I live in Europe. From my perspective going to US looks like going to some kind totalitarian country. First I have to got visa which is not automatically approved because I'm Polish not British. Then I have to go trough a lot of, mostly pointless, security checks, checking social accounts, interrogations, scans and manual personal revisions. On any stage of that I can be handcuffed and sent back to Europe for almost no reason. It's sad but from where I sits US starts to look like all of those countries they was fighting with "for the freedom".
We had serious plans to go on holiday to the US this year. I have been in the US at least a dozen of times, and absolutely love the desert states, Oregon, and Washington.
Entering the US was already a large hassle, but with Trump's travel bans, rumors of phone, laptop, and social media checks, we have decided to postpone our travel plans until the political/security climate improves.
Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.
Before you say that this is overreacting, hear me out: the US belongs to US citizens. If you want this president, fine. But some of his policies, such as denying climate change and undermining journalism is going te have a large influence on the rest of us.
Well, sure but it's also going to the Europeans that work in that factory, and to the local community through taxation. It probably benefits the local community just as much, if not more, than it would benefit Ford.
Not to mention, the government backed pension/retirement funds of many European nations are at least partially invested in global securities indexes and more conservative US corporate bonds. Which means many countries technically own chunks of Ford.
Also, surprise! European nations often sell their municipal bonds (to fund local projects) to American companies. Using Ford specifically as an example, I know someone who works for a local municipality in Finland and travels to Detroit every so often to sell their muni bonds to the US auto companies.
TL;DR the global flow of capital is absurdly interconnected. Trying to "hurt" a nation by not buying their goods can just as easily hurt your own country.
Yeah, but American companies leave and hide as much income and money offshore as possible for tax reasons so buying something outside the states is rarely going to give money to America.
Companies are private enterprises who's main purpose is to make a profit. They don't hide money offshore, they move money wherever it's not taxed as much. And the EU is pretty rough about that stuff anyway, especially when it comes to US corporations.
Car manufacturing is also a rather tough business to be in today - definitely not the money hiding type, but rather the "we build a factory in <insert industrial town with unemployment here> if you give some sort of tax break for a couple of years".
As for Canadians in Trump era: 'Refusals of Canadians at American land crossings dropped 8.5 per cent between October and the end of February compared with the same five-month period a year earlier, according to U.S. government statistics.
The total number of Canadian travellers denied entry also dropped: 6,875 out of 12,991,027 were refused entry, a refusal rate of 0.05 per cent.
Between October 2015 and February 2016, 7,619 out of 13,173,100 Canadian travellers were denied entry to the U.S., a refusal rate of 0.06 per cent.'
Trump didn't become president until January 20th. That time period is still primarily the Obama era. It will be more relevant to see the numbers from February - June.
And how much of that is because brown/muslim canadians, the ones most likely to be refused, just arent risking the trip? All sorts of groups are saying it is too dangerous (schools, boy/girl scouts etc).
Then Bush? Because most of what Trump tried to change in terms of border security has been sacked by judges. Travelling to the US now isn't harder than a year ago (except for the laptop ban).
I was on a student visa during GWB. It was bad. All my mail from home arrived opened and resealed with DHS-labeled tape. Boarder crossings were interesting, but nowhere near those when i lived in the middle east. My favorite thing was being seated beside someone who was clearly an air marshal.... armed but asleep on the aisle seat of my row.
Technically, only ~57% of eligible voters actually voted. Of those, about half voted for Trump. So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump. That is pretty standard for a US presidential election.
Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president.
> The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'.
Or they lived in some of those insane regions where only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours, or they couldn't get a tuesday off (sane countries allot a whole weekend for voting), or they couldn't afford to get sufficient id to satisfy their state's demands. (Yes, i know, mail-in voting is a thing, but i'm sure there are good reasons to keep people from using that as well.)
There's plenty of reasons otherwise eligible voters didn't vote beyond "didn't care" and many of them are "they were prevented from doing so by institutional problems".
only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours
Really, that's how it is in US? Any semi-decent country is responsible for creating comfortable conditions for anyone to vote.
Here in Poland there were 28k voting offices for 30 million of potential voters, so there's on average little more than 1k voters per office. It is almost impossible to be waiting in line for more than 5-10 minutes, even in the most crowded offices.
Elections are mostly regulated at the state and county level, which causes a lot of disparities in registration law and polling place funding. Invariably every election during the non-stop coverage, you'll see the pictures of the long lines wrapped around blocks in cities throughout the country, but especially in Republican controlled swing states. I think it's an utter failure of our society that we can't hold elections with fair and accessible voting methods.
Yes, that is really how it is. State legislatures controlled by Republicans do everything in their power to disenfranchise minority voters. This includes gerrymandered districts, removing early voting days, not allowing early voting on Sundays, requiring an ID to vote, and calling into question the validity of the voter registration of minorities.
Sadly, yes, but it's not everywhere. Jerrymandering is used by both parties to lock-in districts for particular candidates. Then voter suppression is used to keep people away from the polls, mostly used by the old Jim Crowe states, this nonsense dates back to slavery from which the US is still recovering.
'Democracy in America', by Alexis de Tocqueville is still about as valid today as when it was written. In that he describes this scene where townspeople literally shoot at a farmer to keep him away from the polls. Not all that different than the gun toting individuals who show up to polling places today to 'protect' the vote.
Not really a fair statement given the oddities of the electoral college. I know a lot of people in big coastal cities (New York, Boston, LA, San Fransisco, Seattle) who don't vote but are very anti-Trump. They know it doesn't matter because their states were always going to go strongly for the Democrats.
It seems like those people didn't feel the electoral college was problematic. Otherwise, voting would have exposed the vast discrepancy between popular opinion and the college. Even if Hillary had won, that demonstration could be used to spur reform of the election process.
Say the majority went up to 55%... We'd still need a lot more than that to change the electoral college.
And honestly, having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, is a cornerstone of the electoral college.
A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote.
Something closer to that might be enough. However, I don't think that the electoral college could be changed because the parties responsible for changing it would be decreasing their electorates influence in the government which might be unpopular with said electorate.
> having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function,
This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case. The President is not all powerful either, this should be a fully democratic election. Also, the electoral college was broken when states started alotting their votes in a winner take all manner.
> This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case.
Maybe this is the problem then? If you have less federal government control, and more state-level control then it wouldn't be as big of a deal if Trump is elected if you're a Californian. Likewise with a democratic candidate.
And the current setup actually works pretty well. You should get diminishing returns on popular vote in a republic. Otherwise you have some areas that dominate others instead of a balance. In other words, you don't punish people/states that are not highly populated. It may not have worked out for us this time around, but it's more fair. If you want a different system, then abolish the Republic and the States.
If Hillary was up to 55%, a feat not reached by Obama, the discrepancy between the college and the popular vote would be huge, at minimum 10%, which would top the already few instances of a president winning without the popular vote.
Actually no. Literally all the cities listed are in states that have agreed to a compact [1] that would award all electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote. The thinking being that such a system would be easier than getting rid of the electoral college. It goes into effect if 61.1% of electoral votes are part of the compact.
What is it with non-US citizens in this thread? Honestly, none of you seem to have a good understanding of US politics and are being very insulting.
But not all states are part of the compact, so they still could be convinced to join it, and a higher popularity vote margin would be more persuasive. Hillary's vote margin was smaller than Bush(2004) and both of Obama's. A 7%+ loss like 2008 would make a discussion about the electoral college more pertinent, since it's such a rare case that someone wins without the popular vote. My argument was that if people wanted to advance a position of reform, it would help highlight the college as being too far away from the popular vote.
Except a discrepancy between popular opinion and the college won't matter because the party who wins is the one that the problems of the electoral college worked in favor of. The electoral college was already brought up when Trump won while losing the popular vote, but it's just seen as "whining and complaining" so it just drops off pretty quickly.
I'm not from the U.S., so my knowledge here is a bit sketchy, but wasn't one of the problems Clinton had exactly that some states which always voted for the Democrats fell to the Republicans this time?
Well, sort of. There were several states that Democrats traditionally won federally, but those weren't the "safe" ones like new York and California. The big thing Trump took from the Democrats was the Rust Belt states - the old industrial places like Michigan, which usually vote for Democratic Party presidents but have strong Republican contingencies and often have Republican governors.
