As a citizen of the US I hate how SCOTUS has ground the fourth amendment down to practically nothing. It's absurd how people want the constitution to only apply to citizens, when IMO what makes the US unique is that it's constitution and the rights it grants are assumed to already exist for everyone, and all it does is acknowledge and respect them and order the government to do likewise. I very much doubt this will change anytime soon. At this point I'd be all for just abolishing the DHS and everything under it -- I don't think the DHS has, since it's inception, actually done anything that protects the homeland in any capacity. I could be wrong, but if it has actually done something, it's so inconsequential that nobody talks about it.
The DHS is an umbrella organization with a huge number of parts under it, including stuff like FEMA (emergency management), customs, the coast guard, the secret service, monitoring of agricultural pathogens (formerly part of USDA), infrastructure protection (formerly part of FBI), federal law enforcement training, etc.
Abolishing "everything under" the DHS would do incredible damage. The various agencies lumped under the DHS could plausibly be re-organized again, though I'm not sure it would serve much purpose.
The biggest problem is that voters keep putting incompetent ideologues in charge of the federal government.
It's funny to me that the government was so intent on implementing a bunch of policies in the name of "efficiency" when DHS is a prime example of an inefficient agency. Why should we have an entire department dedicated to all the things it does when we could simply devolve many of the parts back to their original departments (INS back to DOJ, TSA back to DOT, etc), leaving a much more slimmed down entity (or perhaps none at all)?
Pretty much the basis for the DHS was 9/11 and terrorism, but terrorism exists in the first place due to US support for Israel and unnecessary interference in the Middle East. I don't particularly like the Islamic nations one bit, but even I see the connection of pointless US foreign policies to terrorism. Moreover, Israel is in large part militarily capable of defending itself. As such, the argument for DHS was all very circular. If you take away the circles, there's nothing left.
A country that so hates its own constitutional democracy cannot possibly support the democracy of other nations.
> terrorism exists in the first place due to US support for Israel and unnecessary interference in the Middle East.
I'm no fan of being Israel's sugar daddy but that's a gross mis-characterization of the situation.
The terrorism landscape of the 80s through 2010s has to do with the cold war, the post-colonial governments of the middle east, etc, etc. It's not a simple problem.
But yeah we should def stop supporting Israel. Not our sandbox, not our problem.
This. I will continue maintaining the opinion that the US needs to just stop supporting Israel. Seriously. Israel can fight it's own religious wars and I see no reason for us to be backing that when our very constitution says "Hey, no endorsing any religion!" If I remember right, Israel has only been able to do half the things it's done with respect to wars because we've just kept giving them weapons and supplies in the first place.
> A country that so hates its own constitutional democracy cannot possibly support the democracy of other nations.
The whole "support democracy" thing has been a ruse for a while now. Democracy has become a synonym for "human rights", and that's always been for sale. Not just in the US, either. The last 35 years have been characterized by exporting economic infrastructure from the US (and West at large) to a place that specifically does not support democracy because, hey, it's cheaper to make stuff there, and line need go up.
Hell, touching on the Middle East, the only reason the region has a seat at the international table at all is because we're willing to look past the abysmal human rights record so long as the oil stays cheap. Otherwise it's a bunch of arid land with very strict rules. Not exactly the kind of place progress and development flock to.
This isn't just an American thing, but it's certainly applicable here.
Disclaimer: not an american, but I too am a citizen of a country with borders.
As far as I understand, there's 3 categories here, citizens, non-citizen residents, and non-citizens non-residents.
The greatest spikes in constitutional and legal rights and guarantees come from being a resident. Being a citizen gives you political rights like voting and participating in the three branches sure, but for the average man it's nothing compared to the rights bestowed by simply walking down a street freely and engaging in free commerce.
This might be one of those restrictions of freedom that allow for greater freedoms to be guaranteed down the line.
Once a non citizen goes through the border, they enjoy a huge spike in rights and guarantees, if you losen the border, you dilute the rights of the residents and citizens, and you add costs (especially if you let aliens in that don't even pay taxes, enjoying only rights but no responsibility)
Ironically, if you value your freedoms as a resident, you should value restricting freedoms at the border.
