THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wow. I can’t even believe that Customs and Border Protection isn’t issuing an apology. Shouldn’t this be embarrassing? Should they be admitting that they were overzealous, but perhaps arguing that it was well-intentioned and that they were doing their due diligence? Because any response other than an apology is a tacit endorsement of idiocy.

This kind of thing surfaces periodically in this country. The Alien and Sedition Acts, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, McCarthyism. Americans have always had a level of paranoia that lurks just below the skin and breaks out like a rash from time to time. We’re having an outbreak now.

It’s not our most endearing quality.

This is how the system is created, with layers of bureaucracy, where you get no support from your superiors, and so, you always think in terms of your personal or professional liability.

Basically, everyone passes the buck upstairs.

Everyone is basically being paid to be a pencil-pusher, following guidelines, and not executing any discretion.

This applies to managers who are afraid of the media, or customer support reps who don’t deviate from the script.

If the guy at the turnstile at the stadium says: “No caps on bottles”, then that’s that.  You take the cap off, regardless of the need for the cap.  To them, they think of it as a projectile, even if it’s a baby bottle.

If the decision-maker knows that he’s liable, either from his boss or from the law, then why would he put his neck on the line for some stranger?

That’s about it, Tango/3.

Someone I follow on twitter put it well, regarding this story: Americans make a lot of jokes, but we lack a sense of humor. It’s the rare underling who allows themselves to get a joke, in favor of covering their ass by sticking to an extreme “letter of the law” interpretation.

In addition, Americans have seemed to have given in to the logic of the police state without much fuss in recent years. Oh, we complain about it, but it doesn’t really get in our gears. Talk about passing SOPA, though, and people are quickly up in arms (without noticing that the state already has the power to do what it wants in that arena too).

"Is there some place I can move where they just leave you alone? Seriously.”

That’s a good question, and if anyone has an answer I’d like to hear it.  I do know these tourists won’t find such a place when they return to Britain, where you can never be out of site of a security camera.

Maybe some countries in South America?  I’ve heard good things about Chile and Argentina, but I’ve never been there.

I am English, and I find this somewhat ridiculous especially when the lead line on the BBC’s report is
“Caution on Twitter urged as tourists barred from US”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312
It is frustrating when bureaucracy fails to allow common sense to prevail

There is far greater outrage over here at the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer. He is the student being extradited to the USA over linking to sites where films could be downloaded in infringement of copyright (this is not an offence under British Law).
This appears to be a complete misuse of the Extradition Treaty designed to combat terrorism

anyone else unclear as to the actual order of events in this case? the Time article and the Daily Mail make it sound like it went:

1) tourist writes tweets weeks before travelling to the US
2) DHS noticed the tweets ahead of time and flagged the twitter account holder to deny him entry in the US, specifically because of the tweets
3) tourists travel to the US and get detained at the airport and sent home.

that may well be the case. and if it is, and thats all there is to it, then it is indeed a pathetic shame. but it seems to me that it could just as easily be that there is something else that got the Leigh Van Bryan guy flagged and detained, and then after interrogation the tweets were revealed and included in the report. of course, misinterpreted the tweets in any event is ridiculous, but if the guy was already on the watch list and those tweets come up, its a cover-your-butt deal for the DHS agents.

so i’m mostly incredulous that the tweets were the original cause of the detention. how is the DHS able to link someone’s twitter account to an irish citizen? thats an honest question if anyone knows the answer.

Can you explain the O’Dwyer case for me?

Reading about it a little, we have a person who created a website (hosted in UK?), that has links to sites deemed illegal (in UK? in USA?).  These are sites that are accessible either directly through their URL, or through search engines, like Google or Yahoo, or sites dedicated to finding these kinds of sites.

The UK, it would seem, would have jurisdiction over his actions.  And, they are not bringing up charges.

But, USA ALSO wants jurisdiction over the exact same actions, and they DO want to bring up charges?

And so the UK allows the extradition to occur, for an action committed in UK, an action they are fine with.

Is that the jist of it?

Let’s say that I as a Canadian, 19 years old, and of legal drinking age in Canada, wants to offer a service to all the 18-20 years olds in Canada: a list of all the establishments across the border that I have been able to drink at, implying lax ID check.

My site is hosted in Canada, but I link to the websites of these places in the USA.

Americans 18-20 year olds would also be quite interested in my Canadian-hosted site.

Would this be equivalent to the O’Dwyer case?

kendyanamo/7: Just follow the link from Time to the original Daily Mall article and be incredulous.  You’ll even find a copy of the Visa Waiver Program refusal document from DHS.

