U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#381

Post by Broken_Hippo » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

felipelemos wrote: post #122

komali2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the 5th amendment make those questions impossible to answer? (If you plead the 5th on them, you're.. probably a terrorist...)

The constitution protect non citizens too?

Sometimes, sometimes not.

If you are a non-citizen living here, you'll generally enjoy most of the protections of the constitution and laws. If you are sitting there at customs just visiting, there are a lot of those protections that simply don't apply. Of course, some of those protections don't apply to citizens at these places either, though they play out a bit differently.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#382

Post by andybak » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 10:36 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #24

People I've spoken to seem more comfortable acting like this is part of the current administration's agenda, rather than an encroaching trend which has been gradually getting worse year upon year. For example this specific policy was added as an "optional" (not really) question on an entry form before the 2016 presidential elections (I know, I wrote a letter protesting it during public comment period). My point is: B…

> These questions are almost impossible for some of us to answer completely.

This is true for me also. And the result is that I'm now not going to risk a holiday in the US. I've never been and I'd love to go but the entry requirements are just too onerous.

(I'm from the UK by the way and I don't suspect anything in my past or social profile would cause a problem but the system is too capricious for me to want to engage with)

It's interesting to note that the only other countries on my "too much hassle for a holiday" list (other than outright warzones and similar) is the UAE and it's neighbours because of their terrifyingly arbitrary legal system and the risk of being innocently targeted)

EDIT - it's not entirely clear whether this affects tourist visas but my concerns extend beyond this particular measure and any visit is likely to be a mixed purpose trip in any case.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#383

Post by Broken_Hippo » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 10:47 AM UTC

confounded wrote: post #163

It feels good to complain on HN, but we all will be contacting our representatives, and following the EFF’s campaigning, won’t we? Please?

Except I think I'm not listened to.

I've lived outside the states for nearly 5 years now, with no plans on moving back. They ask about this on the voting forms. It helps me suspect my vote is easily cast aside and that I don't count. On top of that, I'm very much a minority in my home state (Indiana). I suspect I don't have someone that will listen.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#384

Post by caf » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 10:49 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #314

ineedtosleep wrote: post #13

Pretty absurd that they're asking for all of this and: > [...] In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities. I know a number of people going through, or have been through, the US visa process an…

> visa applicants will be asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers Which I think is an interesting admission they have all the calls stored somewhere so they can check them for content...

More likely for who-calls-who social graphing.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#385

Post by jstanley » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 10:51 AM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #259

briandear wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get a visa for France, I had to provide my full financial details -- bank statements, information on investments, etc. I also had to provide an FBI background check. To get a visa for China, you can be denied for content of social media posts. In Thailand, you can be arrested upon arrival if you've ever written a blog post critical of the king. The UK can bar entry based on the prior speech of applicants: rapper T…

"bank statements, information on investments, etc" There is nothing personal in bank statements compared to social media profiles.

It shows who you've been paying, who's been paying you, how much, and how often.

That basically describes your entire life.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#386

Post by nl » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 11:09 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #355

dragonwriter wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't it always the case that the President has "disapproval" ratings around 50% though? No, it's not. From the source cited upthread, here's what other Presidents had at the same point in their Presidency as Trump's current 53.6% disapproval: Obama: 45.3% Bush 43: 17.6% Clinton: 40.2% Bush 41: 15.3% Reagan: 45.0% Carter: 34.5% Ford: 38.6% Nixon: 31.4% Johnson: 15.1% Kennedy: 12.0% Eisenhower: 22.2% Truman: 45.1%

Still, factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump, I’d say his numbers are amazingly good and still within the range of Obama’s after Obamacare began hitting people’s wallets. That’s either scary or good, depending on your political leanings I suppose.

You keep saying this, but it's just not true.

Obama got to 55+% disapproval rating twice, in two single polls (3 Dec 2013 and 2 Aug 2014). His yearly average disapproval ratings were 36, 47, 47, 48, 52, 50, 46%.