Similar to how GPL briefly restricts user rights by requiring them to share the source code.
> Ironically, if you value your freedoms as a resident, you should value restricting freedoms at the border.
Can you clarify this? This doesn't make any sense to me. Freedoms like those granted in the US bill of rights are specifically designed to be universally applied regardless of citizenship status as long as you are within the geographical boundaries of the US or otherwise subject to it's jurisdiction, from my understanding.
> if you loosen the border, you dilute the rights of the residents
Strip searching tourists, interrogating them about which social media jokes they shared, or locking them up for weeks without charges and then deporting them based on nothing more than their political views does not strengthen the rights of residents.
> especially if you let aliens in that don't even pay taxes, enjoying only rights but no responsibility
If you are talking about people working in the US without visas, this is a serious misconception. The large majority of undocumented people working in the US pay the same taxes as anyone else, including income and payroll taxes (sometimes under a borrowed social security number, but sometimes with an ITIN, "individual taxpayer ID no."; the IRS is happy to take the money without worrying about immigration status), but don't reap the benefits of those. So it's rather the opposite: all the responsibilities but dramatically fewer rights. In aggregate, undocumented immigrants pay on the order of $100 billion of US taxes every year.
> As far as I understand, there's 3 categories here, citizens, non-citizen residents, and non-citizens non-residents.
The US Constitution applies to persons within US jurisdiction.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. This protection extends to individuals' persons, houses, papers, and effects.
So much freedom. It is scary to see how fast the USA is falling. But at least we now have an answer to how this all could have happened in Germany, why they didn't stop the builders of the concentration camps and how come the 'good Germans' did nothing. The price is a little steep though.
The most surprising thing to me is that people that are by most measures intelligent are falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
About half of Americans apparently don't have a passport and according to other sources I found only about <30% of Americans have travelled internationally in the past year.
So I imagine this revocation of freedom doesn't affect everyone equally. Presumably things are still mostly fine for those folks or at least they wouldn't have experienced it.
2/3 of the US population lives within the border zone (defined as within 100 miles of any border or entry point). Likewise, every major city is basically one giant border zone.
So, you could conceivably be a citizen, but CBP/ICE think you might be here illegally, so they can stop you without a warrant. How are you going to prove you're a citizen? There is no national ID, passports aren't required nor are they held by the majority of citizens, and unless something has changed, green card holders / permanent residents aren't required to carry their papers.
> So I imagine this revocation of freedom doesn't affect everyone equally. Presumably things are still mostly fine for those folks or at least they wouldn't have experienced it.
Sure, and most Americans have never had their speech censored by a government entity so getting rid of the first amendment would be fine for most people.
| only about <30% of Americans have travelled internationally in the past year
30% sounds insanely high. I suspect at least half of Americans haven't even taken a _vacation_ in the past year, let alone _travelled internationally_.
If we've learned anything from the catastrophes of the 20th century, it should be that you need to resist attacks on freedom even when they only involve smaller groups, because they will come for you eventually and by then it may be too late.
Even if I happen not to hold any particularly radical political opinions, if political speech is censored, my rights of free expression are also decreased. I may not practice a minority religion, but if the state systemically attacks one religion, my freedom of religion is also attacked.
The same is no less true for the 4th amendment; I may not be a target of the police at the current moment, but if they have the ability to search and take stuff at will, I am still less free.
This is not new and started under obama. Courts have ruled that until you pass customs you are not IN the country and thus 4th amendment does not apply. IF you are a citizen, it STILL DOES apply so they cannot force you into a search or deny you entry but they can confiscate your device.
> You can refuse, after which they are empowered to jail you and seize your belongings.
Or you can vote with your feet and stop going there.
> Sorry but I'm not seeing the connection between searching belongings whilst crossing an international border to the mass genocide of 6M people.
Nazism did not start with genocide. It ended with genocide. If your position is that as long as we haven't seen the death of 6M people then sure, you're right this isn't Nazism. But if you see the endless propaganda, the creations of large 'outgroups' and the building of actual concentration camps as possibly leading in that direction then now would be a good time to do something about it. Otherwise you'll be in a long line of people saying 'wir haben es nicht gewusst' in a couple of years. But you did.