The Department of Homeland Security was recently criticised over false accounts it set up on Twitter.

These are then used to scan networks for ‘sensitive’ words and then for tracking the people who use them.

Online privacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Centre requested information on the DHS’s scans, which it says the agency announced in February last year.

The group claims that a request under the Freedom of Information Act to access the documentation has gone unanswered.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunting-Leigh-Van-Bryan-UK-tourists-arrested-destroy-America-Twitter-jokes.html

#10 - i did read the original daily mail piece. that led me to be incredulous in the first place. it sounded to me like van bryan got held up and denied entry for something else, then was able to talk up the tweets which were mentioned on his form to the Daily Mail who then ran a very sensationalist article that would get it a lot of attention.

it never answers the question of how the DHS was able to link the twitter account to an actual person living in another country. or why he was even applying for a visa in the first place.

maybe it did go down exactly as described, which as i said, would be a pathetic shame. but the only information right now is coming from the detained tourists and the british tabloid they spoke to. i’d like to find out more the incident before making too much of a big deal over it.

Tango, you have the jist of it.

Outcry over it is for two to three main reasons, as far as I can tell

1) that the USA are using the Extradition Act / Treaty, which is essentially for anti terrorism purposes, to try and extradite for an act; not deemed illegal in the UK; not relating to terrorism

2) that the British courts would allow the extradition to go ahead

3) that the current coalition government has not done anything to make changes to the Extradition Act to strengthen protection of British Citizens

#11: If the tweeter has their real full name, photo and nationality in their profile (as appears to be the case here) then it’s not rocket science to link the account to a person. 

The DHS paperwork (are you suggesting it might be a forgery?) answers some of your questions: They were seeking admission under the Visa Waiver Program for tourists.  The tweets are the only subject of the interrogation that is noted. 

I guess you could argue that there could be some other smoking gun found in the additional (unshown) charge sheet pages, but the newspaper must have had access to those since the article quotes from them.

Bruce Schneier writes on security and has a lot to say about the TSA and DHS. This is my favorite recent post:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/01/the_tsa_proves.html

#13 - still dont find it credulous that an irish guy can make a tweet, and in two weeks the DHS will have matched it to a passport and have it flagged so that when he lands in the US they will detain him. maybe they are that efficient, but i suspect that was something else that had his profile flagged first that was not disclosed in the article besides the tweets.

the forms they show say that it is continued. why is it hard to believe that the daily mail knew that maybe they were detained first because he had a prior felony but didnt report it because someone being denied entry to the US for that is not a story, but someone being denied entry for joking on twitter is? its not as if british tabloids are paragons for journalistic integrity. i see no reason to believe this 100% until i hear the other side of it. which most likely never come out, so i remain nonplussed.

15: No sophisticated efficiency is necessary.  Just crude name matching.  Why are so many innocent people harassed for having names in common with someone on a watch list?

More U.S.S.A goings on:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/house-republicans-order-j_n_1246971.html

ok, so DHS is monitoring tweets. i dont doubt that. and “destroy america” is a flagged phrase on twitter. and so two weeks ago the DHS knew that @BryanLeigh has tweeted a flagged phrase. i get that. but now anytime a foreigner comes through customs with the names Bryan and Leigh on their passport they are denied entry until they can prove that they didn’t make those tweets? or did the DHS know specifically that it was the Irish Bryan Van Leigh who did it? if i go on twitter right now, call myself JohnSmith264528 and tweet “I’m going to destroy america!” the next time a john smith from australia tries to visit the US he’s going to get detained until he can prove that wasn’t him?

again, i suppose it’s possible that there is nothing else to the detention and deporting except the offending tweets, and that would be an abysmal state of affairs. but i still suspect there is more to this story than the Daily Mail is reporting.

No one else finds it troubling that the government is monitoring social networking sites?

This “story” was debunked two days ago. Someone - probably one of their friends as a joke - called the LAX tipline about these two.  Reading between the lines, they were probably refused entry for another reason that was learned after further investigation. Likely criminal convictions in the UK, which is a usual reason for denial.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/30/u-k-tourists-deported-due-to-tweet-about-destroying-america/

As should be well-known to people by now, don’t take British tabloids seriously.

#20 - i just saw today’s follow up to that forbes post you linked to

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/31/call-to-lax-tipline-flagged-u-k-tourists-tweets/

in which a security expert explains just how implausible it would be for the DHS to use twitter as a means to track and flag tourists and bar them entry to the US. so pretty much what i suspected.

