There are a lot of comments here about the importance of free speech. I value free speech very highly, so I will practice some here. I will see if an attempt to write a possibly disagreeing opinion here will be responded to by thoughtful comments, as I expect, and urge HN participants to consider some other points of view besides those expressed by the majority here.
As I noted in my last comment on this incident, in another HN thread,
"a foreign national kidding around about a trip in which he or she will 'destroy America' shouldn't be surprised to be questioned about that by law enforcement officers." It is routine national policy in every country of the world to give border officers full discretion to deny entry to any foreign person, even if the foreign person has a visa issued by the host country's overseas diplomatic officials, and even if the foreign person comes from a country with a visa-free entry treaty with the host country (as the United Kingdom has with the United States). A general policy of visa-free entry or routine issuance of visas to visitors who meet defined criteria does not remove an immigration officer's general discretion to deny entry to any foreign visitor, without further legal recourse.
I encourage Hacker News participants to check the law of the country where they live, whatever country that is. Very likely you will find that immigration officials have exactly this kind of discretion, unreviewable discretion, in your country. A foreign visitor who kids around about engaging in any kind of illegal or bothersome activity, even the kind of activity that many loyal citizens of the host country engage in, is at risk of being denied entry in pretty much every country in the world. The way to test how often this kind of rare edge case occurs in other countries is to try the experiment--tweet about the fun you desire to have in the next country you plan to visit, in the same terms, and see what happens. Probably most British visitors to the United States who previously have tweeted similar messages have been allowed entry to the United States, without anyone taking notice of the tweets. And probably on some future occasion someone else may tweet the same kinds of statements, and not be detected. But try it yourself if you wonder what other countries might do. In general, each country of the world gives its immigration officers unreviewable discretion to deny entry to foreign persons for any reason or no reason at all.
On the broader issue of whether or not this lone incident is a sign that the United States no longer cherishes freedom of speech, no of course not. Here we all are talking about this incident, with many criticisms of the United States being openly expressed. I daily exercise my right as an American to criticize government officials at all levels in the United States. I will keep right on doing that no matter what I hear about practices by immigration officers at United States borders.
Moreover, the United States continues to enjoy substantial net immigration and a large number of asylum claims by people from other countries who expect to enjoy more freedom once they start living in the United States than they did in the countries of their birth. Here in the United States, I can disagree with you, and you can disagree with me, and we can be civil about that, and not be afraid of secret police or private militia hit squads coming after us if we express a controversial opinion. Other countries also provide the benefit of free speech, and people who are concerned about recent trends in United States law are correct to be wary about granting the government intrusive authority to monitor the private conversations of people in the United States. But the reported incident, while perhaps an excessive response based on the facts reported so far, does not suggest that the United States has lost free speech, nor indeed does it even suggest that the border response to such a tweet is a response that would not be found at other national borders.
The continued interest here on HN in founder's visas and in other efforts to loosen immigration requirements is evidence that there are still plenty of people around the world of high levels of education who would be happy to settle in the United States and pursue their careers there. There are still people who advocate that all of the tens of thousands of university students from dozens of countries who attend undergraduate or graduate classes in the United States should gain residence visas when they gain their degrees. There is plenty of demand to reside in the United States, to visit the United States for tourism or for business, and to invest in the United States. That is not going away any time soon.
Believing in free speech, I welcome your kind comments to this comment, and will read them with care to see if I can improve my thinking on this issue.
I am sensitive, having insensitively used the term "The Republic" to refer to Ireland when speaking to a British customs agent, to your argument regarding sovereignty and the necessary discretion of government officials. I simply didn't know the implications. Similarly, a stated intent, not a joke, to engage in an activity that, while indiscreet and boorish in some circles, is not reviled as in our Puritanical society should not serve to permanently discredit a visitor to the US. It is a pernicious scale to employ. And it isn't just visitors to the US who need to find concern in this story. Am I to expect that all of my public statements from now on, guided by whatever level of maturity, sobriety, or proclivity, are to be recorded, permanently and used to determine which airspaces I may traverse? Should my intended audience include every customs official I may ever encounter? Puritanical, indeed. Jesus and the border patrol are watching! You trumpet our political freedoms, casting aspersions on the domestic political establishment. Talk trash about the Her Majesty and then go to England. Speak about religion or sexuality without offending anybody, and expect to travel the other way around the globe to reach your destination. A panopticon such as this equates every iota of common speech with taunting an official.
The argument that we're still a popular place to visit rings hollow. Greece is a popular place to visit, but that shouldn't server as an endorsement of their horribly broken bureaucracy.
Say what?! It is the UK Ireland Act (1949) that recognises "Republic of Ireland" as a name for the Irish state. Under Irish Law, "Republic of Ireland" is only a description, and the official name (in English) is Ireland. The only insensitivity (and ignorance) in this instance is that of the the UK border agent.
I cannot disagree with your main argument however.
As I was later to understand, "The Republic" is slang that indicates a sympathy for Republicans, Irish Catholics, some of whom rather notoriously caused "trouble" for the Crown and it's subjects. The offences were mutual. Open hostility relatively rare now, but there is still a lot of animosity and caution reserved for suspected troublemakers of any stripe. As an American, I am certain I was treated deferentially. I had, in effect, just given the agent the finger.
