That is class-A bullshit (not that it’s untrue, but that it shouldn’t be true).
All politicians adopt laws that are not to be used in bad faith, just to fight the right people. It is always an exceptionary measure. And then the people they fought with those laws come to power, and use those very same laws against them. Only usually with less scruples, more glee and much rejoicing by the usual assholes.
Same thing with backdoors in operating systems, police powers to snoop and detain temporarily, states of emergency… it’s always the same. And nobody ever learns.
Same will happen to the temper tanTrump in the White House, if he ever loses power. One more reason for him, who does not know much but knows this very well, never to leave the White House alive again.
I thought Elon loved failure. Fail fast, fail forward, fail until you make it.
The administration is offering more information about why the French researcher was denied entry. According to Asst. Sec. of DHS Tricia McLaughlin
The French researcher in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory — in violation of a non-disclosure agreement— something he admitted to taking without permission and attempted to conceal.
They could of course be making this up but it seems it would be easy to confirm if this is true.
This fits in perfectly with the GOP philosophy that if you can’t fix a problem perfectly on the first attempt, then why bother even trying. So any attempt to fix a difficult problem that may not succeed or may take several iterations is wasteful of both time and money.
How were they able to take their personal phone into the national research lab? I know we sure as heck are not. Also, how were they able to access that data from their phone? I assume it was a photo of something.
And has it been?
He was in possession of confidential information, but all they did was deport him? Seems a bit off. And wasn’t this while he was entering the US? Where did he get it from?
There is a statement from the Chair of the upcoming Seattle World Science Fiction Convention about this:
Statement From Worldcon Chair – Seattle Worldcon 2025
Were they being accused of bringing confidential information into the country?
This is almost poetry. Very well said.
Good question, this whole story just seems off to me.
Another question: This happened at customs, right? How did the customs guy recognize “confidential information” from a scientific lab? Did he have something labelled “top secret” just sitting on his phone?
It seems rather more likely than not that when this story started blowing up, they were told to find something, anything, to make it look better.
My money’s on that, since they’ll never have to prove it publicly: “Top secret! We can’t show you!”
“Confidential information” does not necessarily mean “Classified”. There is a vast amount of what is called Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) much of which is work product from government contractors. I have generated a lot of reports to sponsoring agencies which was considered CUI; primarily work that my company did that we retain IP rights to and do not want disseminated to our competitors. CUI classification controls who has access to the information, but the information is not considered harmful to national security if it spilled.
CUI (as well as classified documents) requires extensive marking throughout the document (every page) as well as “part marking” which clarifies which parts of the page are CUI and which are uncontrolled. I can use WIndows Explorer and search for “CUI” and it will find all the CUI marked documents on my laptop in a matter of seconds. We also usually put “CUI” in the file name but I’m not sure that’s a requirement.
The fact that an NDA was referenced (assuming the story isn’t complete bullshit) kind of implies CUI rather than Classified information.
I wish I had answers to your questions. It does indeed seem to be off in several ways. Maybe just a sloppy attempt by DHS to cover their ass.