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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

#181

Post by eru »

dedward wrote: post #167
grannyg00se wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the logic or basic reason for this level of extreme prejudice against people doing basic work in another country? It seems to me that someone working in a country is going to be contributing.

Someone working in another country is doing work someone in the country could also be doing, depriving them of a potential job. That's why you need a visa.

Or rather, enough members of the public believe in the lumb-of-labour fallacy to make these kinds of policies fly.

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

#182

Post by acchow »

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.…

How do you infer someone's citizenship from their FB profile?

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

#183

Post by davidmr »

Houshalter wrote: post #149
doktrin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .…

Just because the NSA didn't share the data doesn't mean another government agency couldn't also request it from Facebook.

Are you suggesting that the TSA agent interviewing this woman called up some TSA hotline who called up someone at Facebook who just gave it to them, sans warrant, all within the span of a couple hours? Words fail me for an adjective to describe how unlikely that sounds.

The far, far, far simpler explanation would that she had a printout of the conversations because it had an address or directions or that she voluntarily handed over a device (or, possibly, was bullied into doing so, which is in the rights of border control to do).

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

belorn wrote: post #125
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.

So because you think its unlikely that US immigration officials has access to private communications on FB, that speculation is enough to dismiss the whole article about how two young girls, traveling to the US with hopes and dreams to study the language and experience the world, and then at the border was interrogated and immediately sent back. Is it just me who feels that is a bit heartless?

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by inquist »

I haven't heard this mentioned yet: Do we really think facebook "private" messages are in any way private, or even billed by facebook to be private? I am reading the facebook privacy policy and they do mention that they "... may use the information we receive about you: ...to protect Facebook's or others' rights or property..."

So we have rights to free speech, do we also have rights to private speech?

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

#186

Post by exDM69 »

Here is a similar story from one year ago:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Buntin...

This case was public twitter messages and not private facebook conversations, but otherwise similar.

There's a lot of skeptics in this thread whether the US immigration would actually snoop through social networking sites. But if these two cases are true as reported, it seems there's some level of semi-automatic filtering of social media accounts for people entering the country.

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

#188

Post by mehwoot »

laumars wrote: post #87
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.

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

We already know that the NSA has access to information specifically requested by an individual either by showing probable cause if they are a U.S. citizen or using some other specific request if they aren't.

It doesn't seem likely a low level border agent would have access to this. If this is standard operating procedure, don't you think we would have heard about it from other people who were presented with printouts of their facebook messages when arriving at the border?

Or more likely, this is FUD that leaves out specific facts (border agents don't have broad access to facebook messages) to give the impression it is linked to a big trending news story.

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

#189

Post by mehwoot »

exDM69 wrote: post #186

Here is a similar story from one year ago: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Buntin... This case was public twitter messages and not private facebook conversations, but otherwise similar. There's a lot of skeptics in this thread whether the US immigration would actually snoop through social networking sites. But if these two cases are true as reported, it seems there's some level of semi-automatic…

There's a lot of skeptics in this thread whether the US immigration would actually snoop through social networking sites. But if these two cases are true as reported, it seems there's some level of semi-automatic filtering of social media accounts for people entering the country.

That is completely different to what is being alleged, especially in light of events this week, that they had access to private facebook messages.

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

#190

Post by manarth »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #171
nostromo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heartless, yes, but not outrageous. If a young Mexican woman showed up at the border with papers describing how she intends to work as an illegal nanny, would we react the same way?

Is she getting paid an actual wage, or is she getting a room and a trivial amount of spending money? The first is a job, the second shouldn't be considered one.

Many countries consider whether something is a job based on what it should be paid (accounting for typical pay, minimum wage, etc), rather than what someone is paid.

This is to prevent abuses such as shipping in workers from a poorer country, giving them food, board and $10 a week for them to stack shelves, and claiming "It's not a job", so the not-workers don't require a working visa.

Similar judgements are also often made in relation to tax law, working conditions, etc.

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