The Federal government has always had broad lateral regulatory powers over the influx and outflux of people and goods across the border, citizens or not. The U.S. has had laws on the book to this effect all the way back to 1789. This is one of the defining features of a sovereign country. There's not a single country on planet earth that doesn't permit searches at the border.
Thank you for entirely missing the point here and illustrating mine by being one of those good people that keep on justifying what is happening by pointing to legal texts. In what world do you think it is normal for border patrol to search private devices? I've crossed in and out of former East Germany and Poland when they were still behind the iron curtain and never ever had to so much as show what I had in my pockets. By the time countries like that were examples to be held up to countries that nominally value personal freedom, freedom of expression and freedom from political and religious persecution you have to wonder if you are not in the words of Mitchell and Webb 'the baddies'.
The article doesn't say, but I wonder how many of those searches were truly at a border? For those unaware, the US defines the border as anyplace within 100 miles of a border, where international airpots are considered "the border" in addition to the actual physical border. This means something like 2/3 of US residents live "at the border" and are subject to border policies. It also means just about the entirety of every major city is also completely within the border region, even a city like Denver that is nowhere close to an actual border.
Ah, I misread (but can't edit any more)... lots of online content describing CBP/ICE operations near major international airports, which I took to mean those airports were considered borders that start a "new" 100 mile zone.
That's incorrect (per the ACLU post in the sibling comment) - it just happens that many major airports are within the 100 mile zone, so CBP/ICE can run operations there (beyond what they might run at an airport well inside the heartland).
This is bad, and the erosion of rights at the border is a serious issue of liberty in our modern age, but in many powerful ways the US is still ahead of many Western countries in terms of rights at the border, for both citizens and noncitizens.
For example, in New Zealand, you can be fined $5000 if you do not unlock your phone at the border, and later still compelled to unlock it. The US does not have any fines or laws to compel access. Of course, in any country, refusing the orders of a customs official will get you banned from the country, so that's a strong enough incentive for most tourists.
In terms of frequency: New Zealand searches 671 devices per year on 3M tourists, the US searches 46k/yr on 72M tourists, Australia 8.3k/yr on 6M tourists. That works out to 671/3M tourists is 0.02%, 46k/72M tourists is 0.06% and 8.3k/6M tourists is 0.14%.
Personally, I have fought against these searches for nearly my entire life. But to pretend that the US is on some sort of unique authoritarian slide is laughable. In the UK, today, most forms of protest are illegal. The EU has mandated cellular devices which record your car's location - on every new car. We should stand united against authoritarianism worldwide, not divided and pointing and laughing at each other in some sort of sad petty tribalism. I don't want to score cheap points on the internet, I want all people worldwide to enjoy liberty and privacy. United we stand, divided we fall.
The problem is that customs officials (and immigration officers) are granted an extreme amount of power through discretionary authority. Congress has yet to actually constrain this, and from my understanding the statutory language is so broad that determinations can be made based on literally anything. Which is why that hole "abolish ICE" got quite popular (and in many places is still around). Congress and the courts are way too deferential when it comes to these two, instead of holding them up to an incredibly high standard and giving the courts that level of discretion, which is where it belongs.
The idea is to prevent us from hitting rock bottom wrt rights by addressing abuses as they occur, not years down the line when we finally realize we no longer have rights or recourse.
Who's pointing and laughing? I don't see people in the US laughing at other countries becoming worse and I don't understand how pointing out that that the US is becoming more authoritarian leads to tribalism. Are you talking about countries outside the US?
When something like this happens in the US, the general European internet response is to shake their heads about how the US is becoming literal Nazis and Europe is superior (one example: the current most popular comment chain in this thread.)
When something like Chat Control, mandatory cellular location recording devices in cars, anti-encryption laws, elimination of the right to protest in the UK, etc happens, the American response is to shake their heads and do much the same.
I don't find that productive. That sort of division is toxic. And the broader strategy - provoking us to hate our brothers across the Atlantic - has long been a core strategy of the enemies of Western civilization.
NZ is absurd because given large numbers, someone could have genuinely forgotten their password from a night of heavy drinking, or from a password change that wasn't jotted down.
