Via John Batelle's blog, we find that the New York Times (sorry, it's password protected, but don't forget to take a look at Bugmenot) has reported on the strange case of a scientist turned back at the US Border on account of an internet search.

It's worth taking a read of the article, but the long and short of it is that the border guard put the name of the person in question - Vancouver psychotherapist - into a search engine, found an academic paper written by him which mentioned experimentation wth LSD, and barred him from the country on the grounds of drug use.

As it turns out, drug abuse is one of the things that will get a foreign national barred from the US, an irony not lost by one of the commenters on Batelle's blog posting. However, the interesting thing here is that all of this was turned up by an internet search. Plenty of people have owned up to or been reported as doing things that would get the barred from the US or other countries online, and it raises an interesting point. Andrew Feldmar will be able to apply for a waiver from the US in order to enter the States and see his family. But that will take time. What would have happened if a web search had thrown up untrue statements about a person? Of course, Feldman acknowledged that he was the author of the article, and that the contents of the article was true, but would a denial have made much of a difference?