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5 years of social media history required to enter the US

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Re: 5 years of social media history required to enter the US

#11

Post by pseudohadamard »

dotcoma wrote: post #10

I’d feel much safer if a plane I were flying on had to make an emergency landing — on purpose, I do not intend to fly to either of the three countries — in Iran or Russia than in the US. Talk about a damaged reputation.

I've been to Russia in the past, before the recent crap, and it was actually a breeze to get in, you just paid the embassy for a visa stamp in your passport and that was it. Why are you coming, "tourism", where are you staying, "this hotel", and once you landed they barely glanced at your passport but just waved you through.

I've also been to a few other semi-totalitarian countries in the past, the most extreme of which would have been East Germany, and that was less painful to get into than the US.

Re: 5 years of social media history required to enter the US

#12

Post by pseudohadamard »

oliyoung wrote: post #9

and I wonder why I can get flights to the US from Australia at historically low prices?

I noticed that too, travel agent said that getting to Europe via not-the-US was literally double the cost of going via the US. I ended up going via Dubai (also very cheap for some odd reason) because it's less risky than via the US.

Re: 5 years of social media history required to enter the US

#13

Post by dotcoma »

pseudohadamard wrote: post #11
dotcoma wrote: post #10

I’d feel much safer if a plane I were flying on had to make an emergency landing — on purpose, I do not intend to fly to either of the three countries — in Iran or Russia than in the US. Talk about a damaged reputation.

I've been to Russia in the past, before the recent crap, and it was actually a breeze to get in, you just paid the embassy for a visa stamp in your passport and that was it. Why are you coming, "tourism", where are you staying, "this hotel", and once you landed they barely glanced at your passport but just waved you through. I've also been to a few other semi-totalitarian countries in the past, the most extreme of wh…

Not sure it's still a breeze now in Russia.

But that it was simpler in East Germany says a lot.

Re: 5 years of social media history required to enter the US

#14

Post by pseudohadamard »

phs318u wrote: post #5

What wasn’t clear to me (or I missed it in between all the long winded legal citations) - will I need to reveal the contents of non-public social media accounts? I have a private FB account purely to stay in touch with friends. How would I share this content? Handover credentials? Handover a device? Friend some random federal agencies? Flip my profile to public? Also, does all this checking happen offline before entr…

See my earlier post above. I've been to East Germany and it was considerably less bad than entering the US today.

Re: 5 years of social media history required to enter the US

#15

Post by pseudohadamard »

dotcoma wrote: post #13
pseudohadamard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to Russia in the past, before the recent crap, and it was actually a breeze to get in, you just paid the embassy for a visa stamp in your passport and that was it. Why are you coming, "tourism", where are you staying, "this hotel", and once you landed they barely glanced at your passport but just waved you through. I've also been to a few other semi-totalitarian countries in the past, the most extreme of wh…

Not sure it's still a breeze now in Russia. But that it was simpler in East Germany says a lot.

I wouldn't go to Russia today but a friend of mine did, his wife is Russian and her babushka was dying so they went to see her. Wasn't really much of a problem, you just had to go in via China but no problems getting in or out. China was also mostly a formality, they stayed overnight and the hotel staff gave them the details of the unblocked WiFi to use to to bypass the Great Firewall.

The thing with East Germany was that they were concerned about people wanting to get out, not people coming in. So they scanned the vehicle for contraband goods going in and concealed people coming out, but apart from that it was just standard Soviet-bloc bureaucracy. The other thing was that, even though it was a somewhat totalitarian state they played by the rules, as a visitor unless you did something outrageously stupid nothing was going to happen to you. I had a camera on my lap and had been taking photos of the border installations, a border guard saw me holding the camera and said something like "you're not taking photos are you?" - "no, just changing the film" - "well, OK then".

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