141–150 of 174 posts
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>There are no time limits. Yes there are, eventually you need to make a decision about whether to let this person into the country
Here's how it works: Data (even encrypted data) is being collected and stored today. It is decrypted/made sense of whenever technology has reached the required maturity. At that moment, we become 100% open books. And you may feel that at the border (or elsewhere).
For the people who claim they'll never take action on trivial stupid tweets: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312 > The 26-year-old bar manager wrote a message to a friend on the micro-blogging service, saying: "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America." > Mr Bryan told the newspaper that he was questioned for five hours about his Twitter messages. "All" that happened to him was…
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Likely unnecessary. 1. Unless you are taking extraordinary measures to sever all connections between yourself and your online presence, odds are there are enough links for any Government to tie a person to an account. Given how much is collected at the border already along with the big-data collected passively by the various TLA Government Orgs, they simply need to pop in your Passport ID or Drivers License or State…
Last year i set up a facebook account with a fake name and then never accessed it ever. After a few weeks i started getting emails from fb asking if i knew xxxxxxx, the only way they could have known that i knew these people is by tracking my ip and comparing it with others, looking at those ips and working out who was common amongst their connections. Two people logging from the same ip, creates a bridge between two…
This is disturbing despite it being "optional", because it's a place for border agents to push in the entry interview. "I noticed you didn't fill out the question regarding online identity. Do you have an online identity?" Sure, you can (and should) tell the agent that's all personal information, but that may also lead to further hassles and delays.
Just like you can opt out of the body scan, which induces them to yell, in front of everyone, "OPT OUT!" and then you get to stand in a little roped off area and wait for a while. So, I agree, they'll make it as painful as possible to decline.
More seriously, it's also the only form of civil disobedience I can think of so far that has any shot at ending this farce; if more of us opted out more of the time, the system would become unworkable, and it would have to change.
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I disagree with you that his comment cheapens the discussion. I do think that your comment cheapens it. His point that the US military, with its illegitimate wars, torture practices, and widespread murder of civilians, is reasonably considered to be a terrorist organization is a reasonable and good comment which advances the discussion intelligently and productively. The fact is that US military are in fact terrorist…
> The fact is that US military are in fact terrorists, as is the citizenry that supports this terrorist regime with tax money. Please don't post shrill ideological denunciations to HN. It's not what this site is for, there's no substantive argument that requires it, and one needn't be a militarist to know that.
To maintain the credibility of HN and ycombinator, I suggest you review your censorship and control issues associated with your moderators. Thank you.
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I get the sarcasm, but given there are hundreds of millions of US border crossings annually, a policy of taking everything seriously regardless of size probably does make the US safer.
I'm sure that there are lines somewhere between 'taking things seriously', 'overreacting' and 'making examples of people'. Ask a stupid question, expect a stupid answer. It's a stupid question because nobody in their right mind would answer 'yes' to the question which just leaves people with a language barrier (which have a high incidence rate at borders), people that are nervous and/or tired (ditto, probably includi…
This question would likely weed out any wanna-be small time people intent on causing harm to the US. Something similar to how many criminals in the US are arrested due to routine traffic stops.
If asking this "stupid" question prevents 1 single undesirable person from entering the US, then it's served it's purpose.
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There is already precedent for criminalizing dissent -- Turkey, for example, considers online criticism of Turkey as equivalent to damaging national security by spreading propaganda with the intent to provoke attacks towards the Turkish government. It would be fair to assume the US would be open to such means to improve security.
> There is already precedent for criminalizing dissent -- Turkey, for example, No need to reach so far. New York just made it illegal to advocate boycotting Israel[0]. [0] http://www.salon.com/2016/06/05/ny_gov_cuomo_signing_unconst...
> WHEREAS, the State of New York will not permit its own investment activity to further the BDS campaign in any way, shape or form, whether directly or indirectly;
Is there more to it than what the article mentions?
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I disagree with you that his comment cheapens the discussion. I do think that your comment cheapens it. His point that the US military, with its illegitimate wars, torture practices, and widespread murder of civilians, is reasonably considered to be a terrorist organization is a reasonable and good comment which advances the discussion intelligently and productively. The fact is that US military are in fact terrorist…
Classifying the US military forces like that just cheapens the word "terrorist". I'm not arguing that everything the US did in Iraq was morally right or justifiable, but it's generally implied that terrorists are almost always non-state actors. If you use that definition almost every nation in the world is full of terrorists. China, North Korea, and large swaths of the Middle East enforce their power using fear, so t…
If you define terrorism as necessarily non-state, then you have to discard the state sponsored terrorism of Libya, ISIS (which is in fact now a state), Afghanistan, Nazi Germany, etc. I do not believe that discarding state sponsored terrorism as "not terrorist" by defining terrorism as not possible by states to be a useful definition, do you?
> "Are you a terrorist or affiliate with a terrorist organization?" Sir, yes, sir! I was part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, sir!
I don't think one needs to support the invasion of Iraq to know how deeply uncool a comment like this is on HN. No more political flamebait, please. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984942 and marked it off-topic.
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It's not as simple as that: they would still need to make the case but you lying at the border just gives US authorities bigger evidence. Couple of years ago a French tourist answered "yes" to make fun of US borders and ended up in jail for a couple of days - not years as obviously he was more a dumb tourist than a real terrorist
He's not necessarily dumb because he made the mistake of thinking your border drones had a sense of humour. And given that English is probably not a native language for him, it's entirely possible that the sarcasm did not get through. Quaking in fear in front of authority figures might be the norm in the USA, but it is not the norm everywhere.
Imagine how many non-resident/non-citizens enter the US daily. Now imagine if everyone of them were allowed to jokingly answer these questions. It would make doing their job that much harder.
It's much easier to treat all declarations as serious, rather than try to weed out the jokes. And because of the nature involved investigating, anyone who willing makes false statements are punished.