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[smjjames]

From a few days ago, a missed gem: US customs agents may require foreigners' social media passwords as part of vetting

"We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?" said Kelly. "If they don't want to cooperate then you don't come in."

C o o l

I had actually posted that (different link though) a whole bunch of pages back, but it was more a hypothetical thing they were considering rather than saying it out loud.

Also, what I saw wasn't that they wanted passwords, but rather they wanted the names of websites you visit (difficult to actually confirm unless you hand over browser history, but browser history can be cleared), your social media info (Facebook site, twitter handle, etc), email address, and the contacts on your phone.

While not as blatant as demanding your passwords, it still breaches a whole bunch of ethical lines and legal ones.

[Sergarr]

(Dear god, are there people who don't do that sort of thing besides grandparents?)

Given that I haven't even heard of both of these things before, I'd say yes.

[Max™]

(Dear god, are there people who don't do that sort of thing besides grandparents?)

Given that I haven't even heard of both of these things before, I'd say yes.

https://disconnect.me/freeprotection
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

[smjjames]

Regardless of whether people actually do that stuff or not, the point is that there are ways for people to hide their digital trails if they wished to, even if it's not for some nefarious reason.

Also, I'm not sure whether they're planning on doing it for ALL arrivals, which would be hell on tourism, or do it with specific individuals.

[Frumple]

Regardless of whether people actually do that stuff or not, the point is that there are ways for people to hide their digital trails if they wished to, even if it's not for some nefarious reason.

Also, I'm not sure whether they're planning on doing it for ALL arrivals, which would be hell on tourism, or do it with specific individuals.

Well, like most things cored by bigotry, ignorance, and fear, it will be done sporadically and largely capriciously, based more on the prejudices of the individuals on the ground or their superiors than anything. Don't expect too much in the way of consistency, particularly of any sort except the most shallow.

[Strife26]

Don't worry, the 4th Amendment hasn't been a thing in a few years and it's not like judges don't give warrants for everything and it's not like bad warrants aren't usable and it's not like qualified immunity gives a nice blanket of security for most of the people doing those things.


No problem here, citizen. Move along.

[Rolan7]

Hell, I can't even remember mine unless I have a keyboard right in front of me. Same problem as Max, really.

I imagine a keyboard and physically move my fingers.  Otherwise I can't get the various capitalizations.  Changing passwords sucks for a few days...

[misko27]

Now see, I have a specific modulation (made by myself, and memorized) which I put my passwords through, which makes it much easier to remember since all I need to remember is 1: The base password, and 2: any alteration to the modulation. It means I have a nice long password and there's no risk of forgetting it. Only issue is it means I have very long passwords, and it's easy to mispell or miscapitalize or what have you.

[itisnotlogical]

I have a list of memorable words (romanizations of Japanese words, titles of metal songs, nonsense phrases) that I make into acronyms and arrange in different orders with varying amounts of numbers and symbols.

[Frumple]

I... don't mention any patterns or lack thereof in my password choosing schema, personally >_>

... save for the lack of mentioning them, I guess.

[itisnotlogical]

But what if it was a clever misdirection

Now I am the cybersecurity experts

[misko27]

I... don't mention any patterns or lack thereof in my password choosing schema, personally >_>

... save for the lack of mentioning them, I guess.

I hope that you at least have a password of over 10 char and one capital, one lower case, one number, and/or one symbol. Preferably at least one of all, since it's easy to make that.

Most important rule of password building: no one knows what your password looks like. They can rely on forcing it open, or on searching through certain things which are more likely than others (i.e. going through "password", "111111", "letmein", "fuckyou", etc), or even the most likely modulations (capitalizing the first letter) but after that they can't tell "L3tmE1n!!op@#rw323" from "LetMeIn1!1!1!1!1!1". The latter is obviously a lot easier to remember, but equally difficult to crack. It's easy to pad out your password length in such a way that makes it much more secure (provided you don't pad your password in the exact same way as everyone else, otherwise they'll just start checking that; i.e if everyone added "11111" or something to their password it would be easy to check through).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Curious, how much of the current state of the Republican party can be blamed on Reagan?  If I recall correctly, he did have a heavier focus on religion, American exceptionalism, and the military than prior Republicans...

Wanted to answer this, but I've been gone all day.

Reagan captured lighting in a bottle, there's no doubt about that. He took a good situation and used his PR and acting skills to make it a great situation (in this way, he is Trump's ironic mirror). I hate Reagan, but he was competent and after a fashion rather moderate in a way that captured most of America. It pulled the country as a whole rightward since the party is much more than the President's agenda, but Reagan instituted several policies I'm sure you've heard about for how they would get a modern Republican crucified.

The trifecta of social conservatives, economic conservatives, and hawks existed before Reagan but they had much, much lower crossover. The 70s have firmly passed into "real history" now, and this is why there's all sorts of weird incongruities like far-right churches arguing for welfare (for white Christians, at any rate) and what remained of the pre-realignment Republicans' social liberalism (see Barry Goldwater, right-wing eternal champion's candor against society for mistreating gay people). And the hawks definitely had a problem in the form of literally everything about Vietnam and there being a lot of people who remembered McCarthyism for the man himself. In a way, all this lack of unity turned into a strength when Carter started to lose popularity, because they were willing to give away secondary issues in exchange for the same from the other groups, and it was Reagan who sat at the center of it.

As for the Republicans today, their biggest thing I think is trying to make that lightning strike twice. The coalition is still solid (mostly, RIP religious right, only Pence is your savior now) but the membership is facing some endemic problems. Reagan is often satirically referred to in religious terminology for a reason, the eternal issue of nobody knowing what they're actually doing means the GOP's positions are often a legacy of the things Reagan did that they liked most, because surely if they just do what he did it will work out the same way.

Of course, if Reagan were around to see Trump, it would probably be at best with the eye-twitch of can't-say-anything-but-what-the-ever-loving-fuck.

[Reelya]

Even Bush Senior has been like "I'm too old for this" ever since he was voted out.

[smjjames]

Not sure why we're discussing password methods. Not sure I'd want to discuss my password method, heh.

Anyhoo, heads may figuratively roll soon, soon being by the end of the summer probably, according to the article.

They've also been looking for a new press secretary. Not sure what that would mean for Spicer, maybe he'll go and be communications director full time, which is basically what his old job was in the RNC.