The reason why other members of the core white-anglo-saxon empire, Canada, UK, Aus, NZ have draconian surveillance systems is because it's the only way the US can "legally" hoover up a lot of this data as it's own constitution gets in the way.
A small island state in the south Pacific, close only to Aus & Antartic penguins, doesn't need or care about your data.
An outpost of the wasp empire, without constitutional impediments getting the way, ABSOLUTELY DOES want to hoover up as much data that passes through it as possible.
Which do you think NZ is? "5 eyes" has the membership it has, for a reason.
So yes, as the centre of this unholy empire, the US is involved, and responsible.
That is an inaccurate summary of the Five Eyes program / intelligence disclosures. Almost all of the bulk+targeted surveillance of US citizens was carried out by the NSA directly - they have the biggest budget, the most power and brains. Not to mention, at the time of the leaks, datacenters were generally quite centralized in the US. The sharing of non-US-citizen data, of course, was (and almost certainly still is) rampant. But sharing of US citizen data was mostly from specific operations, not ongoing programs. I would be happy to be corrected if there is a leak that I have not heard of.
This is not to justify any part of modern surveillance, which I have protested against for many years. Nor is it to dodge US responsibility.
Back to the topic we're discussing - border phone searches - the US surveils their own citizens far less than the other Anglo countries. 22% of the searches were of US citizens, while US citizens make up a bit over half of border crossings. Australian citizens make up a similar proportion of Australian border crossings, but 42% of searches were of Australian citizens. Combine that with the figures above, and an Australian citizen going home has about a 4x higher chance of getting their phone searched than an American citizen. Very roughly, 0.025% vs 0.11%.
>But to pretend that the US is on some sort of unique authoritarian slide is laughable.
It is, but maybe you just haven't been paying close enough attention. Device scanning at the border is not the only indication of this, there are many. Masked federal agents arresting anyone they want without any warrant and then sending them to prisons in foreign countries without due process, should be ringing authoritarian alarm bells for everyone, including you.
Between this, the forced social media disclosure, the alleged entry denials for memes and the detaining of people I'm just not going to go to travel to the USA anymore.
For that level of risk I'd rather go see Shenzhen frankly.
A friend asked me to visit them in the states, there is no way I’m going currently - hopefully at some point in the future. I’ve had fun there in the past under Republican administrations - so this isn’t a blue/red thing - it just doesn’t appear safe to cross the boarder right now.
Yes, it was a sad moment, years ago now, the day I realized that I'd likely never travel to China. Sadder still to acknowledge I'd feel safer doing so than entering the modern US.
It is, but it is always hard to figure out causes as there are other economic indicators and any one could also be the cause of tourism being down. Not to mention random changes in what people do. Statisticians can dig through this data and way what is signal, but so far I've only seem people quoting absolute numbers and stating whatever cause fits their pet beliefs.
Anecdotally it is, but I wondered if I could find supporting statistics. I live near Yellowstone NP which has a fair proportion of non-US visitors based on my personal observations (perhaps 25%). Stats are collected on a monthly basis. July is the most recent month with full data (obviously). Report URL below.
The report says the visit count (MAU?) in July is down 18% vs last year. Since I can't think of any local issue (fire, flood, weather...) that would have had an affect on visitor count this year vs last, that seems quite a large change. Especially when the fact that only a proportion of visitors are not from the US.
Yes it is. At least in NYC. I'm including multiple links to the data, lest folks try to claim it's some sort of TDS[0] fueled plot against our beloved and incredibly popular leader.
Same. No interest in going to that country. We'll continue travel in Canada or throughout Europe as we have over the last year and a bit. We used to go to the US to camp and on family vacations in the winter, but we skipped that last year and this year and have no plans to visit unless the situation changes.
Does using GrapheneOS guard against such searches? Also, what is the future of GrapheneOS given that Google's release of the source code for Pixel's kernel was dropped, replaced with a generic image.
To a degree. You have the duress pin, so you can wipe your phone quickly if need be. But I wouldn't call that guarding, your phone won't get searched but if TSA or ice saw you wipe your phone in front of them with a, to them, unknown feature, I doubt they'll let you enter the country.
