Googled on trying to enter the US?
 

Does anyone know if the DHS routinely Googles individuals travelling into the US? There was a news story about how "U.S. Border Patrol Bars Canadian Psychotherapist With Drug Research Far in His Past".

Not routinely.

I was Googled entering Canada in 2008. Very weird. But they found me and apparently weren't bothered by what they found. I had entered Canada roughly once a month for about a year, and maybe it seemed like a lot to somebody.

Bruce

I got Googled upon entry into Canada some years ago too.

Given misinformation is part of the internet picture -- or even perhaps the whole picture -- reliance upon online searches of Google can be an invitation to relying upon fiction.

That's why Francine likes to use it.

Francine Fishpaw?

I got Googled entering Canada as well. It was earlier this year.

Odd.

My guess: as long as you're not either a certain former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania or a close relative of his, you should be fine.

Francine Kerner

How do you know you were Googled?

"So you say you're a marketing manager for RIM?" (type, type, type) "Ah, there you are." That's not to say one cannot fake a LinkedIn page or other website, but Google can still be a good place to start.

When I was Googled in 2008, the Canadian immigration guy showed me the screen.

Bruce

So what do they Google? Your name? What do they do when they find 76 million results for John Smith?

I think they are able to refine their searches to find what they are looking for much like you and I are.

I'm not sure what's scarier - that a government agency is using Google to get their nation-protecting done, or that Google may have more accurate and invasive databases than governments do.

It's easy to mislead with the results that come up in Google searches.

Some even deliberately attempt to get databases populated with misinformation -- which may, for example, assist with messing up stalkers on the government dole or otherwise.

Hmmm, so any "furiner" that I want to prevent coming to the U.S. merely needs a Wikipedia page that chronicles their history as the "Johnny Appleseed" of the cannabis world. Along with their organization of violent protests against the establishment, and that little "misunderstanding" about what is "art" that was later overturned on a technicality.

And if they are turned away at the border once, it's almost impossible to get in later.

The frequency of incidence of a passenger being Google searched at an airport of entry into a country is not the same in Canada as in the US. Some kind of scenario approaching the one you are mentioning above would somewhat more reliably result in denial of entry to Canada.

Refine based on what? Why on earth would you answer any other questions for them?

Uh, maybe because you want to enter their country? Just maybe.

Bruce

TSA wants me to answer questions to enter their sterile area. Doesn't mean I do it.

Example
TSO: Where are you going today?
Me: Do you need help reading the boarding pass I just handed you?

You don't see the difference?

Immigration officials have considerably more power and responsibility than TSA clerks ever have or will have. I don't mess around with immigration officials in other countries -- and even in the U.S., which I have an absolute right to enter at any time, I treat immigration officials with the respect that they generally deserve. They are nothing like the TSA clerks. I hate to even refer to them in the same sentence.

Bruce

Nope, there is absolutely zero difference. I will show them my identification, but government in any form has no business knowing what my business is.

Let me try one more time: A visitor to another country can be denied entry for a variety of reasons and it is the business of that country's immigration officials to determine that the visitor is eligible to enter the country. If the visitor does not wish to answer questions necessary to establish his eligibility to be admitted to the foreign country, he need not be admitted.

A citizen returning to his own country has no duty or obligation to answer such questions.

I agree with respect to our own (U.S.) government. But if I want to enter, say, Mongolia (which I entered in May), I'm not surprised when the Mongolians want to know what I'm going to do there.

Bruce

You'd be surprised how much you can say without actually divulging much of anything.

+1 This is so stupid, its scary. Why on earth would anybody think that this would work even a little bit?

Jennifer Williams? Andreas Schmidt? Juan Lopez? Wang Wei (or is that Wei Wang)? Sunil Gupta? Park Seo Yoon?

How would a Canada-cop have way of figuring out which of the of (1 - 5 million) hits for each of these names has anything to do with the person in question. In fact, given such common names, it's almost guaranteed that someone with that name will be googlably notorious for something unsavory.

What about language? Could some random Canada-cop even correctly enter any of the last three into google using an English/French keyboard and hope to get meaningful results from China, India and Korea, respectively?

Moreover, although English is indeed the international language of business and science, that doesn't mean that citizens (even English speaking ones) of Germany, Japan, Brazil (umm well like most countries, actually) feel obliged to produce English or French web content for the delectation of Canada border control.

Making it even more complicated, in many languages and cultures, the name that someone uses can vary by context: People may use a nickanme in all but the most formal contexts. In some cultures, it is common for women use their maiden name professionally. Carefully looking up "Catherine Elizabeth Smith" is unlikely to find someone who's always called "Cathy Smith", except at work, where she's "Cathy Jones or Cathy Jones-Smith". In some cultures, the given + surname construction is much more flexible, with a mix of patrynomic and other identifiers used. In some Eastern cultures, changing a name (say after a period of bad health) is not uncommon.

So IOW, via Page Rank, you have a foolproof method for catching the stupid criminals, terrorists, and liars.

Google doesn't have "invasive databases." It's a search engine that finds information that's already out on the Web, usually put there by the person themselves. A typical Google search of an average professional would return pages/profiles from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other opt-in services.

