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As much as I’ve always loved to come to the US and as fascinating as some US conferences are (e.g. StrangeLoop might be my personal fav) – no international attendee or speaker can be expected to put up with this ever expanding amount of bullshit anymore.

If the science community or “our industry” really want to encourage and unlock the magic of diversity we need new venues for a whole lot of conferences either in Canada or the EU.

8 comments

Oh I think you will find the EU is not far behind and in some area's further ahead in this orwellian future. Germany for example on verge of rolling out facial ID recognition and trialing currently: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security/german-p...

This with data retention laws imposed upon ISP's, they already have all your data, so no need to ask.

You are right, it's getting worse everywhere - it has been so for far too long.

That said, I can't imagine a more unwelcoming tourist entry into a "western" country than the US at this point in time.

It isn't getting worse everywhere - that's just defeatist attitude.

For example, the EU data retention directive that Zenst mentions was struck down last year; the EU is adopting a new personal data protection regulation next year that will significantly improve personal data handling; the EU introduced the right to be forgotten, etc.

The EU data retention directive was invalidated last year as overreaching. Several countries still have national laws on their books that require data retention but those won't stand up when challenged.

The law is obviously offensively bad, and I do not support (dual citizen to the US), but I think the bigger problem here is any country can do this now -- and any of them that can get away with doing this will do it. The real solution is get the fuck off facebook.

By this logic, when this administration starts discriminating people who are into programming ("they cause cyber terrorism," might be the excuse) we shall all "get the fuck off programming"?

In many cases social media accounts are like public records of your contacts. You're already giving your data to those companies and anyone who pays them to access it (depending on the TOS of the platform).

It feels different to me than "programming". But, I wouldn't be surprised if they checked my Github account or something... And if I don't want them to see my Github account, then yeah maybe I shouldn't have a public Github account.

i follow your logic but respectively disagree - there are so many good reasons delete your facebook account at this point - and lets face it, when they say "social media" they mean facebook

They probably also care about the videos you watch, the keyword you search, the private conversations you have on chat apps.

Not when you say "I don't have a Facebook account" and promptly escorted into secondary inspection area at the border for more scrutiny.

I think your logic is flawed, Facebook is nothing more than a self maintained state surveillance dossier that naive fools have been tricked into participating in. As Zuckerberg famously said early on "I can't believe these idiots are giving me all their information" (paraphrased). No dictator or other authoritarian regime of all of history could have even ever dreamed in their wildest state of imagination that people would willingly participate in such a self-surveillance system. It's really rather bonkers and only a symptom of the human detachment from reality that surrounds them.

Don't forget the CIAs venture capital firm helped many of today's tech giants getnoff the ground, including Facebook. Along with NSLs, upstream node collection, and the history of The Company using famous actors/CEOs, Its worth remebering Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, are all much less independent private companies and are much more useful tools for the state.

The real solution is to finally realise what these dynamics have slowly been amounting to for about 16 years now – a "death by a thousand cuts":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality

"any of them that can get away with doing this will do it"

I'd hope some or even many countries would opt out of these restrictions as an incentive to tourism and business.

The intelligentsia of the east has always run west away from totalitarian regimes and these regimes have stood the test of time. All of central Asia has been controlled by totalitarian regimes since before democracy was invented. If the US becomes totalitarian, then where will the intelligentsia go? Is there going to be an ever shrinking realm of freedom? Perhaps north west Europe will be the last refuge? Hardly seems to be an appealing thought.

This story is specific to "immigrants", not tourists.

if i understand correctly, your solution is to erase your public social media footprint

wouldn't that be a form of free speech suppression?

Erm, did you read the article? Visiting the country != immigration.

It's also implemented for visitors, in fact earlier than this.

http://fortune.com/2017/06/01/u-s-border-social-media/

don't forget the classic:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Buntin...

To be honest, as an English person, I'd be quite happy for the US to have kept both of them along with anyone else who uses "destroy" in that context.

So if you decide to visit to do harm you're not subjected to the search, only if you plan to stay and contribute? That sounds silly, right? Thankfully it's an easy fix now the tech is in place -- you just flip the switch! Easier than boiling a frog!

