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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 03 2017, @07:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-myspace-account-please dept.

The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years.

The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period.

Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States.

Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.

Officials will request the additional information when they determine "that such information is required to confirm identity or conduct more rigorous national security vetting," a State Department official said on Wednesday.

The State Department said earlier the tighter vetting would apply to visa applicants "who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities."


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Justin Case on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:13PM (8 children)

    by Justin Case (4239) on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:13PM (#519965) Journal

    Could somebody have the balls to actually make the counterargument in public?

    Innocent until proven guilty?

    Math problem: There are one million people in Country X. There is one terrorist in Country X. What are the odds that a given person from Country X is a terrorist?

    Jeopardy question: The truth.

    Answer: What does a terrorist not tell when you ask him questions designed to determine if he is a terrorist?
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:23PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @08:23PM (#519970)

    Shouldn't it be:

    There are one million people in Country X. There is one terrorist in Country X. Your algorithm with 5% false positive rate identifies a person from Country X as a terrorist. What are the odds that the person is a terrorist?

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 04 2017, @03:06PM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday June 04 2017, @03:06PM (#520229) Journal

      Why not use for the example a much more accurate test with merely 0.05% false positive rate? And in addition, assume it never fails to recognize an actual terrorist. With those specifications, the majority of people could be easily convinced that everyone who tests positive must be a terrorist.

      Yet on someone from your Country X, the probability that someone identified by the algorithm as terrorist actually is a terrorist would still be about 0.2%.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @03:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @03:31PM (#520240)

        Yep, it is the same deal as the diagnostic medical testing scam currently being implemented.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by julian on Saturday June 03 2017, @09:34PM (3 children)

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 03 2017, @09:34PM (#519992)

    I sometimes feel like all it would take to convert a conservative into an intelligent person (at least on the issue of natsec/immigration) is to explain Bayes' theorem and the base rate fallacy.

    • (Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Saturday June 03 2017, @10:31PM (1 child)

      by Zyx Abacab (3701) on Saturday June 03 2017, @10:31PM (#520002)

      That just might work for those people who, possessing basic reasoning skills, are able to listen to and internalize explanations.

      I'm not as faithful about the rationality of most human beings—conservative or otherwise. But especially conservatives.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @02:56AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @02:56AM (#520068)

        Innumeracy is the load bearing beam of all bigotry.
        But you can't reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:37PM (#520401)

      Have you met Runaway1956?

  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday June 04 2017, @04:11AM

    by tftp (806) on Sunday June 04 2017, @04:11AM (#520093) Homepage

    There are one million people in Country X. There is one terrorist in Country X. What are the odds that a given person from Country X is a terrorist?

    It's not particularly relevant how many people are in Country X. You need to look only at those who want to visit the USA. The percentage of terrorists will be higher in that group.

    One would think that foreigners coming on a visa are not likely to be terrorists, however the 9/11 was done by them, and the shoe bomber [wikipedia.org] was one of them as well, and the underwear bomber [wikipedia.org], and a bunch more... It's a pretty straightforward act for any budding terrorist: to buy a ticket, go there and do something.