The difference is that the Democratic party "rebased" itself. They've basically removed blue collar white people as a constituency that they focus on.
This created a problem, as the get out the vote efforts from groups like unions and others were tepid as a result, and the GOP isn't stupid and courted these voters pretty heavily. The other thing is that the Democrats over-relied on minority voters as a key base, which didn't work out for a variety of reasons.
I think strategically they missed the fact the ethnic voting requires an ethnic candidate. They also missed that certain key platform positions alienate ethnic factions of their voting base. In the old days, the Irish-Catholic political machines didn't run aging teetotaler baptists as candidates for a good reason!
Basically, Mrs. Clinton ran a campaign that was divided, disorganized and poorly administered, which crippled her ability to make appropriate decisions. Trump's opportunism, marketing savvy, and tight team made his campaign agile and tightly focused on the objective. When the campaign had internal divisions, he purged the dissenters and moved on.
Right i wasn't including those in the "bases". 200 counties represents about 6% of the total number of counties in the country, and few of them are from states that "always vote for democrats"
This ignores the other parties, which can explain most of the disparity. In Michigan, other candidates got about 1% of the vote in 12 and 5% in 16. Even if it helped Trump win, labeling them "spoilers" just ensures that our terrible system will have this happen again.
Our system stabilizes at two parties. Other parties aren't viable until/unless they hit a point where they can eat one existing party, or large parts of both. This happening will in short order kill one or both existing major parties, some brief chaos will ensue, and we'll end up with two parties again. Labeling does not cause this.
Fixing that would be great (most sensible solutions would probably also fix our massive gerrymandering problem at the same time) but is unlikely to happen any time soon.
It's guaranteed not to happen as long as you vote for the big two parties, making sure it doesn't is one of the things that gets bipartisan support.
While I agree a win for a third party likely end with the new party entrenching itself like one of the current two, that seems like the best way to get a new party devoted to fixing this to emerge.
No. They are the people saying I need to choose between them. Supporting either is not in my interest, they will not earn my vote by being slightly less abhorrent.
"Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president."
Absolutely according to the rules in force in the USA. Other countries have different rules, and I don't think that there is some set of unique 'best rules' for this.
UK tomorrow many of us are voting for the mayors of 'combined authorities'. The voting paper has two columns for each candidate and you get to state a first preference and a second preference - they call it the supplimentary voting system
It will be 'interesting' to see how this one works in an election that noone especially wanted and that traditionally has a very low turnout - but at least we are trying different approaches.
"Conservative Mr Street took 216,280 votes to Mr Simon's 210,259. He won by 3,766 votes after second preferences of those who opted for other candidates were counted.
Mr Street said it was the start of a "new, urban Conservative agenda".
Overall, 26% of eligible voters chose a candidate with most people staying away from the polling stations on Thursday." [1]
So, the man has a majority of less than 2% in an election where just a tad over one quarter of those eligible actually voted. He is in charge of a unitary authority where most of the constituent authorities have Labour administrations.
Technically, 27% of eligible voters voted for the Republican party. How many of those voted for Trump is unknown. But it's definitely less than all of them.
And others (such as myself), voted for Trump only because he was the only alternative to Hillary. (Better option than Hillary, but not by much. There were other options of course, but they did not have a chance at winning). I should also specify that I voted for someone else in the primaries.
I don't know what it's going to take to break the 2-party system in the US, but people continuing to vote for "the other" candidate just because they hate "the one" certainly isn't going to influence change. I've been voting Libertarian in (almost) every race I can, for at least 15 years now, and I'll keep "wasting" my vote to send the signal that I want more parties in the system. (As in, I want to see BOTH Jill Stein and Gary Johnson at a podium in the debates, and given equal time.) I'm willing to "waste" my vote in order to tell BOTH the D's AND the R's that they do not represent my desires for governance.
We also have 2nd turn of election in Europe. Basically people need to choose between 2 candidates. I'm under impression that most of libertarian voters would vote for Hillary if they had to choose between two options.
Trump voters of course didn't prevent him becoming president. They wanted him, so they voted for him. That doesn't count in my book. So with 55% turnout, that leaves 45% who didn't vote. Still a large portion.
But that is US' problem, not the world's. It's up to you to clean up in your own house and not make excuses.
The who-voted-for-whom discussion in one of adjacent subthreads just sounds like airing dirty laundry in front of everybody - nobody cares, it just makes you look bad.
He won according to the system that's been in place for 100-200 years. You don't get to support it until it works against you and then complain about it.
The electoral college system has obviously been a terrible idea for years. Plenty of people also vocally complained about it in 2000, for example.
But changing it requires changing the Constitution, which requires a supermajority of state legislatures—and the electoral college shifts power from citizens and the federal government to states.
It actually doesn't require changing the Constitution. States are allowed to allocate votes however they want. Several states have passed laws that say: when enough states pass a similar law to determine the presidency, all of our electoral college votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote.
This hack lowers the barrier, but not by enough, at least yet.
Thanks for bringing up, since it is a relevant point. However, it still does not change the fact that he is now leading the most powerful nation, with all its consequences.
I have always wondered how hard it would be to switch to direct voting rather as opposed to the system with an electoral college. Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment. If so, was there ever a serious attempt to change this system?
> I have always wondered how hard it would be to switch to direct voting rather as opposed to the system with an electoral college. Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment. If so, was there ever a serious attempt to change this system?
The constitution simply says that each state gets to appoint its electors as it sees fit.
Wit that in mind, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [0] commits states that adopt it to appointing their electors in line with the national popular vote: e.g., in the 2016 election, had it been in force, every state that had adopted it would have chosen electors for Hillary, regardless of how the vote in that state fell.
So far, it has been adopted in principle by 10 states and the District of Columbia. However, it doesn't come into force until adopted by enough states to achieve an absolute majority in the electoral college; currently, it's 105 votes shy.
Why exactly would this be the case? As far as I can see most people don't live in this two cities?
And saying the US system "was designed to avoid the concentration of power" sounds like a sad joke from an European perspective (First-past-post-system, extreme presidential powers etc.)
Those "extreme presidential powers" were not in the system design.
They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years. Unfortunately, the code review team didn't remove the changes and tacked on their own during the process.
>They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years.
They started way sooner than that, the first major one was the Louisiana Purchase. Basically non-Washington presidents have been trying to expand their power.
Most people do live in a small number of counties (~146 in ~3000). The US system is essentially designed to distribute voting power over land, rather than per capita.
It was designed to distribute votes to slave owners in order to appease the southern states. It was never about protecting small states or distributing over land.
When the constitution was first signed if votes had been distributed by population the Southern states would have essentially never had a voice, which was a non-starter for them. Considering that these states were also the economic power houses of the US, not including them was also a non-starter. The electoral college coupled with the 3/5ths compromise was the eventual solution to this problem.
Most Parliamentary representation I know do still have seats allocation based on districts/political areas, and thus the biggest issue people have with electoral system would still be there. Even the EU with the EU parliament have degressive proportionality system where the larger the state the more citizens are represented per seat.
In the end, the idea that low population area have more impact-per-voter comes from the need to keep people united and making sure that high population areas don't completely out vote the needs of the other areas. The obvious alternative is independence, so instead of one united states you would have several smaller countries based on common needs.
I think 'proportional representation' might have been what they meant.
I like NZ's MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system, but there are others that work too. Anything that results in fewer, bigger districts electing multiple representatives should break the power of gerrymandering. And Proportional representation makes 3rd parties viable, which gives you more than a single forced political axis, and just might lift the level political discourse above the current 'My team, right or wrong'
Due to the electoral college system, correlation between "voting for Trump" and "wanting Trump as a president" isn't 100%, so you I'm not sure you can make strong conclusions based on 2.2% difference in popular vote.
No, the point is, depending on the rules of the game, people vote differently. E.g. under the current system it makes no sense for republicans in NY and CA to vote... If the popular vote actually counted, the popular vote would be different (it's like quantum mechanics applied to psychology - if people know that you observe them, they change their behaviour)!