I have always considered crossing the US border as a training for backup recovery from catastrophic failure. Wiping my phone and laptop clean has shown me where I have gaps in backup recovery.
I wonder what people these days think about the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Free travel, world peace and equality is so out of fashion that a strong majority seems to think that it is OK to restrict people's movement around the world and feel so terrified of foreigners and yet without seeing the irony the same people would talk about becoming interplanetary species. I wouldn't be surprised if the totalitarians drop the "think of the children" line and just doi everything for "national security".
I'm not fan of the trend, I'm open about it I despise travel restrictions and the security theater but I really want to hear from people who like the new way the world is headed for.
> I wouldn't be surprised if the totalitarians drop the "think of the children" line and just doi everything for "national security".
Republicans are planning to ban all pornography under the guise of "national health crisis". It's in their Project 2025 playbook which they have been following very closely.
Is it the same people who just made the Epstein files go away? I can't believe people keep falling for the same stuff all the time. Thanks god EU is incapable of acting together, some of the members still keep trying anyway.
I mean, of course, we all would like to be able to travel without restrictions ourselves. The concern for people in developed nations is what would happen to their quality of life if people from poorer nations could freely migrate.
Europe has ~750 million people, and even with current policies (where migrants might drown when their boat sinks while the Greek Coast Guard looks on and laughs) millions of migrants try to enter Europe each year.
The US has ~340 million people, and even with current policies (where children might be separated from parents and placed into cruel detention centers) millions of migrants try to enter the US each year.
If movement was free, how many hundreds of millions would pour from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia into Europe and the US? The 3+ billion who live in the tropics are only going to become more likely to try to migrate as the climate continues to warm.
What makes you think that everyone wants to come to Europe? Have you considered that instead of geofencing the non-millionaire population like cattle, maybe not bombing or couping the poor countries is a better option?
People don't actually leave the places they grow up or their families and friends to live on European food stamps.
Also, Europe tends to receive the worst people because the legal routes are closed. We end up with people who dare to go to the illegal routes for other reasons than running for their lives.
US a similar thing, instead of relying on illegal workforce just let in people from the main gates and watch out for shady types.
There are so many things that can be done to address the issues instead of dividing the world limited travel areas.
Readit News
Abolishing "everything under" the DHS would do incredible damage. The various agencies lumped under the DHS could plausibly be re-organized again, though I'm not sure it would serve much purpose.
The biggest problem is that voters keep putting incompetent ideologues in charge of the federal government.
As we're seeing with cuts to anything other than programs enabling masked, jackbooted thugs to beat/harass/disappear brown people.
A country that so hates its own constitutional democracy cannot possibly support the democracy of other nations.
I'm no fan of being Israel's sugar daddy but that's a gross mis-characterization of the situation.
The terrorism landscape of the 80s through 2010s has to do with the cold war, the post-colonial governments of the middle east, etc, etc. It's not a simple problem.
But yeah we should def stop supporting Israel. Not our sandbox, not our problem.
The whole "support democracy" thing has been a ruse for a while now. Democracy has become a synonym for "human rights", and that's always been for sale. Not just in the US, either. The last 35 years have been characterized by exporting economic infrastructure from the US (and West at large) to a place that specifically does not support democracy because, hey, it's cheaper to make stuff there, and line need go up.
Hell, touching on the Middle East, the only reason the region has a seat at the international table at all is because we're willing to look past the abysmal human rights record so long as the oil stays cheap. Otherwise it's a bunch of arid land with very strict rules. Not exactly the kind of place progress and development flock to.
This isn't just an American thing, but it's certainly applicable here.
Deleted Comment
As far as I understand, there's 3 categories here, citizens, non-citizen residents, and non-citizens non-residents.
The greatest spikes in constitutional and legal rights and guarantees come from being a resident. Being a citizen gives you political rights like voting and participating in the three branches sure, but for the average man it's nothing compared to the rights bestowed by simply walking down a street freely and engaging in free commerce.
This might be one of those restrictions of freedom that allow for greater freedoms to be guaranteed down the line.
Once a non citizen goes through the border, they enjoy a huge spike in rights and guarantees, if you losen the border, you dilute the rights of the residents and citizens, and you add costs (especially if you let aliens in that don't even pay taxes, enjoying only rights but no responsibility)
Ironically, if you value your freedoms as a resident, you should value restricting freedoms at the border.
Similar to how GPL briefly restricts user rights by requiring them to share the source code.
Can you clarify this? This doesn't make any sense to me. Freedoms like those granted in the US bill of rights are specifically designed to be universally applied regardless of citizenship status as long as you are within the geographical boundaries of the US or otherwise subject to it's jurisdiction, from my understanding.
Strip searching tourists, interrogating them about which social media jokes they shared, or locking them up for weeks without charges and then deporting them based on nothing more than their political views does not strengthen the rights of residents.
> especially if you let aliens in that don't even pay taxes, enjoying only rights but no responsibility
If you are talking about people working in the US without visas, this is a serious misconception. The large majority of undocumented people working in the US pay the same taxes as anyone else, including income and payroll taxes (sometimes under a borrowed social security number, but sometimes with an ITIN, "individual taxpayer ID no."; the IRS is happy to take the money without worrying about immigration status), but don't reap the benefits of those. So it's rather the opposite: all the responsibilities but dramatically fewer rights. In aggregate, undocumented immigrants pay on the order of $100 billion of US taxes every year.
The US Constitution applies to persons within US jurisdiction.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. This protection extends to individuals' persons, houses, papers, and effects.
The most surprising thing to me is that people that are by most measures intelligent are falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
About half of Americans apparently don't have a passport and according to other sources I found only about <30% of Americans have travelled internationally in the past year.
So I imagine this revocation of freedom doesn't affect everyone equally. Presumably things are still mostly fine for those folks or at least they wouldn't have experienced it.
So, you could conceivably be a citizen, but CBP/ICE think you might be here illegally, so they can stop you without a warrant. How are you going to prove you're a citizen? There is no national ID, passports aren't required nor are they held by the majority of citizens, and unless something has changed, green card holders / permanent residents aren't required to carry their papers.
Sure, and most Americans have never had their speech censored by a government entity so getting rid of the first amendment would be fine for most people.
30% sounds insanely high. I suspect at least half of Americans haven't even taken a _vacation_ in the past year, let alone _travelled internationally_.
Even if I happen not to hold any particularly radical political opinions, if political speech is censored, my rights of free expression are also decreased. I may not practice a minority religion, but if the state systemically attacks one religion, my freedom of religion is also attacked.
The same is no less true for the 4th amendment; I may not be a target of the police at the current moment, but if they have the ability to search and take stuff at will, I am still less free.
Sadly that's usual for learning such things first hand.
The ABF are empowered to search any electronic devices, copy and retain its contents.
You can refuse, after which they are empowered to jail you and seize your belongings.
Sorry but I'm not seeing the connection between searching belongings whilst crossing an international border to the mass genocide of 6M people.
Or you can vote with your feet and stop going there.
> Sorry but I'm not seeing the connection between searching belongings whilst crossing an international border to the mass genocide of 6M people.
Nazism did not start with genocide. It ended with genocide. If your position is that as long as we haven't seen the death of 6M people then sure, you're right this isn't Nazism. But if you see the endless propaganda, the creations of large 'outgroups' and the building of actual concentration camps as possibly leading in that direction then now would be a good time to do something about it. Otherwise you'll be in a long line of people saying 'wir haben es nicht gewusst' in a couple of years. But you did.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
See for yourself: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
That's incorrect (per the ACLU post in the sibling comment) - it just happens that many major airports are within the 100 mile zone, so CBP/ICE can run operations there (beyond what they might run at an airport well inside the heartland).
For example, in New Zealand, you can be fined $5000 if you do not unlock your phone at the border, and later still compelled to unlock it. The US does not have any fines or laws to compel access. Of course, in any country, refusing the orders of a customs official will get you banned from the country, so that's a strong enough incentive for most tourists.
In terms of frequency: New Zealand searches 671 devices per year on 3M tourists, the US searches 46k/yr on 72M tourists, Australia 8.3k/yr on 6M tourists. That works out to 671/3M tourists is 0.02%, 46k/72M tourists is 0.06% and 8.3k/6M tourists is 0.14%.