My guess -- purely a guess -- is that Google searching someone is more likely to speed them along than to detain them. If they find your profile in LinkedIn and see right away that you're a well known professional in your field, they hurry you on your way. If they can't find you (and it's easy to tell if the John Smith on the screen is the John Smith whose passport they are looking at) then they fall back to their old school processes. It's remarkably difficult to fake LinkedIn and Facebook profiles that appear credible and have the 100+ connections that most people tend to have.

The information is already public. I don't see this is a big deal.

Side note: it's very funny to me to see multiple people on this thread talking the talk of "Google expert" when they clearly know very little about the technology.

I was having one of those "whatever happened to" conversations with a friend I've known since I was a teenager. One person we knew didn't participate in any social media, but it was surprising how much information was out there. :eek:

It's very easy to do that which you claim is remarkably difficult to fake.

It's even easier for females or for those who are thought (by some at least) to be female. ;)

The information is public -- it's just that there's no absolutely no reliable mapping (reduced or otherwise ;)) between a person and the information google returns when given their passport name. Nor is there any reliable relationship between what google turns up and reality. You'd have to be crazy-stupid to use anything that google handed you either positively or negatively.

If someone wanted to appear to be a "well-known professional", it would be trivial to create a LinkedIn account with 100 connections. (Do you really think there aren't services that do this for people seeking e.g. US or Canadian visas?)

On the other hand, I know many very successful professionals who don't have have linkedin or facebook pages at all or just have an empty placeholder that they never use. (I've never felt any need for one.)

For my own name (which isn't terribly common), google seems to identify several distinct women, including a yoga instructor, an audiologist, a college track athlete, and a woman who seems go out drunken partying a lot. Unfortunately, google also thinks that one of these woman writes a great deal of rather creepy soft porn with a disturbingly high page rank. How would I (or any of us (or all but one of us :eek:)) prove to the Canadian authorities that they're not her? (If she's even using her real name...)

Don't confuse the ease of creating a profile with the ease of making it look real. Anyone who uses the various social sites as the tools of their trade can spot a fake profile instantly, especially when coupled with other information that an immigration officer is likely have.


Really now? So if an immigration officer Googles me (along with my city or my current employer, since I too have a common name that returns everything from athletes to convicted felons) then sees a LinkedIn profile that corroborates my story, a Facebook profile as well, a Twitter feed that shows me having used that service for four years and has evidence of numerous verifiably real people speaking to me, then sees a quote from me in the newspaper or a panel I served on at a conference, they'd be crazy stupid to draw the conclusion that I must be who I say I am?

How silly.

If a CBP officer Googles me and sees all of the information out there that's already public anyway (most of which I allow to be out there), then sends me on my way faster as a result, I really don't see the big deal.


Edited to add:

Google doesn't "think" anything. Google returned search results of pages on the Web. Those search results (assuming what you say is true) show a lot of "creepy soft porn" written by the woman in question. Those pages' PageRank have absolutely nothing to do with how likely an observer is to draw a connection between you and the person in question, and PageRank in general is a tiny fraction of what goes into a particular site's appearance on the high side of search results. Cross checked with information beyond one's name (as I said, city, employer, and so on), any idiot would likely conclude there are two different people in play.

Without going into detail, I can say beyond any doubt whatsoever that references previous posters have made to MapReduce, PageRank, and other Google technologies (Let me guess... looking for a way to make a weak reference to BigTable or GFS?) are backed by miniscule to zero knowledge of the technologies themselves, and should be ignored entirely.

"Robin Sage" would disagree with you.

(If she was real)

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._network_risks

Run your name through Spokeo or Intellius...go ahead and pay the 5.00 for your information on Intellius..you might be unpleasantly suprised.

I worry much less about US Government than I do about Data Aggregators. At least the goverment has laws and controls on how they use data. Commercial organizations don't.

+1

They are wildly inaccurate. And they make their business by selling data. What kind of recipe for disaster is that?

OMG that is creepy. Remarkably accurate, and yet some glaring errors, too.

The only confusion is that which your post above is communicating.

That someone can often spot a fake profile doesn't mean that that someone will always instantly (if ever) spot a profile as fake even when they come across the fake profile.

Not all fake profiles are of equal "quality".

Plenty of misinformation pulled up by those searches. Even some dead dogs are thought to be living persons according to one or both of the above providers of data.

Commercial organizations that aggregate personal information should be subject to tighter scrutiny and laws that regulate them a lot more than is the case currently. Same goes for government organizations.

Ugh... why do you keep changing the argument? You're making the opposite argument than is clearly intended in the OP, which I keep making.

I never said one should rely on public data as the only source, and I never said social media profiles are the only source that should be relied on.

* Numerous social profiles on multiple sites
* Conversations with real people who verify I'm real on those sites
* Quotes from me in the newspaper
* Participation on panels at actual industry conferences -- perhaps even complete with a video

And you're saying that using all that public info *in addition to* info a CBP officer already has is a stupid means of the CBP officer thinking "Yup, you're who you say you are... have a nice day"?

What exactly are you arguing that we're giving up here?

Let's just don the tinfoil hats and call it a day. :rolleyes: