Very strange paragraph right there. I could easily generalize this to Windows powershell is increasingly being used in cyber offensives by non-state actors, let us eject Microsoft from the United States
And no that does not have anything to do with ejecting Microsoft from the US. Microsoft isn't a private foreign individual using a privileged entry mechanism in the US that given any reason whatsoever can be revoked in favour of a perfectly functional visa process that most countries have to use.
ESTA is only available to a few countries, and not all people in those countries.
I don't think Microsoft will be ejected from the US because of an ESTA invalidation.
Each tool can be used for good and for evil: risk management is primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss, and is embedded by the law for companies, and people too.
It certainly sucks, but your summary of the US legal system is irrelevant.
Spin it however you like, but the fact is that he was denied entry into the US?
Whether or not he can pay (time, money) to go in the future is irrelevant to being denied today?
Regarding the entire esta vs visas... I'm lucky enough to have passed painlessly through VISA and I don't understand the difference between them? You have to apply for both? You have to provide your identity documents, information about yourself, payment? The only difference I can see is that you don't need to visit an embassy? Why do we draw a distinction, other than marketing?
Having been a great admirer of the US, I can say that what I admire are some principles, principles that seem forgotten. They are probably forgotten because when you teach a CBP employee to look for only the worst of people, this will eventually find something suspicious in anyone.
The recent run into exploiting software vulnerabilities could explain why there’s a focus on developers/hackers. But just putting a critique is not constructive, remembering where we come from, what are our principles, why we have them, and their purpose, is much better to motivate why it's wrong to "discriminate" someone.
It's not just slow and annoying, it's wrong because he’s not responsible.
Cute girl offers glass of champagne and complimentary strawberry 'so.. I'm gonna need you to unlock your phone, give me the password to your work-related e-mail, your personal e-mail and all your social media accounts.'
Not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's easy to blow this stuff out of proportion.
That's what I'm trying to do here - offer the view of someone who does this every few months for nearly two decades.
I'd be willing to bet significant money that it was either a clerical error, or something mundane from his ESTA form that got double-checked and came up "no". I am willing to bet this because I have been in that situation:
What?! Sources please.
If you write a general-purpose utility and it gets included in some kind of bad software, the people writing the 'bad' parts aren't likely to include their details, but if your 'good' code has your details....
[0] Exhibit A: man curl
[1] CURL website
Same goes for wget, links, etc.
Sorry no sources, it won't take you long to verify this yourself using google. I'm sure there are competent infosec guys and gals here who can provide a better explanation.
Just because it went well for you doesn't mean you have to turn a blind eye for other people. As soon as you don't come from a list of "nice" countries crossing borders is a living hell.
I don't think this is true. The circumstances/environment are the same but compare entering America to entering any other country.
No country but America has ever fingerprinted me, searched my luggage, detained me in a small room with no explanation for 3 hours, forced the departing airport to search me again after security (on 3 separate but consecutive flights to the US, months apart) or made me spend more than ~10 minutes in a line waiting to get through security or immigration. America has done all of these things.
After a long flight having to deal with the delay and hassle of immigration seems much worse than it is. I really hate it, and the comments here suggest others do too, but if you look at what we have to deal with objectively it's not really that horrible.
It feels weird for me to be defending them, because of the crappy experiences over the years, but when it comes down to it I think CBP are far more reasonable than they are given credit for because of the crappy environment it happens in. If you were calmly asked the same questions by a sweet guy or girl on a chaise longue while being offered champagne and strawberries, people would have almost no problem even though it's really the same thing without the elevated stress level.
Regarding Daniel - like others here I'm sure it's because cURL has been used extensively for bad purposes he was kicked off the ESTA program. Yes it sucks that they didn't let him know in advance, and they didn't have the smarts to figure that he had nothing to do with the bad actors.
For me getting a visa was a pretty easy process. The interviewer in my country was a smart political science graduate and everything went smoothly. An inconvenience for sure, but hey this is another sovereign nation, why should us foreigners expect to be able to march in without playing by their rules, even if we don't agree with them.
Don't get me wrong - this situation sucks for Daniel and US immigration has massive room for improvement.