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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

#151

Post by Amadou »

rl3 wrote: post #53
nostromo wrote: post #25

It's unclear to me who provided the print-out of Jana's private messages. Obviously it seems much more likely that Jana provided the messages, not Homeland Security. I hired a Canadian once under a TN NAFTA "visa" and he had to bring some correspondence from me to the border. We had to be very careful to word things correctly and not to use specific words that could prevent him from coming to the US. It seems that th…

Data acquisition methods in order of highest probability: 1. ^ This. 2. Was actually public information; story details lost in transmission or translation. 3. Her phone was still logged into Facebook. 4. They gained access to Facebook via links in e-mail. [...] 10. Normal federal law enforcement powers. 11. Special federal law enforcement powers, e.g. Patriot Act. [...] 100. NSA data that requires TS/SAP + full-scope…

> 100. NSA data that requires TS/SAP + full-scope poly to access.

You may be over-estimating the classification level here. The government classification isn't about protecting the secrets of private citizens, only government secrets. I have some experience in this field - handling fingerprints of non-criminals which were classified at the bare minimum for the agency. It would not surprise me if any non-specific NSA drag-net data itself was not classified any higher than CUI - controlled unclassified information.

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

#152

Post by tessellated »

As a native German speaker, I just wanted you to know, that the provided translation wouldn't make any sense, if you at least didn't have a basic gasp of the German language. The original German article does not provide any information about how HS dept got to read the Facebook messages. Further, it seems a rather badly researched article out of an insignificant tabloid.

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

#153

Post by rieter »

benaiah wrote: post #135
rieter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US authorities may have been reading her private Facebook messages for weeks. That's ridiculous and puts the whole article under doubt. Nobody would waste that much time on her.

"reading" doesn't necessarily have to be done by a human. As PRISM has shown, the government has capabilities we weren't aware (or at least sure) of. Would it be that ridiculous that they would have algorithmic scrapers running through all the FB data they have available? They say they aren't, but they've already proven we can't trust them farther than we can throw them. Even if they aren't, she's a foreign national,…

Even if there is a bigger reason for wanting her out, there is no reason for them to expose PRISM that way. Immigration officers already have rights to deny anyone without explanation.

I just don't find anything about that article logical.

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

#154

Post by ecspike »

winter_blue wrote: post #59
rdouble wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USCIS reviews Facebook for those applying for long term visas, to prevent fraud. It doesn't have anything to do with the NSA.

Source?

Memo from DHS on checking social network sites:

http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/DHS_CustomsImmigration_...

http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/does-uscis-check-the-faceb...

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

#156

Post by aaron695 »

I find it quite unbelievable people are buying into this story.

Border guards have access to private email to catch people who possibly might work on the wrong visa, sure....

And boarder guards have kept this secrete for years but the leak came from within the NSA.

What is wrong with people. This is why the governmenat walks all over you, there's just no common sense amongst the masses.

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

#157

Post by Kylekramer »

laumars wrote: post #114
Kylekramer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason it seems unlikely is not about whether they were able to access Facebook messages (though the scope of PRISM is still unclear). It is more that it seems unlikely the NSA or other groups who may be able to get access to private messages care about German teenagers attempting to work in America. Alternative explanations (they got it from the host family, it was actually public, etc.) + vague reporting i…

> It is more that it seems unlikely the NSA or other groups who may be able to get access to private messages care about German teenagers attempting to work in America. Playing devils advocate here; there maybe more to this teenager than we're aware of. She might be an active protester or have left vocal remarks on other locations online that triggered closer inspection. I'm not trying to say that your explanations a…

Certainly a possibility. But the assumption that she was a person of interest to intelligence agencies is much greater than the assumption that the newspaper report is either misleading or being misinterpreted.

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

#158

Post by leoc »

wtvanhest wrote: post #6

This story seems highly unlikely to be true given the following 4 assumptions: 1) The US Government wanted to maintain the secrecy of the program. 2) Giving the data to a large number of border guards would have increased the chance of its dissemination. 3) It would be unnecessary to show her the data to refuse her admission to the US and showing her would violate #2. 4) She would not be a valuable enough target to e…

> 1) The US Government wanted to maintain the secrecy of the program.

Well, more precisely it wanted to avoid drawing attention to the program, which wasn't really a secret at this point. But I'll also add a fifth reason: the fewer than 2000 FISA orders a year http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/05/fisaca... , combined with the fact that David Drummond appears confident the average number of people covered per order isn't very high. If FISA orders were being used routinely, or even often, to investigate simple immigration cases then there would be a lot more of them; as things are, if you were busted for run-of-the-mill illegal immgration by a FISA order then you'd have to have been very unlucky. It's possible you could be identified by chance as part of a search for terrorists, but again not statistically likely, and as you say the government would want to be very careful about tipping its hand in that situation. There are also NSLs, but Google's NSL tally suggests that there aren't huge numbers of those per month either.

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

#159

Post by ubernostrum »

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.…

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.

Someone leaks information about PRISM, and the primary response is TREASON! TREASON! ARREST THE TRAITOR AND DEAL WITH HIM!

Given that, do you really expect that A) random border agents are in on it, and B) feel free to just randomly disclose that sort of surveillance to someone who has no need to know about it?

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

#160

Post by rl3 »

Amadou wrote: post #151
rl3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data acquisition methods in order of highest probability: 1. ^ This. 2. Was actually public information; story details lost in transmission or translation. 3. Her phone was still logged into Facebook. 4. They gained access to Facebook via links in e-mail. [...] 10. Normal federal law enforcement powers. 11. Special federal law enforcement powers, e.g. Patriot Act. [...] 100. NSA data that requires TS/SAP + full-scope…

> 100. NSA data that requires TS/SAP + full-scope poly to access. You may be over-estimating the classification level here. The government classification isn't about protecting the secrets of private citizens, only government secrets. I have some experience in this field - handling fingerprints of non-criminals which were classified at the bare minimum for the agency. It would not surprise me if any non-specific NSA…

> The government classification isn't about protecting the secrets of private citizens, only government secrets.

Using that logic, Facebook private messages supplied courtesy of the NSA would be highly classified, considering their collection mechanism would be PRISM or similar closely-held programs.

> I have some experience in this field - handling fingerprints of non-criminals which were classified at the bare minimum for the agency.

Fingerprint data is available to nearly every local law enforcement organization in the country. There's no mystery about the collection method. It's a foregone conclusion that it's aggregated up the chain.

As other comments have said, if immigration officials were using NSA-supplied data, it would likely be in vague, aggregate form that did not hint at the underlying collection mechanism.

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