Not voting because of being in a red/blue state seems to happen to both parties. A change to the voting system would probably change behavior and (hopefully) increase voter turnout in general. :)
you can say that about pretty much any Democratic government with few countries exception where it's voting mandatory and actually enforced which is very rare combination
I had hoped a bit that the security checks would actually go down during the Trump administration since he has property in the tourism sector. Maybe it will take until the last few years when political points weights less than personal wealth.
Obama never tried to revoke visas while the people holding them were in the air.
I think there can also be a big shift in who is given a visa, without there being much visibility. Time will tell. That's not part of the entry procedure but is part of border policy more generally.
I really try to avoid political discussions on HN, as I dislike both of the major parties. I would suggest you read a book called 'Operation Troy', what Obama did IMO is much worse than revoking a visa, he extrajudicially killed an american citizen with a drone strike not in the field of battle.
So if I read a book about Obama abusing the power of the US presidency, how will that impact my thinking about whether the approach to border policy has changed under the new administration?
It's like you haven't been reading the news for the past four months. So much has changed, and it is so much of an anything-goes clusterfuck right now that it's hard to keep up.
what's wrong with Japanese and Korean cars? according ADAC Japanese are by far most reliable cars beating all European brands, top 10 most reliable cars usually consists of half normal Japanese cars (eg. Toyota Corolla) and half niche European cars you will hardly see on road (think Porsche)
uh, Seat is very well known for being very unreliable and by far the most unreliable brand of VW concern, Skoda is decent but pretty bad value against Koreans, if you equip Skoda same way as Korean you end up for sure on higher price. Japanese in general cost slightly more, but it's worth it for better engines, high quality, low risk of stealing and decent resell value, while Seat has zero value
I can't really imagine someone in US butting any of brands you mentioned, Seat is pretty bad deal even in Europe
Sorry, but the ADAC had excellent reviews for the Skoda models that we considered and good reviews for the Seats. I'd rather take their word than hearsay. Again, these models were cheaper than similar Japanese models, that we had also looked at.
Admittedly, we haven't looked much at Korean models. That's mostly because my wife (I don't have a driver's license) had no experience and consequently no opinion about them.
At any rate, we ended up buying a Skoda ;). And I see Porsches here nearly every day :p.
Did the travel ban affect you? Are you from one of the six affected countries? I read a lot of commentary about how the travel ban has influenced travel decisions, but I'm not seeing much practical impact to the vast majority of travelers.
Everyone has a right to vote with their euros of course, but I am curious if a single traveler has avoided France because of their policies in French Guyana, the Magreb or Sub-Saharan Africa or avoided China, Turkey or most Middle East countries because of human rights records? How about avoiding Italy or Greece because of widespread corruption or the U.K. because of the Brexit vote.
Avoiding travel because of political disagreements would mean that people would only visit places that are exactly like they want. It's geopolitical inbreeding.
Just a point of fact: Trump isn't denying climate change, he's skeptical of the impact from human activity.
I think it has mostly to do with how the TSA treats us non Americans. We don't have to be from one of the banned countries. Every non American has to fear being asked to hand his laptop / cellphone and whatnot.
Remember that a minority of Americans voted for Trump—a majority voted against him. He is president because a majority of states voted for him, not people.
Trump is not that much worse than Obama, it's mostly the media, politicians, people in power that are able to convince you of that. Remember, Obama droppee 26,000 bombs on Muslims last year, but I bet you'd never heard about a single one.
Climate Change is mostly about politics, just like the War on Poverty and War on Drugs. Yes it's real, just like people have real problems with poverty and drugs, but people starve and suffer in 2017 because of greed, which leads to politics, not because of resources. Climate Change will likely worsen the resource situation, but it's not actually the real problem with humanity. We need to get over our little egos and figure out how to get off this earth and keep exploring.
Strange, for someone who received Nobel Peace Prize. To be fair, he received it just for being black, nothing else (it was just after he won his first term, he hadn't even had time to accomplish anything of significance).
> Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible.
What an exciting new world we live in, in which, before we do any kind of business or trade with a company which has a presence in a foreign country, we must consider all of the policies of that country's current, democratically elected leader--and if we don't agree with them, we refuse to do any business with that company, thereby attempting to punish the citizens of that country for exercising their right to democratic self-rule. How dare they have a different opinion. We'll buy local instead. That'll teach 'em to disagree with us.
What a sad state of affairs our world will be in if we all stop doing business with those who don't agree with us on everything. We might as well organize ourselves into separate entities and only do business within them. That would be...something like nations, without trade, no? But then here we are trying to force these other nations to do what we want, thereby erasing the distinctions between them.
And that's the real goal here, isn't it? The world becomes smaller every day.
Sounds to me like voting with your pocket book. How is this a bad thing?
Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?
It's very interesting that you would compare it to voting, because that means we're talking about citizens of one country "voting" for the leader of another country--which would mean interfering with another country's elections. Are you sure you want to stick with that analogy? :)
This is in contrast with the traditional definition of "voting with your wallet," which refers to refusing to do business with companies you don't like.
> How is this a bad thing?
In a nutshell, it's bad because it further contributes to polarization and division. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, leading to ever more "us vs. them" thinking. Eventually it's what leads to wars. Isn't it fairly basic political theory that nations which are economically interdependent are less likely to go to war with each other? If we can't do business with anyone who has different political opinions than we do, that's a recipe for...well, war.
> Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?
You're comparing apples to oranges. This is not a question of a company mistreating its workers.
By the same token, I could ask you why you would punish the innocent workers who didn't vote for the candidate you dislike. By refusing to do business with them, you are hurting them, and it's not their fault the candidate got elected. Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, this is likely to drive them away, toward your political opponents, who can tell them, "See how nasty the other side is? They won't even trade with us anymore because they disagree with how we run our own country!"
That attitude is essentially a large part of why Trump got elected: the Democrats' constant condescension toward a large swath of the population alienated them. If you mistreat people, they aren't going to thank you for it, they're going to hate you for it.
Or, colloquially, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
I guess I'm just more cycnical (possibly pragmatic) than you, because IMO it is "apples to apples". I believe that the US was captured by corporations long before Trump made it to office, and the only way to sway corporate opinion is to hit them in the wallet.
Sadly, as a foreigner, what I purchase is the most effective way to be heard. Besides, how successful is a business that blames potential customers for not buying their products? "We're gonna bomb them until they buy our cars dammit!"
I also disagree with you about why Trump was elected. I hear this condescension argument all the time but I think it's total BS. I suspect it's more about jobless (white) men and is a much harder (and real) problem to solve than simply being polite.
> I guess I'm just more cycnical (possibly pragmatic) than you, because IMO it is "apples to apples". I believe that the US was captured by corporations long before Trump made it to office, and the only way to sway corporate opinion is to hit them in the wallet.
Corporate power is indeed an issue, but I feel like you are changing the subject here.
> Sadly, as a foreigner, what I purchase is the most effective way to be heard.
I don't think your theory is logically coherent here. If you desire to punish the corporations which you say have captured the U.S., then which candidate was elected President is irrelevant. More than that, although Trump is an entrepreneur and far wealthier than Clinton, he is also far more independent than Clinton, far less in the pocket of the mega corporations. On this concern you should favor Trump over Clinton.
> Besides, how successful is a business that blames potential customers for not buying their products? "We're gonna bomb them until they buy our cars dammit!"
Sorry, I don't understand your point here.
> I also disagree with you about why Trump was elected. I hear this condescension argument all the time but I think it's total BS. I suspect it's more about jobless (white) men and is a much harder (and real) problem to solve than simply being polite.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but as a non-foreigner, I think you are completely wrong. In fact, your "jobless (white) men" line is merely repeating the leftist media's racist, sexist propaganda. Note that it is, by definition, racist and sexist. It's inherently condescending, but here you are protesting that condescension had nothing to do with it.
It's disappointing that you seem to be uncritically accepting this belief. It doesn't even cohere with the data: Trump received many votes from non-whites, non-males, and the employed. The votes were split primarily along geographic lines! But don't let that stop you from blaming angry old white men for all the problems in the world. Obviously, if it weren't for them, everything would be great...
What kind of influence on voters is OK in your books? Political rallies where you lie about what you'll do and about your opponents? Discussions with friends? TV ads?