Leaving aside your rather ill-informed history lesson - indicates to whom?
As a British born non-catholic who has lived and worked in both Ireland and the UK, I can assure you are over-stating its meaning, except perhaps to practicing loyalists in Northern Ireland. The accepted vernacular there as a matter of practical sensitivity to the majority is "Southern Ireland" or "The South" and "GB" for the part of the UK that excludes NI.
To suggest that it is generally offensive (as in "giving the finger") is, well, offensive.
That other countries practice similar, or worse, exclusionary methods is irrelevant. That people within America still have the right to freely express themselves is, I think, a less interesting takeaway from this snafu.
More interesting is that this sort of behavior is emblematic of major government failure: a failure of policy, of implementation, and of accountability.
From a policy standpoint, we've had roughly 24 terrorists or 3 trips attempt to cause harm to US aircraft in the last decade. In that time, we've hand hundreds of millions of air travelers or millions of trips. And yet, our policy is to treat every single traveler as a potential terrorist.
We've implemented these policies poorly as well. We've spent billions of dollars on what amounts to security theater. We've deputized some of the least capable members of our society, giving them the power to screw with customers more or less without reprisal. We've made travel, which many people viewed with joy a short time ago, a massive pain in the ass. But apart from that, we've also given untold agencies untold power to surveil, apparently, the entire world.
Eventually, and this didn't take long, those in charge of the theater begin to believe they were on the righteous path. As long as your behavior can be cloaked in "security" or "doing what's best for the country", you've essentially got a free pass. And so, 80 year old women get pulled out of line to have their colostomy bags inspected. Senators must be randomly patted down. We get decisions like this.
And, that “security” cloak never gets lifted. When bad decisions are made, as I would argue was made here, we don't hear "Ya, we overreacted. Sorry." Instead, they double down. They cry Security! and spew politicized bullshit, the kind that would make Orwell cringe:
"it tried to maintain a balance between 'securing our borders while facilitating the high volume of legitimate trade and travel that crosses our borders every day.'"
The trouble is, many Americans seem to have no problem with this. Such a minor hassle is worth it, even if it increases safety an imperceptible amount. The problem, in the short term isn’t devastating either. We get a few less Mr. Van Bryan’s visiting each year. But in the long term, all societies whose citizens cede too much power to those who claim to be acting to protect those citizens fail. Usually in the most unpleasant ways.
My only comment/question would be regarding your last comment. How can you be so sure that the desire for people to immigrate to the US "is not going away any time soon"?
Furthermore, how can you be sure that the mix of people desiring to immigrate will continue to be favorable to the economic growth of the US? I think I could take your points about the founder's visa and encouraging university students to stay and spin them as a negative indicator. Are these efforts to correct an inherent imbalance in immigration policy, or a reaction to the growing trend for foreign entrepreneurs and students to return to their home countries to set up shop?
Unskilled laborers will naturally migrate to where the jobs are, and the economic excesses of the US will ensure that demand for unskilled labor remains for many decades to come. The engine of the economy, however, is driven by entrepreneurship and inventiveness. I think that the sorts of people who bring these skills to the US are more likely to be sensitive to overbearing regulations and overeager policing.
I'm just an anecdotal data point here, but I was likely going to travel to the US from work sometime this year. That's not going to happen anymore. Because of various political moves, extradition requests, etc. which happened lately, I no longer feel comfortable visiting US. That also triggered some talks with my friends, from which they learned a couple of uncomfortable facts... This will have next to no real effect of course, but I'd be surprised if I was the only one rejecting to travel there for similar reasons.
Quite honestly the thing I find most deeply offensive about this move is the gratuitous stupidity of it.
Who believes terrorists would post their intentions on twitter? and even if they did, all they need to do to avoid this ridiculous farce is swap out a word: psst 'engage in revelry' = 'destroy'
There is no trade off between security and freedom taking place here, there is just a parody acting out that not only fails to make anybody any safer, it causes all reasonable people to blanch in shame.
Firstly, just because the border officers have final say on denying entry doesn't mean that they don't get policy guidance from their superiors. Since we can't see what that policy guide says, we have to choose between forbearing to criticize at all, and criticizing based on the results we observe.
Secondly, I would argue that both (i) a "reasonable" country (as defined in my imagination) and (ii) many actual countries simply would not search for that tweet, cross-correlate it with an arriving passenger and use it as a reason to question them extra on arrival.
My only real evidence for (ii) is that only the US has passenger manifests of arriving airliners sent to them in advance so that they can be checked against watch lists. (Other countries do this if/when they make you apply for a visa, but the US does it dynamically when you get on the plane even if they don't require you to have a visa.)
Note that in regard to the US, many foreign visitors do not need a visa if they enter through the visa waiver program (90 days duration, tourist classification only, no extension).
Visa Waiver (ESTA) and Advance Passenger Information (API/APIS) are not the same thing. Even with a visa waiver you (via the airline) must provide API before check-in, and may subsequently be denied boarding, denied entry at your destination, or in extreme cases return of your flight to it's origin mid-flight.
