One of the DSS’ main responsibilities was to introduce fast track technology during national security incidents to help the Pentagon to quickly react to developing situations.
While DSS responsibilities will be passed on to another department, it is unclear how long it will take for the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to assume DSS responsibilities - potentially putting the security of the Pentagon at risk.
There are also constant ongoing efforts at improving efficiency, which is why they keep going “ah ha! We found it!” then poor bureaucrats who are trying to do their fucking jobs while these idiots run around messing things up have to explain, “no, you’re seeing an artifact of record-keeping practices that exist because [very good reason], you’re wrong yet again, maybe try asking literally anyone who knows about these data sets”
They also love to throw around the word “fraud” while bringing no charges. Despite the DOJ being in Trump’s control. Same pattern as other lies (“rampant voter fraud! We have proof” ok so when you’re in change you’ll prosecute, right? You should! That’s bad if true! I mean I’ve looked at your proof and it doesn’t appear true, but maybe you have more proof you haven’t shown! “Uhhh… [smoke bomb]”)
Plus, we have the GAO and CBO. Trump won’t want to listen to them because they’ll say “our #1 problem is we keep cutting taxes”, and “there’s not much waste to be eliminated cutting government workers”, because that’s true at this point, but they exist. It’s not like nobody’s been looking at these kinds of things. That’s just bullshit.
This is not a solution for now, but a solution for 'next time', but can you migrate to using 'virtual credit cards' where you can essentially use a separate credit card number per subscription. In cases like this, you just cancel the credit card number that's been "burned", but you don't have to re-jig all the other subs to use a new number.
(ie. the advice for this situation is cancel the credit card, knowing that's a giant pain in the arse).
As per a question that someone posted on HN recently, should all US businesses that rely on goods coming from overseas (especially China) be seeking alternate paths for their goods, like the Vietnam re-shipment example?
If the rules are changing by the day, how can anyone be expected to follow them, and what resources are available to monitor and / or enforce these rules? Double that for monitoring / enforcing bastion-country re-shipments?
Is import monitoring and enforcement done by federal government employees?
To attempt to be somewhat balanced in reacting to this, the article is, as it states in the title, about "fear of being detained", it's not about actually being detained.
As some people point out, what makes the news is the exceptions, not the norms.
I'd like to know some statistics around the frequency of being questioned, detained, deported from the last few years, to the last month, two months, three months. What characteristics can be sliced up in different ways to determine what, if any, emerging patterns are?
However, perception is reality, so even if nothing has actually changed in behaviour of border security, the media messaging has definitely changed which already seems to be causing a slowing down of international travellers coming to the US - there was a good article about that on the front page of HN not long ago.
> As some people point out, what makes the news is the exceptions, not the norms.
There are also the cases that never make the news.
For example: last Friday I went to a friend's PhD defense in Stockholm, during the party/dinner after one of his supervisors was telling us the story where she got detained by CBP in her last visit in March. She is a Finnish professor, with a J1 visa, with a part-time position in an American university, she was detained and deported because the CBP agent didn't like she said she was coming into the US for work-related matters.
This never made the news or anything, she was quietly disposed of after being in "custody" for a few hours.
Her takeaway was simply she would give up this part-time work helping some American PhD students, she didn't need the money and the stress and time wasted was too much.
How many more of these cases exist? We will never know.
I doubt you can get statistics on that… You may have heard stories about visa applications taking so long that the trip became pointless, e.g. granting visa for travel to a conference on the last day of the conference? That's a "yes" in the statistics, a granted application.
And often there isn't any data at all. I've been questioned by immigration for ten minutes a couple of times. No record was made as far as I could tell. I suspect that if a country wants to, people can be kept for quite a while without any record being made.
So if you want to know whether the US is moving from a top-25% position to something rather worse, I fear you might not be able to get enough reliable data for a comparison.
Border Patrol Checking US Visitors' Phones, Social Media are a thing and it is quite large escalation over what was happening before. The claim that nothing changed is just not true.