What does any of that have to do with citizens of Nation A refusing to trade with companies in Nation B because some of the citizens of Nation B elected a leader whom the citizens of Nation A don't like?
That is the kind of attitude that drives people apart, creates hostility, and eventually leads to war. In what world is that a good idea?
Can you imagine Americans refusing to buy BMWs because they don't like Angela Merkel?
Barely, because for the most part USA citizens are politically inert and/or incompetent and they wouldn't care, but in theory it would be perfectly normal.
Some people feel guilty for wearing (or even owning) furs, supporting an "evil" country or an "evil" corp is clearly a worse conduct.
If you have to travel to the US, fly via Shannon Airport in Ireland. A special arrangement with the Irish government allows you to pass through US immigration and customs controls while you're still on Irish soil. When you arrive in the US, you're treated as a domestic passenger. You don't avoid the intrusive interrogations, but they're a lot more polite about it because they can't detain you. If you're refused entry, you can fly home at your own leisure rather than being detained and deported.
Here's the full list from the CBP website: "Dublin and Shannon in Ireland; Aruba; Freeport and Nassau in The Bahamas; Bermuda; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; and Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Winnipeg in Canada. CBP also staffs a Pre-inspection facility for passenger/vehicle ferry traffic to the U.S. in Victoria, Canada"
Oh that is great news! I love visiting the US but have passed up on several opportunities to travel there this year just because it seems like such a hassle. Still, I am about to make the trip for a work conference. Even though I know the majority of people go through without incident I am still nervous about having an experience like one of those news stories.
Some of the Canadian international airports have the same pre-clearance arrangement. But I've not found the security check people any "friendlier".
In any case they're currently working out an agreement with Canada such that US agents on Canadian soil can still detain you in the same way they can in the US:
I'm sure they'll try to force the same agreement on other "trading partners."
Result for me: I will not travel to U.S. except for work. And when I do I will _only_ carry work devices and accounts. My employer can and will defend itself quit well.
GF traveled to the US for work, a conference in Houston. Everyone that looked Arab of Muslim was 'randomly' picked out of line. Some of the employees had to undress and squat in front of the TSA and one had to undergo cavity searches.
These were regular European citizens. Let's just say conferences will be help in Europe or Canada in the future...
They seem to get the racial/sexual/agist profiling right at Schiphol (Amsterdam). I'm a white male in my twenties, and consistently get the patdown. Half the time that includes my inner thighs and the side of some guy's hand touching my balls.
I've come to dislike flying for the humiliating and demeaning security theater I have to go through for it. No way I would risk going through that in the U.S., where it's presumably worse and where I'm not a citizen.
I can barely convince myself to go to family weddings if I have to pass through Schiphol for them. At least with Schiphol I don't have the risk of being detained (or marked a terrorist for having encrypted data/voicing anti-authoritarian opinions/having contact with Muslims, "no rights applicable"), and if I were anyway I could defend myself well as I'm a somewhat savvy citizen.
I already go through great lengths to fly via small German airports, where the security measurers aren't dehumanizing. Perhaps I'll visit the U.S. by boat sometime.
it's not that uncommon even in Europe to be honest, if you will find German policeman who had bad day and you drive car with foreign (PL, CZ mostly) license plate you can be searched same way under suspicion of carrying drugs and you can do nothing about it and it's happening occasionally
i don't see why people have problem with this, what would be point randomly search old (white) retired woman, what risk she present? pretty much same goes for Eastern Asians, etc.
if you have biggest odds finding terrorist between dark skinned Muslims, then you will search them the most, nothing random or racist about that, it's like saying i won't take umbrella outside when there is 90% chance of rain because there is 10%chance it will be sunny
Only in the past two years have there been more jihadist deaths. Not sure where you got 2x from? Unless you mean one particular year? You may want to re-read.
In reality the KKK has killed more people than all jihadists combined. That is one group.
The page states the following body counts: 95 Jihadist 51 Far Right Wing.
(bottom of the page)
So not quite 2x.
> Only in the past two years have there been more jihadist deaths.
> In reality the KKK has killed more people than all jihadists combined. That is one group.
I am not familiar with the history of the KKK, but are they still a threat?
If you consider the recent incidents: Paris (how many times!?), Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Nice, do you really believe Right Wing groups poses a greater threat?
I couldn't find the story I was looking for but here are a few. Both TSA and CBP represented here; the CBP stories are closer to what the grandparent post describes.
These stories describe sexual assault graphically (to various degrees).
Yes, it feels strange but me and my girlfriend have decided it is not worth it to try to go to america on holidaysfor now because of all these difficulties.
Quit believeing everything on the internet. I'm sure those things happen but are so far off the norm.
I've been to Europe twice this past year and I don't think it's any different.
In Italy there was military everywhere in Rome and Florence. At every monument and Big site there were military with guns looking at everyone. Sometimes stopping people.
I've never been patted down and searched as bad as I was in Frankfurt. Security and questioning was on par with US customs.
Walk in the park. I just got a Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visa. Total cost for mine and my partners (including flights home to NZ because, apparently, the world would end if people on working holiday visas were allowed to transition in-country)? £~5.5k
that seem pretty reasonable compared to third world country like China where I had to pay like 110€ for yearly FAMILY visa, because why not charge husband of Chinese citizen visa (plus had to renew it each year like some newcomer student) and you can't even work with this visa anyway, according Chinese government you should be freeloading on your spouse
now compare it with my wife in EU - 5 year residence permit for free, of course including work permit and also because she is taking care of our child she got free healthcare insurance
I agree with your observations, but I wanted to offer a positive viewpoint on them. One thing I learned about the US over the years is that a lot of law enforcement's heavy-handedness is an emergent property of supporting a country with extreme notions of personal liberty, not a reaction against it. The gamut of socially acceptable behavior is much wider in the US.
That's necessarily reflected in how their police function, and shouldn't be to their detriment.
No, it isn't. I am European, travelled twice to the US last year. Each time multi-hour wait for the USCBP check. From take-off in Brussels to landing in NYC took less time than getting from JFK to Manhattan.
If I can avoid it, I will not be travelling to the US any time soon.
Really? Since they installed the new machines that you can use with ESTA, I haven't waited more than 10 minutes for the machine, plus another 5-15 min for the final check. No extensive questions anymore, maybe 1-2 in total.
Waiting times entering the UK (even with passport machines) can easily be as long.
Yes. The first time they didn't have the new machines yet. The second time, they had the machines, but they didn't work for my passport. That didn't matter (except for some stress that they might turn me away), since you still had to queue afterwards anyway.
I never said 8 hour wait to get through customs. I said multi-hour wait to get through customs. 7.5 hours from touchdown to Manhattan. That includes waiting on the plane to get off, customs, AirTrain and metro (no more shuttles running due to customs delay, a taxi queue of about 50 people). On my second flight it took about 4 hours in total.
By comparison, in the opposite direction, in Brussels it took about 1.5-2 hours to get home (about the same distance, public transportation, my companion, a US citizen, had to go through customs). The US has many great things; welcoming foreigners at their airports (at least at JFK) and public transportation are not among them.
A breeze for white Europeans who do not mind all the privacy intrusions and indecencies they have to go through if they so much as blink their eyes or make a face at the wrong moment.
I'm sure I'd be fine: I've been fine a dozen times before. That was before they decided that it was OK to demand passwords and so on. Maybe now it would be worse. Or maybe my skin colour lets me off the hook.
Regardless, I'd rather just not waste jet fuel on flying to a place that treats anyone this way.
Your phone/tablet/laptop is, for better or worse, a gateway to your entire life. It contains your photos, bank account credentials, messages between friends, messages between you and your wife, photos between you and your wife…
Random border thugs absolutely should not have the right to rummage through it in another room.
There are plenty of ways to do meetings remotely. There are plenty of places in the world you can travel to for work meetups that aren't the US.
For me it's less the risk of being search than the massive queues in US airports that turn me off. Feels like queuing for food in Moscow in the Soviet area, just to take a plane.
