was electronic until the message where he clarified it was a printed email. Until then, it could have been postcards for all we knew. His point wasn't about the wiretapping or even the search of her luggage - it was on the trivial reason they sent her back. She didn't have anything like…

I think "deceptive" is a poor word choice, but it was certainly confusing.

Considering the subject of this post, the resulting discussion, and the larger discussion that's been going on across HN and much of the media and the internet for the past week, exactly how the authorities learned about what she said is critical in understanding how his point fits into the broader context. That his point was about the reason they sent her back, and not how they learned it, was not clear to me until he responded.

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

#138

Post by kleiba »

AJ007 wrote: post #99
icebraining wrote: post #84

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.

Even if that were true, she was exchanging messages with the father of the American family she was planning to stay with. I doubt they only read the messages sent by the German girl.

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

#139

Post by joonix »

scott_s wrote: post #136
benaiah wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not deceptive - he never indicated that the correspondence was seized, illegally or surreptitiously snooped on, or even that it was electronic until the message where he clarified it was a printed email. Until then, it could have been postcards for all we knew. His point wasn't about the wiretapping or even the search of her luggage - it was on the trivial reason they sent her back. She didn't have anything like…

I think "deceptive" is a poor word choice, but it was certainly confusing. Considering the subject of this post, the resulting discussion, and the larger discussion that's been going on across HN and much of the media and the internet for the past week, exactly how the authorities learned about what she said is critical in understanding how his point fits into the broader context. That his point was about the reason…

Yes, this is well said and what I was trying to express. "Deceptive" was a poor choice of words and I think "confusing" says it better.

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

#140

Post by miket »

icebraining wrote: post #84
rbehrends wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Not at all unlikely, but routine. TechCrunch previously wrote about what these Facebook comprehensive account reports to these "lawful" requests look like: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/06/heres-what-a-facebook-respo...
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