> We don’t believe it is safe for everyone to travel to the US, particularly our trans and diverse colleagues
From the article. So, there are groups that are at more risk and those as less risk. And these people worry about at risk groups.
> The focus on that is really troubling. That, if you legitimately have a different passport than you were given at a young age, you could be detained.
So, despite you not believing it is an issue, per their claims, it is the fear.
In addition to America not being safe anymore, actually, the risk can be small for people to act on it. Americans are constantly scared of low probability events - think child kidnapping. Why would it be different for someone else?
> Border Patrol Checking US Visitors' Phones, Social Media
Many countries have been doing this for years though. And several of those countries even have key disclosure laws unlike the US, where you are literally forced to unlock your devices and give out your password no matter what.
Canadian authorities, like U.S. authorities, say they will seize a phone if a traveler refuses to unlock it. New Zealand imposes a $5,000 fine for failing to unlock a phone, and Britain considers refusing to unlock a phone for police to be a counterterrorism offense.
> Thank you for that very logical and level-headed response.
Is it? The regulations are literally changing every day, and he's asking for data on their effects? It sounds like a very unrealistic response to me.
Here is another response: news reports indicate USA borders crossing are going through rapid change, some sort of inflection point if you like. We don't know what the other side of that inflection point will look like as yet. There have been recent reports of unexplained wasted air fares, passport reject stamps and detention. The implications range from minor to very serious. A prudent person without an urgent reason to go to the USA should wait until the situation settles down, so a clear picture of the risks can emerge.
The downside of that is the situation is not settling down. Every day I wake up to unexpected political happenings in the USA, and it's been going on for near 100 days now with no end in sight. It might be a long wait.
I would surmise it's more fear of wasting money and time on a plane (approx 13 - 16 hours at min cost of $2000 aud for a specific flight time,) only to be turned back at the US border.
I mostly agree with your sentiments, that not much has changed, there's been plenty of horror stories pre 2015 in regard to being pulled aside and sent back, misunderstandings perhaps but ...
Last couple of months I'd say there's a stark difference, there seems to be numerous media stores with a definite focus that it doesn't take much to be knocked back, and a few came down to simply having a record of being critical of Trump. eg. Alvin Gibbs (UK Subs) account of it which IMO sounds pretty straight up.[1]
Of course there's probably more than a few media beat ups where one would guess there's probably a bit more to the story but if so it's pretty quiet and perhaps perceived as an unwillingness for US authorities to comment.
If you have two rejection stamps in your passport, that's a real problem for any future visa application. If you have one rejection stamp, you're only one stamp away from a Problem.
Trump's trade war is so chaotic and self-defeating China has a good chance of "winning", not just in the sense of doing better relative to the US, but of actual absolute improvement as people move towards China for stability.
I first saw it in school, at 15 (a looong time ago). Could not believe my eyes. Could not believe one was allowed to even do that. The incredible freedom of it all, starting with the title sequence, and the incredible irreverence, crazyness.
I think it's fair to say it changed me as a person. I never took anything too seriously after that.
My 15year old can quote it. Their teacher said something the other day, and she replied from the movie. They both laughed, but the rest of the class (apparently) all looked confused. I was very proud.
Same thing happened with a FleetwoodMac song. Different teacher.
A few years ago, a teacher friend accompanied me to Phoenix Comicon where there was a panel discussion on “Using Pop Culture In The Classroom”. Driving home, I confided to her that I may have been the only Republican in the room.
Then a few weeks later, I mentioned the panel to another friend from the same church. He was in his mid-20s, and an educator in independent Catholic and charter [liberal arts] schools.
He told me that teachers there were expressly forbidden from introducing pop culture references. I mean, it seems nice for a student to share an in-joke with teacher, but is that an inclusive environment and a safe space?
It is never an error to adhere to the curriculum and thus ensure that your class materials engage all the students with cultural and moral sensitivity.
One company I worked for, we used to joke that we should get rid of all the software questions and ask what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is.
https://youtu.be/lG9pxvpGY-Q?si=cii2iggD-9hAj0ms&t=580
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