But yes, I just traveled from Shanghai back to my home in the US. The queues in China were much, much shorter than those in the American airports. PVG posted a "25 minutes or less" target for all travellers to get through security and immigration. And they hit it, even at peak travel times with huge volumes of people. At American airports if you arrive less than an hour before boarding they might not allow you in until you rebook on a later flight.
You could see it in the architecture of their systems: The American facilities have huge snaking queues designed for as much capacity as possible, which lead to obvious bottlenecks. And when you arrive at the front of the line, a gruff immigration officer in tactical gear doesn't look at the line except to say "No line jumping!" while they're taking 10 minutes on one individual. In China, there's just not enough distance in the line to allow a long delay to form, there's no single point bottlenecks to slow down the system, and helpful people direct you to the shortest lines.
Flying into JFK from abroad, going through customs even as American is one of the more depressing things in life. It is such an unwelcoming sight and experience.
People who have recently travelled to the US, what's the probability that you will be asked to unlock your stuff and have random employees search through it? Is it something that happens a lot?
I've entered the US dozens of times. Visa waiver, 6 month visa, multi year visa.
Never been asked to show electronics. Never been to a special room. Most of the time they ask one or two questions, take my fingerprints, and welcome me to the country.
Now that my passport has a US address in it, even though I'm technically not a resident, they politely say "Welcome Back".
Last time I entered was on Monday. The lady was extremely polite, even smalltalked a bit while the computer was giving her trouble because my visa is in an old passport and my new passport is 7 days old. Guess she had to sync up the system.
Time from entering the queue to being in the country was 24 minutes. I ran a stopwatch.
That said, my visa process did involve checking my social accounts and internet activity because I explicitly listed it as an argument for why I qualify for an O-1.
Anecdata, I know. But that's my experience. I'm white and from eastern-ish europe.
Huh, really? My experience was roughly the same, except the border officers were generally acting very serious, and the queue took 1-2 hours. I wish I could enter in 24 minutes.
No random searches here either, though, but I haven't been to the US for at least a year.
I find they're nicer when you give them the passport in such a way that they first see your O-1 visa. Covertly letting them know that you're an "exceptional ability alien" right off the bat, sets the relationship off to a good start.
The time when I said "Oh just coming back from vacation" before the lady saw my visa ... well, she was much less nice about it.
The queue will depend on the airport and the number of border agents on duty.
A difference between 24 minutes and 1 hour is only slightly more than 2x, so it's not extremely significant in the grand scheme of things. Security lines on domestic flights can last longer than 24 minutes.
I was just going to the US for a convention then staying for a few weeks afterwards. The question that arose suspicion was why I'd booked to stay in a hotel rather than stay at a friend's house. Ridiculous.
Anyway yeah, I had to collect my luggage and they then opened it up and rummaged through it. Asked why I wasn't taking a video game console despite ostensibly going to a video game convention. My response was of course that this would be quite impractical.
They then demanded access to my phone and read through my messages. They couldn't find anything other than my friend asking when my flight would arrive and a photo of him holding up a bottle of vodka (he was under 21). I think they just gave up at that point and let me through.
Fortunately I narrowly managed to make it to my connecting flight but it was such a stupid thing to have to go through.
My wife and I have entered the US twice since President Trump came took charge. We're Indians, I'm on H1b and wife's on F1. The second time was a breeze, the agent was in a great mood and we just chatted about how she loves my company's product while she did her stuff.
The first time was more difficult, because I said something (technically correct) about my documents that confused her (understandably) for a while, so she had to lookup some extra stuff. She also asked my wife a lot of questions, because she was under the (wrong) impression that her school was blacklisted. That was seriously incompetent IMO, but she apologized after her supervisor (or some other superior) explained things to her. She also marked that we needed to go through customs, which the first time I've had to do that in almost 10 entries. I chalked this as a negative experience because of the customs thing, we felt she did that just to inconvenience us in some way. I cannot link this in anyway to President Trump, however.
Both times, we were one of the first people to be off the plane's economy section, but the wait before we got to the counter was 1+ hour. SFO is ridiculous.
My worst experience came when entering during President Obama's tenure (but nothing to do with his policy) in 2016. The agent went through my entire 9-year old passport, asked me why I had visited country X in 20YY, why I lied to my visa officer back when I got a F1, etc (that I'd go back home after studies. I did not lie, I happened to get a job and the employer happened to want to apply for a H1. I did not even know back then that there was a real or fake "shortage" in tech workers).
Hopefully more anecdata helps. If you're on the fence about visiting the US as a tourist I hope you end up deciding to come!
The USA consulate in Rio de Janeiro is also like that. Of course, it's become a business opportunity: right next to the queue outside the consulate, there are several people who offer to store your electronics, for a price.
Contrast with for instance the Germany and France consulates a few blocks over (they're in a single building), where as far as I know no such rule exists.
The US Embassy in Paris did refuse to let me in with my laptop. I had to run everywhere to find a place that accepted to keep my laptop for me :/ you definitely get a reality check as soon as you enter the Visa process with the US.
in France you have to turn off your phone, then handle it to them. I couldn't turn off mine (it was badly broken xD) so I just took the luminosity to the lowest and they didn't see anything.
Only rational explanation: the current POTUS is a closet ecologist, decided to use scare tactics to reduce needless CO2 waste. (unlikely, but still...)
The only ration explanation is that the policy is what it claims to be: racial and nationalist discrimination. After all, that's what the huge pre-election rallies were cheering.
maybe just stop traveling to US would be easier and cheaper solution, why one need to be physically present anywhere in 2017?
i find it odd, i can understand it for my father that when some of his agricultural company partners has training, people from neighboring countries must travel there for hours to stay there for few hours and go back, but IT company in 2017?
reminds me of Huawei which is still organizing teleconferences (!) for trainings, because why not let people call across half planet in horrible quality instead of providing cheap full HD video stream work live chat, it's not like there are hundreds of us, max 100 people present
> why one need to be physically present anywhere in 2017?
Because there is still merit to sitting face to face with people sometimes. Not all the time, sure, but sometimes. Also, not everyone works the same as everyone else, and sometimes people need to interact differently. I work remote primarily, but still get value out of my onsite times, just a different value than when I'm sitting at home working on a computer. Even in IT, there is value in sitting with someone and looking them in the eye for a few minutes, or holding two markers to a whiteboard.
A) - Full HD video conferencing for ~ 100 people is not cheap. At all. Bandwidth costs alone would be huge.
B) - For teams that work together remotely, it is very important for them to meet in person from time to time. Communication issues drop when you can put a face and personality to a name on IRC / email. (and no, this is not achieved via video calls)
I agree with your second point, not so much with the first, I've seen very intelligent approaches to video conferencing (only full HD video for the speaker, and dynamic upscaling-downscaling based on who's speaking), not to mention bandwidth is very cheap now.
Communication is still a lot better face to face, but video conferencing is getting a lot better (and I'm betting on that with my own startup attempt :) ).
I'd definitely schedule periodic face to face meetings for remote teams, but that doesn't mean remote cannot work.
maybe i was not clear, there is no need to show participants at all, they would be fine with love text chat, you only need one video stream of trainee, which would be very cheap, they could even use Youtube
what's expensive about providing one one way video stream with live text chat for participants to ask questions?
as for putting face to name,I can't hardly imagine how this could be positive for concentration and work, I am more likely going to be neural and more efficient if I treat other party as robot than someone with face, because then you lose focus on work
As I mentioned on my comment, instead of allowing their own employees to do remote work, they outsource the work to consulting companies that actually do support working remotely.
i think this has more to do with tax optimization than location of work, many companies outsource everything to avoid taxes, otherwise they would not be able to provide competitive salaries for direct employee doing same work
I think the 'owners' don't believe at-home work can scale properly. Given a population a subset of humans will always try to beat the system. The 'butt in seats' mentality is believed to curtail that system cheating behavior.
The idea that a seat in the butt somehow would be a good deterrent against people 'cheating' the system always sounded amusing to me. One would think that companies have some way to measure someones work that's better than "Was he here for at least x hours? Yeah? Great, job done."
I've been contracting for the last 15 years and the lack of remote working means I have to do a lot less work! If the bosses are measuring your productivity on just being there then fine, they're idiots and I've no qualms about doing as I please with my time.
