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Comment by iyulaev | Hacker News Reader

What sort of "correspondence" was this?

It was an email thread. In part of it we had given her our address and directions to our house and phone numbers on how to reach us when she got here. She had printed it out and was carrying it with her in her carry on. She allegedly fit the 'profile' and every woman travelling alone on her flight had their bags searched apparently.

Your failure to mention the printout in your original post is deceptive considering we are discussing internet "wiretapping." Of course possessions are searched upon entry, it happens every day in every country. If you're a Malaysian with a visitor visa and show up at customs in Australia with a bag full of resumes, you'll be turned away too.

You are absolutely correct, I was not thinking about that aspect of it, rather the fact that the merest implication in anything that you might be coming to the US under false pretenses (even when the authorities have all the information which clearly shows both the intent and motivation for the trip) is that they will deny you entry.

Yeah, this is something everyone needs to understand. Intent is very important when entering countries on visas. If you enter the US with a non-immigrant visa such as a visitor visa with every intent to remain in the country indefinitely, a finding of visa fraud may be made against you and you could receive a long (multi-year) bar from readmission into the US.

And even if you have no such intent. Hence the cautionary tale.

It's not deceptive - he never indicated that the correspondence was seized, illegally or surreptitiously snooped on, or even that it was electronic until the message where he clarified it was a printed email. Until then, it could have been postcards for all we knew. His point wasn't about the wiretapping or even the search of her luggage - it was on the trivial reason they sent her back. She didn't have anything like a "bag full of resumes".

Your response seems very hostile - apologies if it's not, though in that case you may want to work on your phrasing. Nobody here discloses everything perfectly all the time, and there's no indication the parent was intentionally deceiving anyone.

I think "deceptive" is a poor word choice, but it was certainly confusing.

Considering the subject of this post, the resulting discussion, and the larger discussion that's been going on across HN and much of the media and the internet for the past week, exactly how the authorities learned about what she said is critical in understanding how his point fits into the broader context. That his point was about the reason they sent her back, and not how they learned it, was not clear to me until he responded.

Yes, this is well said and what I was trying to express. "Deceptive" was a poor choice of words and I think "confusing" says it better.

The fact that the details were on hardcopy with her at the border sort of changes the context of your comment -- in a pretty important way.

Let's not conflate standard (even if objectionable) border entry policies with digital surveillance policies.

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