While I have no interest in this case, US border control officials have in my lifetime always—always—acted like apparatchiks in a bad cold-war agitprop piece.  While I have many anecdotes (my folks are immigrants, so I flew back to the old country a lot until the last of my grandparents died), my favorite two are:

One, a customs official interviewed me for one hour, instead of the twenty seconds attention given the rest of the plane, because I dared to ask why she was asking me all these questions.  I wasn’t even a jerk about it, I just asked why.

I was eleven years old.

Two, the INS (now ICE) held overnight for deportation two cousins of my father’s in Chicago.  They had round trip tickets to Hawaii, and were just changing planes.  As best we can tell, the INS was going to deport them because country girls from Austria couldn’t possibly be going on an actual vacation to Hawaii.

It took phone calls from the Consulate General and (probably the one that did it) a Chicago Tribune reporter requesting comment to get them released to continue their trip.

Brezhnev-era border control in the East Bloc was friendlier than the US border control has ever been.

If he had criminal convictions in the UK—which is never suggested anywhere in the Forbes articles-- wouldn’t that be a matter of public record?  Especially for convictions that rise to the applicable standard ("moral turpitude”; generally crimes that are punishable by 5+ years of jail time)?  Why would the formal interrogation report focus on tweets?

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The late Senator Ted Kennedy was famously detained at airports multiple times because his name matched a suspected Irish Republican Army member (some accounts suggested that his politics may have landed him on an IRA database of supporters that was seized).

The mis-identification problem is so prevalent that “redress numbers” are used now to help limit repeated bogus detentions.

#23. I have no idea how easy it is to find out whether someone has criminal convictions in the UK or Ireland or wherever else these persons may have been. If someone actually cared about this story, I imagine they could figure that out. Seems like a waste of time to me. I just posited that as one usual instance for refusal. There are many others. In any event, you should read the rest of the statute because the standard is not just crimes of moral turpitude.

As for the interrogation report focusing on the tweets, you first assume that what is shown is actually the report, which is something I would never assume with British tabloids. Second, it’s page one of a multi-page report. There’s another post on this site about using selective information.

#23 - i guess we know of some great ways to prank people then. wait until theyre going on a trip and then swipe their phone so you can tweet from their account about how theyre going to destroy the country theyre traveling to. then tip off the customs officials. vacation ruined!

#24: The other reasons for denial of entry include disease, prior visa over-stays, overly frequent visits, or false intentions / statements.  In every one of those cases, I would expect those specifics (not the tweets) to be the first topic of any interrogation.

So we’re pretty much down to hanging this whole line of reasoning on the premise that the tweeter and/or paper forged a DHS legal document which includes the tweeter’s fingerprints and personal information (including his DOB).

------

If someone actually cared about this story, I imagine they could figure that out. Seems like a waste of time to me.

That’s exactly the “it doesn’t affect me” mentality that can serve to enable extremely troubling, abusive practices.  And some day it may affect you or someone you care about.

#26. This is why one should read statutes. One other way to be denied entry for criminal convictions is having two or more criminal convictions with sentences adding up to 5 or more years.

And my attitude isn’t “it doesn’t affect me”. It’s “it’s a story cooked up by a British tabloid”. I guess I should also question whether the government is holding E.T. prisoner in a cell beneath the Federal Reserve.

Let’s see some of the headlines on the Daily Mail’s site. We’ve got “The black cat born with TWO faces (does that mean he’s got 18 lives?)” and “‘Lady Gaga’s success is down to yoga’: Singer’s private teacher reveals secret to fame is Bikram” and “‘I’m a Bigorexic’: Champion female bodybuilder is hooked on working out… and won’t stop until she weighs 20 STONE”.

#26 - yeah good point. no way they could ever photoshop that document. it has a thumbprint on it and everything.

good thing we have the british tabloids on our side. i’d hate to have my vacation, or someone’s vacation who i care about, ruined by some ill advised tweets and unchecked abusive practices.

When there have been inaccurate rumors or media reports (or even accurate reports that they felt were misleading) TSA and DHS haven’t generally been shy about rebutting them.

The Forbes article cited here, after getting comment from a DHS spokesperson, still concludes:

“Of course, at the end of the day, the two were banned from the country because of joking tweets.”

BTW, just the possibility that this *could* happen to someone purely on the basis of an anonymous tip and clearly misconstrued tweets is pretty disturbing to me. 

That ultimately has nothing to do with British tabloids.  I want a government that can state on the record that this would never be acceptable operating procedure.