Alternative is to use other tokens than passwords for authentication. There is hardware tokens (which should not be taken abroad), or the system can be designed to only permit authentication from on-site.
If you need to build in flexibility to work remote, add a one-time password system that has to be manually provide by a on-site staff. That way the decision to be compelled to provide authentication will rest on people not being interrogated in an airport.
Is it indeed the norm now to not cross borders with work data? That seems prudent, but I'm rather out of touch with enterprise reality. Regarding accounts, I'd only heard about social media, not work-related stuff. That would be blatant espionage, no?
So, many comments here target US or Trump in particular. But in fact, as many noted, there is not real connection – it started long time ago. Also, I bet, there are quotas (e.g. number of people) to be detained, so they have to fulfil it.
Also, US is just an example here (because many conferences are held in the US), but also there are stories from the UK, for instance. From my point of view, the problem is that with social networks it is extremely easy to get access to your whole life – it is already pretty easy to identify person on the facebook, for instance (right now there is no way to prove that it is _exactly_ you, but I am pretty sure they will be soon). So, with restrictions on such monopoly media (and I've heard it is already harder to register on the Facebook), it is very easy to end up in a situation where we will get "human score" (similar to credit score, but in the digital world), which will be used in such situation.
And even the bigger problem is that it might be needed for a work, for a loan application, etc, so you wouldn't be able to do all this without it (or even "to apply for a visa your score should be higher than 3.0". My predictions are that governments will try to work more closely with popular platforms trying to emerge such (there were few stories than people were detained because of tweets) metrics, and to broad access not only from your phone, but from their device, just your user profile.
The UK border is far worse. Surprisingly, the easiest border I've ever crossed on an American passport was Russia's. No questions, not hassles, neither in nor out.
I've traveled from Zürich to Los Angeles on Good Friday (April 14, 2017) for leisure - my first visit since February 2016 and thus my first trip to Trump's 'murrica.
I was joined with my dad who recently retired and never has left the continent - his first long haul flight and first time to the US.
I feared and prepared for the worst and I even was debating about leaving my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air at home to avoid any searches.
It turned out to become the smoothest immigration ever: We stood at the curb waiting for the car rental bus within 45 minutes after we stepped out of the plane.
Short lines, smoothly working self-service kiosks, a friendly immigration officer, not one single intimidating or aggressive question.
I've usually found Australian customs to be fairly friendly whenever I've been returning home - though these days they make me use the automated passport gates so I don't talk to them at all...
Upon arriving in Finland the passport control officer even welcomed me in my native tounge (Swedish). If come through passport control in the nordic countries I can guarantee they will be friendly.
You should visit New Zealand one day, they have very strict rules about bringing anything in, but I've found their customs people to be the most friendly, even shared a few jokes and tips on snowboard gear with one of the officers while passing through the nothing to declare line last winter.
i had pretty good experiences in Philippines or Malaysia, i would say at least third of immigration officers i met at various borders were friendly. from Europe recently we had very nice Polish woman officer who was very welcoming to our family with small child in EU passports queue despite my wife not being from EU
worst experiences were probably Austrian Nazi guys investigating repeatedly my wife's passport, while at other border with Hungary they let freely roam across Europe thousands of illegal immigrants
The kiosks made immigration a lot easier. Also for the work of the officers who can now focus on details instead of always asking the same standard questions. Have noticed that they seem to be in a better mood, I guess it improved their job and therefore their mood.
I went through LAX for the first time in December 2016. The immigration line was long and took about an hour to get through but other than that it was pretty painless.
I'm a British Muslim who flew to the US on Sunday. Honestly I had assumed it would be hell. In actual fact it was only a little more painful than before.
I'm used to being randomly selected for an additional search every time in the UK premiere flight. My colleague (another British Muslim) was also selected which we found quite amusing.
On the other side it wasn't bad, just answered truthfully, only snag was my colleague who accidentally had both a 10 year business visa and an ESTA at the same time who then had to go down to immigration to have it removed.
After immigration I was asked to speak to a customs officer and that was it, I continued on my journey.
Little more painful but not overly.
Personally I think this guide is a little extreme and I'm sure in the worst case it probably does apply.
This is more to deal with the business risk rather than a personal risk.
The US targeting companies with large amounts of data, obtaining passwords to access all of Basecamp's data, either for industrial espionage or counter-terrorism.
your are not selected randomly, they use profiling and they search Muslims because majority of terrorists are Muslims, i can't comprehend why even smart people always come with this random check nonsense, do they really claim it's random and try to hide it instead of telling truth?
Kind of disheartening to read that (most) of the comments here diverted away from the topic of Basecamp's travel guide, which shows a lot of character from this company.
A company composed of a lot of remote workers outside US that definitely goes out of their way to have their employees come into the US for their business meetings is a keeper.
On a side note, I am a bit confused on a questionnaire asked at the Customs:
Here to do work? Nope! Here on business, meeting with Basecamp.
Wouldn't this be under the discretion of the customs officer to determine whether business meeting qualifies as work? I suppose that being on a business meeting with your company still predisposes the fact that you are technically still paid on those days that you are meeting with your company?
I'm from Eastern Europe and I (literally) just flew back from a 2 week work trip from the US (California):
- Getting a visa was a painless process. I just applied and I got a business visa.
- Entering the States required me to show my passport. Nothing else. Nobody asked me why I was going there, nobody asked me to show my phone or laptop (I had both). There was no separation, pat downs etc.
There are tons of commentaries like that, and there is nothing wrong with it. Also, US is like second biggest visiting destination in the world, and of course they don't want to scare everyone. So, all of these dreadful stories are true, but they are just a drop in the ocean.
The problem here is a possibility. The mere necessity to think about it, to possibly sweat in the line, to think about what have I erased or not, makes it bad. First of all, you are not treated with a dignity. Second of all, without precautions, you easily can be embarrassed (many people don't care and keep really private info, like messages or photos on their phone). And the last – there is a small, but a possibility that you'll fuck up a little, and you will be detained. It is a small chance, but it presents, and it is not a pleasant thought.
You might remember that the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon Bombing were Chechen.
I say this not because I think we should screen Chechens more thoroughly now, but because your original appeal to profiling at the border is provably ineffective and, frankly, ignorant.
I really can't believe all the negativity here towards traveling to the US. You're taking a few admittedly awful anecdotes, and turning them into giant statistics about the country.
You know that thought experiment where you have scientists debating global warming, but to make it clear just how much consensus there is, instead of having 1 scientist against and 1 pro, you have 1 against and a whole crowd pro?
I run this thought experiment every time I enter the states. I can usually see around me many thousands of people in the airport, getting along just fine. I can imagine the many tens of thousands who go through those airports every day, and the probably millions all across the country who go through the airports without trouble.
These millions are what you should be stacking up against the dozens of anecdotes you get on the web.
(For what it's worth, I have had very easy experiences with immigration, with mostly people being very nice to me, but a few times someone was rude/mean to me. Nothing more than that.)
But from the company's perspective, all that matters is that it _can_ and _does_ happen.
I don't believe anyone is saying every single person coming into the US will get searched. We _know_ they are not. But searches _do_ happen and _are_ legal, and that alone justifies preparing for the eventuality.
My employer has always had rules about how to take care of data on your devices. They tell you to enable encryption and to never leave your company laptop alone and stuff like that. The vast majority of employees will never have their devices stolen, but the fact that some might is enough justification to make sure everyone does their best to protect their data. It's the same thing.
That you always had very easy experiences with immigration _is_ the anecdote here, because it does nothing to change the fact that _some_ people will get their devices searched (and data potentially copied) by Immigration agents.
Yes, you are right, but a mere possibility of searching my phone and going through possibly humiliating experience makes me to avoid it at all.
I know, chances are small, and I'll likely avoid all of this stuff, but I hate such unfair communication, and therefore I don't even want to try it. For me it is important, and I wouldn't trade my confidence even for a small chance.
I agree with you. I'd actually like to know how many people really get send back at the border. There are occasional stories but the number can't be higher than 0.1% or so..
So what happens when they ask for my Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat logins and I do not have accounts with these companies? If a simple "I don't have social media accounts" is acceptable then I'm not sure why they even ask for passwords. Proving a negative is very hard.