My point was that with VWP the US doesn't have the opportunity to do an entrance check at the time of visa issue, as there isn't one. This covers most of Western Europe, Australia, NZ, and Japan AFAIK.
I did some quick searching to see what the obverse situation is -- what countries US nationals can visit without first obtaining a visa. There's no convenient listing I could find.
And this doesn't mean I find the US APIS to be an unordained Good Thing[tm]. Some border controls are necessary, yes. However US immigration policy has more than a small amount of irrationality to it. And pretty much always has (Asian Exclusion Act, etc.).
Right, citizens of most "western" countries can visit other such countries (typically for tourism or business up to 3 months) without a visa. And until APIS became technologically viable, "without a visa" meant that the host country was pretty much waiving the opportunity to perform a background check on you.
But these days, the US runs some kind of check on everyone. So that's the equivalent of being one of those "unfriendly" countries that requires visas for all noncitizens. (I guess Australia does too, since it requires non-visa visitors to apply in advance for something called an Electronic Travel Authority.)
> a foreign national kidding around about a trip in which he or she will 'destroy America' shouldn't be surprised to be questioned about that by law enforcement officers.
I don't see why saying something that has a threatening meaning shouldn't attract interest by law enforcement officials.
Take the other fork of possibility: If Foreign National (FN) had joked about it, been ignored, then blew something up, there would be an unbelievable outcry. It would - in my honest opinion - have been a terrible lapse in judgment by the officer not to have followed up on such a joke, and the office would not have fared well in the ensuing hue and cry.
Which is exactly, of course, why we get such overreaction. Like referees, those in charge of security are only noticed when they do a poor job. Except, unlike referees, there is absolutely no penalty for false positives. They will always err on the side of safety, no matter how remote the probability of harm, because they can never punished for the unseen.
Even when they get it wrong, even when what they initially thought might be a threat turned out to be no threat at all, there is no incentive to admit fault. So this aggressive attitude amplifies, until at some point, it deafens.
As I noted in my last comment on this incident, in another HN thread,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529500
"a foreign national kidding around about a trip in which he or she will 'destroy America' shouldn't be surprised to be questioned about that by law enforcement officers." It is routine national policy in every country of the world to give border officers full discretion to deny entry to any foreign person, even if the foreign person has a visa issued by the host country's overseas diplomatic officials, and even if the foreign person comes from a country with a visa-free entry treaty with the host country (as the United Kingdom has with the United States). A general policy of visa-free entry or routine issuance of visas to visitors who meet defined criteria does not remove an immigration officer's general discretion to deny entry to any foreign visitor, without further legal recourse.
I encourage Hacker News participants to check the law of the country where they live, whatever country that is. Very likely you will find that immigration officials have exactly this kind of discretion, unreviewable discretion, in your country. A foreign visitor who kids around about engaging in any kind of illegal or bothersome activity, even the kind of activity that many loyal citizens of the host country engage in, is at risk of being denied entry in pretty much every country in the world. The way to test how often this kind of rare edge case occurs in other countries is to try the experiment--tweet about the fun you desire to have in the next country you plan to visit, in the same terms, and see what happens. Probably most British visitors to the United States who previously have tweeted similar messages have been allowed entry to the United States, without anyone taking notice of the tweets. And probably on some future occasion someone else may tweet the same kinds of statements, and not be detected. But try it yourself if you wonder what other countries might do. In general, each country of the world gives its immigration officers unreviewable discretion to deny entry to foreign persons for any reason or no reason at all.
On the broader issue of whether or not this lone incident is a sign that the United States no longer cherishes freedom of speech, no of course not. Here we all are talking about this incident, with many criticisms of the United States being openly expressed. I daily exercise my right as an American to criticize government officials at all levels in the United States. I will keep right on doing that no matter what I hear about practices by immigration officers at United States borders.
Moreover, the United States continues to enjoy substantial net immigration and a large number of asylum claims by people from other countries who expect to enjoy more freedom once they start living in the United States than they did in the countries of their birth. Here in the United States, I can disagree with you, and you can disagree with me, and we can be civil about that, and not be afraid of secret police or private militia hit squads coming after us if we express a controversial opinion. Other countries also provide the benefit of free speech, and people who are concerned about recent trends in United States law are correct to be wary about granting the government intrusive authority to monitor the private conversations of people in the United States. But the reported incident, while perhaps an excessive response based on the facts reported so far, does not suggest that the United States has lost free speech, nor indeed does it even suggest that the border response to such a tweet is a response that would not be found at other national borders.
The continued interest here on HN in founder's visas and in other efforts to loosen immigration requirements is evidence that there are still plenty of people around the world of high levels of education who would be happy to settle in the United States and pursue their careers there. There are still people who advocate that all of the tens of thousands of university students from dozens of countries who attend undergraduate or graduate classes in the United States should gain residence visas when they gain their degrees. There is plenty of demand to reside in the United States, to visit the United States for tourism or for business, and to invest in the United States. That is not going away any time soon.
Believing in free speech, I welcome your kind comments to this comment, and will read them with care to see if I can improve my thinking on this issue.