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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

#141
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.

You are absolutely correct, I was not thinking about that aspect of it, rather the fact that the merest implication in anything that you might be coming to the US under false pretenses (even when the authorities have all the information which clearly shows both the intent and motivation for the trip) is that they will deny you entry.

Yeah, this is something everyone needs to understand. Intent is very important when entering countries on visas. If you enter the US with a non-immigrant visa such as a visitor visa with every intent to remain in the country indefinitely, a finding of visa fraud may be made against you and you could receive a long (multi-year) bar from readmission into the US.

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

#142
The whole story doesn't seem to add up, I have a feeling that some crucial information is missing.

Apparently, the reason she was sent home was that she gave wrong information about her reasons to enter the country. That's why she was confronted with contradictory information in her messages (she claimed she wanted visit friends of her parents, while she was really going there to work). So was she actually trying to enter illegaly and was sent back because of that? That sounds like a visa issue to me (tourist vs. work visa).

Certainly the NSA or Homeland Security or whoever weren't reading every facebook message just so they could check if the girl would state a matching reason for entering the country.

To me it looks like something else must have triggered all of this, something that is not mentioned in the article. I understand that the main point here is that Immigration had access to her facebook chats. I just wonder: at what point in time did they decide to access her chats. Was it when the girl was already at Immigrations? Was it as a (random?) background check when she applied for her visa or ESTA? Or was it after something, e.g. keywords, in her chats triggered a check?

(Please understand that I'm not in the slightest trying to defend that customs had access to the FB chats, I just find the article a bit lacking.)

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

#143
post #68

If you want to come to US and work illegally and get caught, what do you expect?

Why was this voted down? No one other than US citizens has a right to enter the US.

The girl wanted to work illegally. That is my main point of concern in case you didn't get it.

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

#144
I think this is a case of a $5 wrench and not big brother http://xkcd.com/538/

when you are taken for questioning they may put you in a cell while they go trhu your stuff.

In that little cell, you are not allowed even you shoe laces!!!!

so they probably got her, unlocked her iphone (either she had no password or they have backdoors) and got the messages.

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

#145
I'm kind of confused - if US immigration authorities are so powerful and omnipresent that they read Facebook feeds of every random German girl in case they ever want to come to the US, how comes we still have illegal immigration problem in the US? Or was there something special about this particular girl that triggered the attention of the law enforcement well in advance of her visit? Or they just took her laptop, logged in to facebook and clicked "print"? Kind of unclear what exactly happened.

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

#146
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right... It's probably more sophisticated like that. Similar to what many HR departments use to screen future employees.

HR departments just use Google...

There are subscription services that do all the dirty work for you. Like beenverified.com (However that explicitly "forbids" its users to use it for employment verification. Pinky promise!)

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unlikely part is not that the US government agencies could get the private messages, it's that they'd jeopardize the whole system by letting regular border officers use it directly (instead of, for example, data-mining and send out no-entry-lists) and show proof of its existence to (foreign!) citizens . I mean, I don't know why Snowden bothered to leak the info, if they're just telling any 18-year-old German girl…

To be fair, the NSA outcry was largely over the scale of the monitoring and the lack of warrants. However that doesn't mean that (other) government organisations couldn't approach Facebook with a warrant and request specific data, such as private messages from a suspect. Assuming for the moment that this story did happen exactly as we're lead to believe (and I'm only making that assumption for the sake of playing dev…

I doubt they would even need a warrant, I expect facebook will roll over for even an administrative subpoena (which are signed by clerks of the court rather than judges and are essentially pro forma).

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

#148
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely correct, I was not thinking about that aspect of it, rather the fact that the merest implication in anything that you might be coming to the US under false pretenses (even when the authorities have all the information which clearly shows both the intent and motivation for the trip) is that they will deny you entry.

Yeah, this is something everyone needs to understand. Intent is very important when entering countries on visas. If you enter the US with a non-immigrant visa such as a visitor visa with every intent to remain in the country indefinitely, a finding of visa fraud may be made against you and you could receive a long (multi-year) bar from readmission into the US.

And even if you have no such intent. Hence the cautionary tale.

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

#149
post #99

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. 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. 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.
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