Trump has spent roughly 30% of his time above 55%. RCP doesn't have yearly rates up, but it's pretty clear they are much worse than Obamas.

factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump

It seems to me the only thing keeping any kind of approval at all for Trump is his attacks on the media. It seems to me that fighting with the media is the only thing keeping him below 60% disapproval.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#387

Post by jstanley » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 11:41 AM UTC

zafiro17 wrote: post #260

mulmen wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oppression is a good start.

There are a lot of people who call this "due diligence." Receiving permission to visit a country is a privilege, not a right. This trend of wanting better data before making decisions is the natural result of there being better data available on which to make it. Banks, loan officers, job offerers, and now nation states are each equally right in taking advantage of whatever you've chosen to put out there in public. I…

> Receiving permission to visit a country is a privilege, not a right.

It shouldn't be.

All border checks should be abolished. All passports should be abolished. Free people in the world should be able to travel between countries freely, and without having to justify themselves or ask permission, just as they can travel between cities within a country freely.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#388

Post by douglasheriot » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

aurelian15 wrote: post #278

davb wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an FYI - that website (evisaonline) isn’t an official government site. They seem to be some third party who provide some sort of ESTA application service. The official site is at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/

Thanks, my fault. Just pasted the first link Google returned.

Yeah… so annoying it confused me for a while.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#389

Post by coldtea » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 11:52 AM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #357

coldtea wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while Trump's remaining voters, who have been repeatedly embarrassed and disappointed, have as much motivation to show up at the polls as a child has to show up at a vaccination clinic. Have they been? In real life? Or was it rather the inverse (all the impeachment fantasies etc, the collusion stories endlessly appearing and fading, the economy that was "sure" to suffer, etc...).

Yes, in real life https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/1... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/us/conor-lamb-pennsylvani...

Can't see the NYT one (paywall).

That said, is the Washington Post a representation of the "real life"?

Have they regularly run such stories by embittered union leaders before, when the President was more to their liking?

Or is it just confirmation bias?

Especially with economic indicators going strong (so much for the "disaster" people like Krugman predicted "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never" [1] on those same papers), and many companies, including Apple, announcing plans to bring jobs back to the US.

At worst, the WaPo link you've sent would be "business as usual", the untangling of US manufacturing jobs that has been happening since Reagan, if not earlier. Surely not some unique catastrophe imposed by The Donald.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elec...

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#390

Post by downandout » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 11:57 AM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #374

downandout wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I’m not. But I think even you would agree that the overwhelmingly negative press coverage - almost all of it opinion based - has some effect on the disapproval ratings. 50% was going to be built in from the start. Somebody should do the math to figure out the correlation between the ratio of positive to negative press stories and the disapproval ratings for both Trump and Obama. I think you’d find that if you nor…

Trump is objectively a terrible person and an even worse politician. His approval reasons would be in the dumps, media influence or not. You're making a pretty wild assertion, that Trump's and Obama's approval ratings would be equal if it wasn't for media influence. How do you propose normalizing that? How would you do that? Please give an example that doesn't entail making up numbers from subjective whole cloth.

Trump is objectively a terrible person and an even worse politician.

That's quite the objective statement statement you have there.

How would you do that? Please give an example that doesn't entail making up numbers from subjective whole cloth.

It would be relatively simple, though it would involve some data collection. Count the number of positive and negative stories published at various time frames, and come out with a ratio. Then figure out the correlation between that ratio and approval/disapproval ratings at that time. Then you'd multiply Obama's disapproval number by the delta between his positive/negative ratio and Trump's (and probably include some multiplier that would be less than 1 based on how strong the correlation turns out to be) to show what Obama's disapproval numbers would be if he had suffered the same media bias as Trump.

That's off the top of my head, but the process would be fairly close to that. Nobody in the liberal media will do it, but the whole point is that comparing Obama's disapproval numbers to Trump's is not an apples-to-apples comparison because of the extraordinary bias of the media against Trump.