#30 - agreed.

also it will be great if they could settle the issue about the number of lives cats born with 2 heads have.

I guess nobody heard of In-Q-Tel, which is the venture fund of the CIA, investing in social-media tracking and monitoring tools.

The DHS has publicly stated that it routinely monitors users on Twitter and Facebook. The agency “plans” to create fictitious user accounts and scan posts of users for key terms. User data will be stored for five years and shared with other government agencies. EPIC has filed a lawsuit after the DHS failed to reply to an April 2011 FOIA request.  Good luck.

I must say I am surprised about the surprise.  Where has everyone been the last 10 years.  Heck, the President has announced his right to assassinate any American without due process if he deems them a threat.

Americans and most people really, are easily terrorized, and willingly surrender their rights to government to “keep them safe”.  The country has operated under a state of emergency since 1933 and various events such as Great Depression, WWII, Cold War, 9/11 and various financial crisis, security threats, health threats, etc has led to a virtual erosion of civil liberties, even if only on paper for most Americans, at least at this moment in time. 

Every disaster or threat leads to new regulations and laws, with a budget to fight it (those body scanners are turning someone a good profit), paid for by citizens with new taxes, debt or restrictions (hand over your bottled water).  Some call it Disaster Capitalism.

And as America goes, so goes the rest of the world.  Bottled water is being surrendered at airports all over the world.  Body scans to follow (why do I still have to remove my belt despite a body scan and pat down?  I am afraid to ask when being checked for fear of being detained).

#29. I would have thought someone so very concerned about troubling, abusive practices would realize that it is rather illegal for US Customs and Border Protection to comment specifically on individuals denied entry into the United States and returned to their country of origin. I rather doubt the Forbes blogger knows anything more than the statement he was given, as I would consider it unlikely that this spokesperson would tell Forbes one thing and not tell MSNBC. Particularly when the question regarding the reason for denial was asked directly. You should applaud CBP for their adherence to privacy laws.

We’ll probably never know the reason(s); the individuals denied entry may not necessarily know it themselves. While they may have been questioned initially because of this (apparently baseless) anonymous tip, if the individuals are to be believed, they were interviewed extensively.  Doing something silly like telling the truth about past drug use and an intention to use drugs in the future is enough to get yourself sent back. Particularly if you are, say, less than respectful to the interviewers and they decide to interpret the laws and regulations strictly and as they are written.

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10272373-tourists-banned-from-us-over-twitter-jokes?chromedomain=overheadbin

@32

you seem concerned/upset by the fact that the DHS (or any other govt agency) would monitor social media.  can you explain this to me? i am not sure i see what the problem is here, assuming of course that they are not accessing private data.  people need to realize the implications of the data that they choose to broadcast to the world.  and if the agencies are making fake accounts, the burden is still on the user to judge whether or not to friend/follow that account.

to me it would seem almost irresponsible for these agencies to not take advantage of that wealth of information.  especially when it is information that i could go and access too if i happened to care at all.

33: Privacy rules haven’t stopped DHS in the past from aggressively “clarifying” it’s procedures and debunking possible “wrong impressions” when individuals have made their experiences public.

Furthermore, I suspect that calling a forgery a forgery or a hoax a hoax doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy either, since DHS has actually done that in the past too.

This what happens when Republicans get too much power.

MGL- Denmark. Or just somewhere in Scandinavia. They’re the happiest countries in the world, have the best education systems, have an egalitarian society without extreme poverty, and their press freedom is among the best in the world. Oh, and no open container laws.

Denmark has been my go-to joke “I’m moving here if (insert candidate X) gets elected President” place for a while, and sadly, it’s seemed less and less like a joke recently.

"Denmark has been my go-to joke “I’m moving here if (insert candidate X) gets elected President” place for a while, and sadly, it’s seemed less and less like a joke recently.”

Sounds like we are on the same page, unless by Candidate X you mean a Dem!

I have a very good friend from Denmark, so I know a lot about it. Too cold. And of course the taxes are very high. Can’t do and get a lot of stuff there that you can do and get here. Lots of Danes buy electronics over here when they visit, I guess because the tariffs on imports are so high there.  Cars also cost a fortune among other things.

What about Spain? I have had my eye on Costa Del Sol. Pretty warm, lots of golf course, nice scenery, and I can speak the language…

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Thanks. Feel free to stop by for any reason!

MGL, you’re thanking a robot

Seriously, it’s just comment spam for SEO value.  I’d delete the comment because that kind of stuff bugs the heck out of me… but up to you of course.