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Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

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Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#51

Post by cowsandmilk »

cantrevealname wrote: post #2

Adi Shamir wrote that the president of his institute says: "It is clear that scientists have been singled out, since I hear that other ‘simple citizen’, do get their visa in a short time." Scientists get more scrutiny? What in the world is going on there?

when I was a grad student, we regularly removed foreign students from our lab web site when they were renewing their visas due to the belief that visas were approved more quickly the less the government could learn by googling your name. That is, if they can quickly learn anything about your research, those are all potential red flags. If a quick google search turns up nothing, you'll just be rubber stamped through.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#52

Post by vbuterin »

aviraldg wrote: post #32
cantrevealname wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much you can relate to the title is very important -- even on HN. Look at the 3 submission titles on HN: (1) Cryptographer Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending NSA History Conference (2) How The Government Blocked An Expert From Attending Its Own Cryptology Symposium (3) Adi Shamir--the "S" in RSA encryption--Prevented from Attending US Crypto Talks Number 3 (this submission) is getting the exposure the story dese…

I find it difficult to believe that there are people who know about RSA, but not about Adi Shamir.

I personally learned about Shamir over a year after I first heard the name RSA. RSA is commonplace; every first-year computer science student knows how it works, and it's the easiest example of how to do public key cryptography. Shamir's other work in secret sharing and linear and differential cryptanalysis is slightly more obscure.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#53

Post by zhuzhuor »

AFAIK, USA has been a second choice for crypto-related conferences for many years. If you ever attended one such conference, you will notice there will always some speakers/presenters couldn't attend due to visa issues. I guess many US people aren't even aware of this, but visa problem has been a huge pain for non US citizens. You can ask about this if you have any friends who are international students or H1B workers.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#54

Post by p4bl0 »

aviraldg wrote: post #32
cantrevealname wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much you can relate to the title is very important -- even on HN. Look at the 3 submission titles on HN: (1) Cryptographer Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending NSA History Conference (2) How The Government Blocked An Expert From Attending Its Own Cryptology Symposium (3) Adi Shamir--the "S" in RSA encryption--Prevented from Attending US Crypto Talks Number 3 (this submission) is getting the exposure the story dese…

I find it difficult to believe that there are people who know about RSA, but not about Adi Shamir.

I don't know why you were downvoted. I would have reacted just like you, but actually people replying to you raise a good point.

I think it really depends on the type of work you are doing. People in research are used to cite other authors in their paper (and we even call a paper by it's author + conference/journal name, not by its actual title) and are thus more prone to remember the name of people behind technologies. It may very well be the case that in some other types of profession you don't do this association as easily.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#55

Post by hrasyid »

rburhum wrote: post #42

As somebody that has held six different US immigration statuses during a span of a couple of decades, I can almost assure you there is no malice behind this and just pure bureaucratic incompetence. I once had a paper that was supposed to arrive in three months take three years . What I learned is that going to the USCIS office after something is due and checking the status will make a difference since, for example, y…

Nobody said there's malice.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#56

Post by p4bl0 »

cantrevealname wrote: post #2

Adi Shamir wrote that the president of his institute says: "It is clear that scientists have been singled out, since I hear that other ‘simple citizen’, do get their visa in a short time." Scientists get more scrutiny? What in the world is going on there?

I thought that was a known fact. I often hear about people who can't attend security-related conferences because of visa problems. Last year at the CRYPTO/CHES/FDTC/PROOFS week in Santa Barbara at least three researchers (from India IIRC) couldn't make it because of visa problems, while they had accepted papers at one of the conference!

In many lab outside of the US, we are told not to be to verbose about the type of conferences we are going to attend in the US. Words such as "security", "cryptography", "side-channel attacks", "fault injection attacks", etc. must be banned from the application. Instead we just say that we are going to a "computer science conference" or "information processing conference" for instance.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#57

Post by adnam »

rrrrtttt wrote: post #33
JonnieCache wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Could you elaborate on this?

Not much to elaborate. You're told to bring a stack of documents if you have a scientific or technical background, such as CV, a list of publications, an invitation letter from your US host, a letter from your university etc. If the embassy official isn't satisfied, you are asked to send more documents to a state.gov email address. On one occasion they wanted more information about my work as a programmer before I st…

It sounds like they're doing more than simply determining ones suitability for entry.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#58

Post by rmc »

cantrevealname wrote: post #2

Adi Shamir wrote that the president of his institute says: "It is clear that scientists have been singled out, since I hear that other ‘simple citizen’, do get their visa in a short time." Scientists get more scrutiny? What in the world is going on there?

It's all those dangerous liberal intelligesia.

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#59

Post by lrem »

ra wrote: post #25

I think if the US must continue to have such draconian and onerous entry requirements they should offer a fast track or simplified program for persons of note to attend a specific event in their field. To not do so simply hinders the progress of human knowledge, or at least, it hinders the United States.

All the fast track you need is to confer in a less-crazy space. In general, this works pretty well. You can publish in Springer journals, attend IEEE conferences and whatnot without ever entering USA.

However, it would be pretty funny to see NSA organize its conference in Europe to evade visa problems :D

Re: Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending Crypto and Cryptology Conferences

#60

Post by askew »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #36
Sidnicious wrote: post #31

Why not attend by telepresence? Let him present by video and hook him up with a Double or similar internet-controllable robot to talk to people around the conference. Or go full-on Bluth and pair up with an American proxy wearing a headset. This sucks, sure, but there's always another way.

I've been thinking you could hook up a cam/mic to one of those Roomba vacuum 'bots and then you could cruise around the conference and network with your colleagues just as though you were there. I understand those things have wifi already, so.... The coolest part would be bumping into other Roombas that represent colleagues from elsewhere (you'd need a way to distinguish from an ordinary, autonomous Roomba). There co…

And on the plus side, to escape any awkward conversations you can simply start vacuuming!
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