Well, it happened under Obama's leadership https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/26/us-customs-soc.... Previous HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984609.

More recently:

> U.S. government begins asking foreign travelers about social media

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13242620

I appreciate that the proposal [1] was put out for comments half a year before its implementation last month, although I wonder what comments it would have taken to get this thing reversed. "Optional" is a menacing word here—has anyone followed up on this?

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2016-14848

Optional doesn't mean what you think it means. Don't want to fill it out? entry denied: failure to cooperate with CBP personnel. "I Don't have facebook" as a way out - google your name, busted: entry denied, lied to a CBP agent. The US is a may permit entry country, even with a Visa your entry is still under the discretion of the CBP agent, they don't like you that's it they don't need a reason to deny entry.

No buts, ifs and whys, you can have all the right paperwork and if you misbehave, don't follow orders, or do anything that the CBP agent might not like you'll be spending 8 hours in a room waiting for an embassy official to come to scold you and give you a ticket for your flight home.

Just because it happened under Obama's leadership doesn't mean Trump can do it too.

Nope but just check the difference in tone.

The current travel restrictions also happened under Obama, Trump used the same list of restricted countries that the Obama administration highlighted. The previous restrictions applied to anyone who traveled to those countries since 2011.

I wonder if there are actual stats on how many people were affected by the previous restriction vs the current one.

People yelling about war crimes and refugee crisis while the actual figures of refugees admitted to the US are ridiculously low without any restrictions.

And those who are admitted are the cream of the top, those who can pay as much as 50,000$ per head if not more to be smuggled to a country, have papers made for them, afford air fares to the US and the cost of the admission.

It's not that US ports were bombarded by barefoot orphans, the vast majority of refugees in the US were from the upper classes who could afford it, they came on a cousy flight from Zurich or Frankfurt and not on a boat from Cuba.

Yes it's all sad and unfair but the real tragedy and travesty is the the current narrative that is being blown out of all proportions which allows pasty guardian reporters to feel good about themselves because they uninstalled Uber while ignoring the real atrocities that happen around the world.

While the 10-15K Syrian's admitted in the US are not a tiny number on it's own but when viewed globally with the ~5M Syrian refugees and 14M Syrians in need of dire humanitarian aid in country it's irrelevant.

Notably:

"If the foreign visitor declines to share such information, he or she could be denied entry."

That part is new, isn't it?

No, this is refusal to cooperate with a border control / immigration agent which is grounds for rejection of entry.

I've seen 2 loud white chicks being denied entry to the US with a valid visa because they were acting obnoxious and causing a mess at the immigration line in JFK.

If they don't want you in it's extremely easy, if you used drugs, if you gotten as much as a parking ticket it's enough for them to deny you entry either due to lying or not being "of good character".

And this happens a lot to people of all races, nationalities, sexes and ages.

An official rule to deny entry might be new, not sure, but border control can already deny entry for that (as they can for basically any other reason).

Anybody who is not a citizen can be denied entry. So it's not new, just reiterating that they have this authority - which they always had.

Classic alt-er redirection. It doesn't matter if Obama started it, what matters is what we're going to do to stop it.

They hated everything Obama stood for but now it's ok if Obama did it?

That's how a lot of the current narrative is, unfortunately. Obama gets a pass, Trump gets the blame.

I'm not a US citizen and I don't support this (I visited many countries and interacting with a border control officer in JFK was the worst experience ever), I'm just saying that the CNN article is misleading.

Let's say they implement this. What are some ways around it? You could uninstall Facebook and say you don't have an account. You could sign out of your Google account (Android). I wonder if there is a way to programmatically back up your contacts, remove everything, the reimport them.

I happen to be a US cit, but if I wasn't, I would just factory reset my phone before entry. Periodic factory resets seem to be a good idea anyway.

Is there an official blacklist of disapproved websites? If so, isn't that a form of censorship?