But I am not lying, I dont have facebook, or twitter or snapchat. How do I prove I dont have these accounts? What if I do have a FB account that i signed up for years ago, never use, forgot to delete, dont know the password for? Do I get a stay in prison for that?
No, his point is that if you are lying they have an instrument to use against you. Similar to how they got Al Capone, where they didn't have to go through the trouble of having to prove his actual crimes in court.
It isn't about you individually, it's about big numbers, statistics. It's just an additional tool in their arsenal. Similar to why doctors perform standard exams even when you come in and complain about something where that particular exam seems ridiculously wrong. The procedures are not invented new each time for every person, they are based on what works "statistically". On that level they found that in (some low) x percent of cases having such a signature helps, so they include that question. And occasionally they even catch someone gullible to, or who can't manage their emotions, but that's just an additional bonus and not even the main reason for the question(s).
Then you can say that you have some accounts but you don't remember the password anymore: "I'm just logged in from my computer at home. If I delete the cookies I don't know if I would be able to get the password again"
This is genuinely applicable to me. I don't remember any of my passwords since I'm logged in at most places via cookies, and my passwords are completely randomized strings two dozen or more characters long, stored in a password manager.
Do border security understand how password managers work, or would I have to tell them how to access my own data?
Showerthought: If I delete my password manager from my phone, maybe the password manager should perform geolocation and detect if the application is trying to be installed at an airport (possibly indicating installation against my will). That's a very nuanced situation.
I suspect they understand how password managers work and either ask you for access or take your hardware and fiddle with it off-screen (Evil Maid attack? [0]). Otherwise if they don't like you they just send you back home and that's it.
1. Lying to them falls under "fraudulent access to the USA" and the penalty is permanent exclusion, no Visa will help you, you have no right to appeal.
2. You cannot discuss or appeal anything, there isn't a discussion that you are a part of in which you get to explain your side or proffer an excuse... your actions already did your talking.
Don't lie to border control, don't give BS excuses. Either you're willing to give them access or you shouldn't have boarded the plane. "I can't because I don't remember" is not a right to enter the USA... you do not have that right, the right is granted by them.
I recently visited the US and I thought the process was going to be hell after reading a lot of these threads on HN. Turns out it was pretty chill, got some questions before boarding and was selected for extra security check. Then upon landing I got like 3 questions from the officer, how long I would stay, where my friends were and what the purpose of my trip was.
Sure they didn't seem very friendly but it wasn't a big of a hassle. I didn't bring my laptop though because I don't want it searched.
It seems like you run on luck mostly. You only need to give up passwords and such if you are unlucky.
I don't think most people who oppose these policies do so because they expect themselves to suffer from them. It's quite obvious that the US isn't going to detain 100% of travellers for hours, if only because it would be prohibitively expensive.
I'd say the opposition is fuelled by (a) an aversion to be in a situation where you have basically no rights, as opposed to the uniformed goons on the other side, (b) the fear that such policies are used to target others, such as journalists, thus having an impact on me even without being applied to me, and (c) solidarity with people who may be at a higher risk for reasons such as their ethnicity, political opinion etc.
There are other ways these policies have a chilling effect without being applied wholesale. I have, on previous flights, chosen the halal food option just for kicks (and gotten bewildered looks when I chose a red wine for dinner). I wouldn't do so flying to the US these days. That may seem inconsequential, but I can easily see someone not sharing that anti-war article on Twitter these days, at which point the possible consequences have become quite real.
Frankly, I find the thought of having to give my passwords away to be baffling to say the least. No chance I will ever visit the US under these conditions, because I tend to dislike totalitarian countries.
Not really, no. Especially when you're used to just walking through an automated machine which I get to do for most of the time when I travel.
First I thought I would bring my computer with pirated movies on it but when I read up online I decided not to bring a computer at all.
People in the thread seems to think I am defending the process which I am not. I just state that people seem to hype the evilness of the border control.
I also prefer travel without much electronics, since it's easy to get it lost or stolen. But it's not always an option - if you're traveling for business, you have to take the computer, and also everybody has a smartphone these days.
> I just state that people seem to hype the evilness of the border control.
Maybe to you it seems like a hype. But I was born in totalitarian country, and while it was pretty benign for ordinary people (I was a child), it's not something that I want to live through regardless.
Asking about trip details or looking if I don't have weapons and so on is fine for a visit.
But looking at my social media accounts (although I have almost none) and data on my devices - these are totalitarian practices. I understand that you don't feel that way, because you perhaps never experienced totality, but please you should also understand that many people feel differently (like the guy with the top comment).
1. Don't you think that to decide not to take electronic devices in 21st century for travel is a reaction that is out of proportions? It's pretty drastic measure, if you ask me.
2. How are the foreigners to change U.S. government's mind, if not by "blowing it out of proportions"? What other recourse is there?
Maybe for U.S. citizens, and especially those that have to do with the tourism or international business or academia, yeah, it sucks that it's "blown out of proportions". But see - they are the citizens, they can pressure their government to take strong stance on the issue and forbid these practices as totalitarian (and obviously useless - no combination of bits on my phone or computer is by itself going to harm anyone).
Exactly. The Basecamp instructions are written on the assumption that not all of their employees will be "lucky" all of the time (where "lucky" means "treated with what in most countries would be considered a bare minimum of respect").
that somehow contradict the other guy who posted that 99.9% are smooth without extra check and now you dump here 33% checked :) that seem fairly big even to me, can't imagine what European country would deserve such percentage, were you departing from Brussels or Istanbul?
Why would I value my personal data any less than my work data?
So what this rally means is: "Don't Travel With Any Data".
And knowing that they only need to plug an infected USB device into your PC/phone/tablet to infect the latter irrevocably, the situation can now be summed up as:
"Don't Travel With Any Data Or Any Hardware".
Now what does that say about the sate of a country?
Recall that these are instructions to employees – the company's first obligation is to protect the company, not the employees. Wiping work data is simply a means of limiting liability. Should sensitive data leak out due to a laptop getting seized at the border that's a lot more serious to the company than if your nudes were stolen.
Contrast this with my employer's advice: cooperate fully with the authorities, our lawyers can and will defend the company, we are more concerned about your safety.
Telling people to work travel and then telling them to not bring work data seems like you should have told them not to travel at all?
I don't think Basecamp's advice is telling people not to cooperate fully with authorities for the sake of your safety - it's merely noting that there's a significant risk of loss of control of valuable or sensitive commercial information in such interactions that can be mitigated.
I think you're being deliberately obtuse and argumentative. I never mentioned personal time travel. The context is an article telling people not to bring work data with them when traveling for work/professional functions.
If you're traveling for work, and your company can't guarantee your safe and reasonably comfortable travel to that destination in a work capacity -- they should recommend you not go.
Agreed, they shouldn't be asking them to go in a work capacity. I misunderstood your objection as them not having a right to ask their employees to remove data before personal travel.
Pff, next thing you know there will be terminal right next to immigration worker and they will just let you sign in to your online accounts to check it even without hardware and deny you entry if you don't comply, that's where it's heading in paranoid scared US.
I will rather have terrorist occasionally killing few people (still nothing compared to drunken weekend drivers or cancer, but those are apparently not worth attention) than sacrificing my privacy.
And don't forget:
Many people voted for Trump to restore the legal and democratic system
in the US. As the lesser evil.
Same as with Obama. He promised the same.
It didn't happen. Both went 180 degree immediately after the election.
For the reality check: The big airports in the South and North are well known as extremely racist and strict with their "work vs business" checks for decades.
What's new are the unconstitutional passport rules from the outgoing Obama administration.
The constitution doesn't apply at the border and not to foreigners.
This has nothing to do with Trump, it was going on during the Obama era - and probably Bush and before (but I'm not sure) - but it was never a problem until now. Stop spreading FUD.
This has nothing to do with FUD, sorry. It's only one of the factors that discourages me from visiting, and if now it has become a problem, it means that this presidency somehow made it worse.
It's always been a problem. It's just that now main stream media focus more on these issues to force the anti-trump agenda. (I'm not a huge fan of Trump btw.)
Woah... this definitely seems over the board! If all of this is required, it's a recent thing, I guess.