IIRC they had (non mandatory) questions about social media accounts already on the ESTA form last time I flew into NYC in January.

If its not mandatory then whats the problem?

The problem is, as a traveler, I now have to choose between my privacy and reduced chance of getting entry into U.S.

"The U.S. government will ask all citizens on re-entry their last IRS tax filings. Optional. "

It is becoming mandatory.

It is also being extended to legal aliens and citizens (naturalized - like me)

“Don’t you really have no Facebook account, Sir?”

It's really only a matter of time. It's already an 'optional extra' on the visa waiver.

Australia is nice this time of year. Why not send a conference or two down under?

Smart, well educated individuals, all motivated by the perpetual drive for international relevance and the existential dread of possibly being taken by the wildlife at any moment.

Australia has similarly draconian monitoring of it's citizens. The whole blow-up about metadata in the US surprised me, because I was already conditioned to believe the government was reading all our actual messages. A couple of years ago there was a violent confrontation between white Australians and Lebanese, and part of the news cycle around that was the media nonchalantly reporting on the contents of text message conversations the white supremacists in Australia were having. Australia probably has an even broader reaching surveillance state, but Australian media never reports on it because the Australian people and its government have a far less antagonistic relationship than that of US citizens and the government.

>Australia is nice this time of year. Why not send a conference or two down under?

Because it's even worse in this regard.

>Smart, well educated individuals

Well, let's not generalize.

> Because it's even worse in this regard.

Do you have some stories of conference speakers or attendees being treated this way in Australia?

Honest answer? It's very far for pretty much everybody not in AUS/NZ

12h if you're in the West Coast, a shorter trip if you're in Japan and that's "the closest" most people will be

Well, Elon did announce his BFR Earth to Earth solution in Adelaide, South Australia, which resides near the bottom of the continent. Perhaps he had a market segment in mind.

from what i can tell, this would not apply to you (conference attendees / speakers), but even though they said immigrants seeking visa, perhaps they could mean a broader set of visas.

I couldnt tell from reading the article if they meant viewing their wall or private messages. Did anyone have any clarification on that?

It really is about time some international conferences, and StrangeLoop is a good example, just upped sticks and moved north of the border.

Well if you are not attempting to stay here then (if I understand this correctly) you will not need to release your social media information.

Edited/removed as I made an incorrect point

Reread the article. You are wrong.

At this point in time i still wonder why people physically move from one part of the world to another to hear somebody speak. What is wrong with live streaming? (and record, download and re-play)

At the next conference you attend I encourage you to mainly focus on the people there, rather than the talks – more often than not, the topics of those talks will come up in even more interesting discussions anyways :)

Not sure about others but I don't go to conferences mainly to hear somebody speak but everything around, meeting people and hearing all wonderful ideas from random people and more.

So live streaming doesn't really solve that.

That’s true for the talks, but there’s a lot going on around the talks.

That might be, and some might run back to the hotel room right after the seminar/conference is finished. Though primary reason of traveling for a conference is to hear that person speak at the conference, anything extra before/after talks that happens is bonus, not primary reason of travel.

People enjoy a) traveling, b) interaction, c) face to face meetings, d) networking, e) break off from normal routine, f) the ability to ask the speaker questions / talk after/before the event, g) free gimmicks like event t-shirts.

I don't know but in my world, a preference is not a requirement. I prefer to watch a movie in the cinema with uber sound systems etc. But i can watch the movie perfectly fine at home.

All points besides a, which is not really an argument but the point of discussion, can be done remotely, if you have to travel to a conference. It might not have your preference, but it certainly is possible and i think comparing travelling half the world, to hear somebody speak vs starting a livestream or recorded version of a conference at your convenience at home, i know what i prefer. Sure its not as interesting on birthday parties or similar, to say you watched a conference livestream vs i was in Tokyo over the weekend for a conference.

I would guess mostly because of "networking" -- the fancy word for meeting people, chatting up about common interests (which is very likely the case since you're both at the same conference), and maybe making potential business contacts for the future.