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kieran

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I kind of wondered what they must do with the ESTA data, and here's an example from the wild of its use I guess.

Having read the report I can see why an average immigration official (from any country) may well take pleasure in reducing their cockiness a bit. I'm always at my most polite when asking to visit someone's country.

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you are correct, BobD. instances such as the one that prompted this discussion are silly and frivolous, at best. particularly when so much real work need be done.

I guess this a consequence of the new inter agency intelligence sharing. Intel that never got out the intelligence communities hands before is now filtering down to the less intelligent.

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To the point that they are watching Twitter, I say so? It's public info.

If the analysis of flagged traffic doesn't run to provincial use of English language, I would be worried about what they are missing.

Excellent point. If they can't understand colloquialisms, how could they possibly catch wind of anything serious?

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Qa1rjCZxtxo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>

Edited by Jack Michaud
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From the UK to visit the US, we have to fill out advance notification through ESTA. They know we're coming. I think it's obvious what they're going to do with that information.

Tweets are publicly available, although connecting them to an individual is more complicated. Unless they posted obviously personal identifiable data in their Twitter dribble then you'd need a warrant to locate the source in the UK in the general case.

If they were thought to be a serious threat they'd have not been flying. They let them get to LAX then interviewed them.

Most of the internet "news" stories are just reporting each other, they don't have any original source information. The US Customs and Border Protection are quoted as saying: "Information gathered during this interview revealed that both individuals were inadmissible to the United States and were returned to their country of residence." and inadmissibility "could include improper travel documents, prohibited activities or intent, smuggling of contraband or prohibited goods or criminal activity or history".

So they're not backing the destroyers' story. For all we know the destroyers arrived drunk and the immigration guys didn't see the joke - all things considered I doubt they'd refrain from drinking all that free booze.

Every so often we have people joking about security; I always think they're lucky not to get killed.

"Destroy" would be used as in "I'm going to get destroyed", but not really as they used it.

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I don't doubt that the guy was pretty undesirable as well as dumb and not someone to welcome with open arms. It's just a reflection on the smarts of the TSA that he was told about monitoring the twitter feed. This is pretty minor, but it's another example of operations winning out over intelligence, and the recent (ten years) trend toward boasting about capabilities, while politicians protect their butts with public legal opinions, rather than taking responsibility as previous leaders have done.

On an economic note, I know that many Europeans are reticent about travel to the US because of mistakes under the previous administration with innocent people being interrogated, or even disappeared and ending up being tortured. This story would never have made the headlines without the chatter monitoring connection.

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it is still nice to live where one is not automatically on cctv the second they step out the front door leaving home. ....nice also to not have a social worker knock on the door when one has purchased more alcohol of late than in the past. ....the only place i've ever been stripped searched was Heathrow. (they were exceedingly polite, though) just sayin'.

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it is still nice to live where one is not automatically on cctv the second they step out the front door leaving home. ....nice also to not have a social worker knock on the door when one has purchased more alcohol of late than in the past. ....the only place i've ever been stripped searched was Heathrow. (they were exceedingly polite, though) just sayin'.

I like living without those things too :biggthump Also license plate reading cameras in police cars (and other places) linked to central computers.

Edited by BobD
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But years ago it wasn't used for rooting out people that post silly things on twitter. It was used discreetly for real intelligence work.

....the massive privatization and outsourcing of both security and intelligence work in the country...now companies like Xe need to invent "terror threats" to justify their massive governmental contracts. Robert Gates himself said there were a tremendous number of contract workers in the DoD and he didn't know what half of them were supposed to be doing....don't get me started on how private prison companies invest in lobbyists hired to fight legal reform of drug laws...

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