Personally, I have fought against these searches for nearly my entire life. But to pretend that the US is on some sort of unique authoritarian slide is laughable. In the UK, today, most forms of protest are illegal. The EU has mandated cellular devices which record your car's location - on every new car. We should stand united against authoritarianism worldwide, not divided and pointing and laughing at each other in some sort of sad petty tribalism. I don't want to score cheap points on the internet, I want all people worldwide to enjoy liberty and privacy. United we stand, divided we fall.
When something like Chat Control, mandatory cellular location recording devices in cars, anti-encryption laws, elimination of the right to protest in the UK, etc happens, the American response is to shake their heads and do much the same.
I don't find that productive. That sort of division is toxic. And the broader strategy - provoking us to hate our brothers across the Atlantic - has long been a core strategy of the enemies of Western civilization.
A small island state in the south Pacific, close only to Aus & Antartic penguins, doesn't need or care about your data.
An outpost of the wasp empire, without constitutional impediments getting the way, ABSOLUTELY DOES want to hoover up as much data that passes through it as possible.
Which do you think NZ is? "5 eyes" has the membership it has, for a reason.
So yes, as the centre of this unholy empire, the US is involved, and responsible.
This is not to justify any part of modern surveillance, which I have protested against for many years. Nor is it to dodge US responsibility.
Back to the topic we're discussing - border phone searches - the US surveils their own citizens far less than the other Anglo countries. 22% of the searches were of US citizens, while US citizens make up a bit over half of border crossings. Australian citizens make up a similar proportion of Australian border crossings, but 42% of searches were of Australian citizens. Combine that with the figures above, and an Australian citizen going home has about a 4x higher chance of getting their phone searched than an American citizen. Very roughly, 0.025% vs 0.11%.
It is, but maybe you just haven't been paying close enough attention. Device scanning at the border is not the only indication of this, there are many. Masked federal agents arresting anyone they want without any warrant and then sending them to prisons in foreign countries without due process, should be ringing authoritarian alarm bells for everyone, including you.
For that level of risk I'd rather go see Shenzhen frankly.
Land of the free?
Forecasts apparently still show an increase in international visitors overall (unsure of the split between tourists and business visits).
But, May numbers appear to be down about 7% compared to May 2024.
The report says the visit count (MAU?) in July is down 18% vs last year. Since I can't think of any local issue (fire, flood, weather...) that would have had an affect on visitor count this year vs last, that seems quite a large change. Especially when the fact that only a proportion of visitors are not from the US.
https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSReports/Park%20Specific%20Rep...
https://nypost.com/2025/07/25/us-news/foreign-tourism-to-nyc...
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/nyc-will-see-a-17-perce...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/nyregion/nyc-tourism.html
https://vinnews.com/2025/07/25/foreign-tourism-to-nyc-faces-...
https://columbianewsservice.com/2025/06/04/new-york-city-see...
https://tjvnews.com/local/new-york/new-york-city-faces-4-bil...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome
I'm not fan of the trend, I'm open about it I despise travel restrictions and the security theater but I really want to hear from people who like the new way the world is headed for.
Republicans are planning to ban all pornography under the guise of "national health crisis". It's in their Project 2025 playbook which they have been following very closely.
https://www.project2025.observer/en
Europe has ~750 million people, and even with current policies (where migrants might drown when their boat sinks while the Greek Coast Guard looks on and laughs) millions of migrants try to enter Europe each year.
The US has ~340 million people, and even with current policies (where children might be separated from parents and placed into cruel detention centers) millions of migrants try to enter the US each year.
If movement was free, how many hundreds of millions would pour from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia into Europe and the US? The 3+ billion who live in the tropics are only going to become more likely to try to migrate as the climate continues to warm.
People don't actually leave the places they grow up or their families and friends to live on European food stamps.
Also, Europe tends to receive the worst people because the legal routes are closed. We end up with people who dare to go to the illegal routes for other reasons than running for their lives.
US a similar thing, instead of relying on illegal workforce just let in people from the main gates and watch out for shady types.
There are so many things that can be done to address the issues instead of dividing the world limited travel areas.