I have been to the US multiple times with a B1-Business Visa and didn't do any of this stuff. I just showed up and the customs officer asked a bunch of questions about my purpose of visit and that's about it. I didn't need any invitation letter or hotel bookings, etc.
Hotel bookings and a LOT of other documentation is required when applying for a tourist / business visa for Europe or UK, but traveling to the US has always been fairly straightforward (except that you need to make two visits the US embassy or consulate twice for the visa formalities).
At all times, I had my company laptop with all the data + source code.
So it's even worse, because excessive border checks are an established trend rather than a new measure from the rather voluble Trump administration: returning USA airport to civilization is going to be a long and difficult process.
Nothing, he was just selected (based on who knows what criteria, they don't need warrants) to be scanned. Whether or not they actually cared about the sensitive data on the device, he still lost control of it long enough for it to be copied or compromised.
US Customs asserts the right to search (and if necessary, force you to unlock) any electronic device you bring with you, and to make copies of data found on those devices. A non-citizen who refuses search can be detained and/or denied entry to the US.
I visited from Australia in 2009 and I was going to a law enforcement work conference- that was close enough to work for them to ask me for hotel details. I remember needing everything on that page. LA-X as point of entry. It was un-pleasant. I didn't go to a similar conference this May as a result of this experience. I imagine it is worse now.
This is just ugly. We have become a mirror image of what we claim to be against. No one in human history has woken up one day suddenly to totalitarianism but the process in undeniably well under way here.
The posturing and denial may continue for now but it is only a matter of time before the edifice of pretension falls on the weight of its own contradictions.
The soft power and moral credibility is gone. No one can take any US position on human rights seriously. What's left is force and brazen hypocrisy as we become more brazen building totalitarian infrastructure, go about destroying entire countries and putting millions of lives in disarray to pursue 'strategic objectives' or to put it simply make more money.
Internally it seems citizens don't care about privacy, spying, human rights or the destruction of other countries as long as the money is flowing. It keeps on becoming more and more egregious as more boundaries are crossed yet there is no citizen response. If there is a value system its certainly not visible. The government can do whatever it wants.
In the end we seem to have succeeded in building a commercial hub, not a country. Humanity and all that makes it wonderful beyond the practicality of making money will rest elsewhere.
I know we would only have anecdotal evidence here, but I'd like to hear from other HackerNews readers. My guess is that based on where you're from and how you look, your experience with the CBP can vary wildly.
FYI: TSA and CBP are not the same. You first interact with CBP when you enter the US, and then you interact with TSA for security while flying within the US.
Most of the posts on here are ridiculous.
People saying they are not going on holiday to the USA because it's too much of a pain.
Seriously.
We applied online for the visa thing. It took under 5 minutes. Then at the airport we queued up at immigration for around 10 minutes. We showed our passport and answered one question about purpose of visit, and they waved us though.
This is the experience of 99.9% of those who visit.
What country are you from? That is not the experience for people from my country (Uruguay, Latin America), nor for any of the high population countries, and it is highlighted in this article.
I applied for (and was granted) an U.S. visitor (B-1) visa last month, it was very expensive, I had to fill out a form that took significantly more than 5 minutes (several hours because I had to contact family members for details), and I had to schedule an in-person interview where they (very politely) cross checked most of what I wrote in the visa form, and were very detailed in the questions.
That's why the article says "If your country does not participate in the Visa Waiver Program or you are not eligible for an ESTA, you'll need to apply for a B-1 business visitor visa… the long way."
"We'll work with you through this process. Start early, as soon as we have dates for a meetup or conference. Visa appointments and processing can take weeks to months."
That directly contradicts your claim (and matches my experience).
I still haven't flown to the U.S., but those in my family who have, experienced multi-hour delays (my mother lost her flight in Boston only last month due to 2 hours in the immigration queue), most of my family members have been set aside for in-depth questioning at least once, etc.
I do know some Europeans have a very different experience (those under ESTA), but I'm not certain your saying "the experience of 99.9% of those who visit" is correct.
You might notice that none of the highly populated countries (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico) are in this list:
What is this visa thing you applied for that took less than 5 minutes? Are you from a country that does not require a DS-160? There is no chance you filled that form in 5 minutes.
I feel like posting something positive here - I travelled to the US last week for tourist-y purposes and the border control was fast, efficient, nobody looked at my devices (even though I had 3 phones with me), and the only gripe was with tourists of certain nations constantly trying to jump the queues.
I visited the US last year for a conference (from the UK)
Border Guard was very angry at me for some reason, very cold, didn't smile. Quite curt with his responses. Which was strange because he was laughing and joking with the couple before me in the queue.
He took particular umbrage with the fact that I'd ticked "Business" on my customs form, as I wasn't sure what else to tick - I was attending the conference on behalf of my employer who had paid for my trip.
Important things are a) which entity is going to pay b) where is added value created. In terms of business meeting both are mostly other seas. I had that info about meetings in my travel guide at least for 10 yeas.
I've been told something similar when going to Canada (I work for Amazon and we have offices in Seattle, WA and Vancouver, B.C.)
Basically, I'm required to not work on anything not related to whatever the purpose of my visit is. For example, if I have a meeting with Team A then I'm not legally allowed to work on anything unrelated to meeting with Team A.
I'm on a business trip to meet with Team A. I'm not in Canada to do my normal work.
Re the purpose of visit, have the rules of what is defined as work changed recently? I traveled a couple of years ago to LA to work on-site with my employer for a couple of weeks - I told the customs official this, and they let me through without issue. I'm from the UK so just got ESTA.
It's not clear to me whether the US Border control can ask you to login on their desktop even if you're not carrying any devices. In such a case, there's no way to avoid being subject to search.
So what happens if you have 2FA via SMS, but obviously you are traveling and cannot get an international SMS? Should one turn off 2FA before traveling to the US?
Why can't US adopt Israel's border control practices? Going in and out of Israel is a breeze. Sure, it's strict, as it should be, but you never feel harassed or worse. And surely their problem with terrorism is equal if not larger than that of US.
I don't know if it changed in the meantime, but I was flying to Israel in 99 and it was an experience I will not forget my whole life. It included the security officers making a call to my parents pretending to be my friend and asking where I am - I guess it was a trick. My mother was very scared, because she didn't know this guy's voice.
I found this very mean. Hopefully it changed in a positive way.
no need to worry someone will go through your Facebook, Gmail and other accounts even if they wanted, they will force you to sign up for WeChat and buy Alibaba share on top of it
You you could be charged with lying and/or destroying evidence and who knows what else. Definitely don't do that. Worse thing to do is lie or attempt to deceive an agent.
Please, stop bigotry and nationalist hatred. That's for both the US, and the ones willing to do the same as revenge against the US people. Let's stop the nationalist madness together.
It really is a shitty feeling for me. I grew up in New York, and was too young to really understand what was going on during the Bush days, so for me the Trump era is a new feeling.
This is the first time in my life I am embarrassed to be an American.
This is a political statement highlighting the current legal uncertainty of refusing to unlock your devices at the US border[0].
By default iphones and macs are encrypted when you completely power them down, so the right way (assuming you have a good password) is to shut down your computers at the airport and only turn them back on when you've passed the border.
Nothing interesting here tech-wise, effectively just a checklist of files to manually delete or encrypt. I'm not a lawyer, but to me this seems like just plugging holes until someone puts up the money and time to rule the whole thing unconstitutional.
If you're a US citizen they have to let you in, but if you're a visitor they'll probably just turn you back at the border. The article says a South Korean man won a lawsuit against an unreasonable search, but you're not going to be able to do that from your home country.
They closed this loophole a couple of years ago, by explicitly demanding that your devices need to be powered on and have enough battery power when entring the country.
So powering off your device, putting out the battery or encrypting it is all forbidden.
Do you have any source for your assertion that one is required to have a powered battery when entering the country? On the face of it, that seems absurd.
I've heard announcements to this effect during takeoff on-route to the US: "Ensure you don't use your devices too much during flight if you can't charge them—they are required to be powered on during entry to the United States".
So they expect you to have your phone and devices charged after a 21 hours of flying to the US? Guess you need to charge your phone before you can queue up at immigration? :)
