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Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#341

Post by throwaway91872 »

Macross8299 wrote: post #335
throwaway91872 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that same token there is no reason to complain about how difficult it can be to enter the U.S. for certain individuals -- or working as intended as you call it. I also find it a bit disturbing how easily you apply law & order in the name of a country that was not involved in deciding the validity of that decision or the circumstances behind it.

>By that same token there is no reason to complain about how difficult it can be to enter the U.S. for certain individuals Well, yeah, entering the US as a non-citizen is a privilege granted at the discretion of the US federal government. Border control is an essential function of a sovereign state. >I also find it a bit disturbing how easily you apply law & order in the name of a country that was not involved in dec…

Let me put things into perspective for you. Cops raided the wrong house (battering ram and everything) which happened to be where I lived. They ripped up floor boards and broken holes in the wall -- they found $300 worth of personal weed. So they confiscated everything I own because it could possibly be related to drug money. I'm also incarcerated without the ability to post bail (because cops just took everything). I wasn't granted personal recognizance bond, it was $50,000 -- my family takes this as a sign that I must be guilty of whatever they say so I have no access to money for bail or for a lawyer. So I did my own case work while I sat in jail for 3 months, got a different judge to finally give me a personal recognizance bond, pick apart the prosecutor and detective at later hearings/motions, and finally leading up to the day before a jury trial (for two felony charges). I was offered a better plea and took it -- everything leading up to this point was so fucking asinine that despite all the headway I made I could not trust I would not spend years in prison. Its quite clear they did not want to look like idiots after getting a warrant and executing it in force based entirely on some 17 year old kid told them while being interrogated himself.

I'm only a criminal to someone like you.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#342

Post by schoen »

wang_li wrote: post #338
schoen wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you flying to or from somewhere else in Europe in the Dublin case? A subtlety about this which has just come up elsewhere in this thread is that the whole Schengen Area is treated as a single "country" for immigration purposes, so if you have an intra-European flight, you have to enter or exit "Europe" in the course of a transfer to or from an external flight. But I think if you fly, for example, from New York t…

I was flying from Seattle to Rome with a connecting flight in Dublin. In both Rome and Dublin I had to go through immigration (that is, present my passport) and in Dublin I had my carry on X-rayed again. Upon arrival in Rome, after clearing immigration I had to go through customs, which is to say I walked out the "Nothing to Declare" portal.

Oh, I just remembered that Ireland isn't in the Schengen Area (due to the Common Travel Area with the UK). So you wouldn't have a domestic-style flight from Ireland to Italy. But your experience then does seem to confirm that Dublin doesn't offer sterile transit at all, which is a bit of a surprise to me.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#343

Post by GordonS »

gist wrote: post #340
GordonS wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just one story though - there have been plenty stories and comments on HN, as well as other places. I'd be surprised if anyone who regularly travels to the US hasn't found it to be extremely unpleasant at times. A while back I spent 6 months or so going back and forth from the UK to Houston or Atlanta, and every time I absolutely hated going through immigration. I've travelled to dozens of countries, and lit…

> there have been plenty stories and comments on HN, as well as other places. We have ZERO data on the probability of this happening to someone. What we do know is that when it happens to certain people and they have some kind of notoriety or the ability to get noticed we hear about it. That means there is a non rational reaction from people which makes it seem like any one person stands a large chance of having the…

I agree that it would be nice to get 'real' number on this, rather than relying solely on empirical evidence. But given the nature of it, I don't see how that's possible.

When I mentioned other stories and comments, I wasn't only referring to those by people with "notoriety or the ability to get noticed" - indeed, I was mainly referring to randoms (such as myself, and BTW I have no notoriety and am an introvert).

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#344

Post by alasdair_ »

pmoriarty wrote: post #234
Marsymars wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much better in Canada: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-case-t...

Countries often have reciprocal arrangements regarding how they treat each other's citizens. If your country treats country X's citizens like crap, odds are country X will start treating your country's citizens like crap too. Because of this, it's likely that the world will likely spiral to worse and worse treatment of everyone. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind.

This is why Brazil now fingerprints travellers from the USA and not from anywhere else.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#345

Post by behringer »

mikeash wrote: post #299
behringer wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you swear an oath to uphold the constitution? If so, it is your duty to allow others to exercise their 2nd amendment rights.

No.

Then nobody cares if you support or defend the Second Amendment in terms of your being a "true american" or whatever.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#346

Post by coldtea »

mikeash wrote: post #258
coldtea wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any threat, whether implied or stated, that they will hold you until you unlock your device is not real Except the threat to put you on a "mess up with every time they fly" list.

I don’t understand why you’d quote me saying one type of threat isn’t real, then reply with “except...” and describe a totally different threat.

To point that while the threat that they'll hold you might not be real, they can still fuck you over in some ways...

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#347

Post by Macross8299 »

throwaway91872 wrote: post #341
Macross8299 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By that same token there is no reason to complain about how difficult it can be to enter the U.S. for certain individuals Well, yeah, entering the US as a non-citizen is a privilege granted at the discretion of the US federal government. Border control is an essential function of a sovereign state. >I also find it a bit disturbing how easily you apply law & order in the name of a country that was not involved in dec…

Let me put things into perspective for you. Cops raided the wrong house (battering ram and everything) which happened to be where I lived. They ripped up floor boards and broken holes in the wall -- they found $300 worth of personal weed. So they confiscated everything I own because it could possibly be related to drug money. I'm also incarcerated without the ability to post bail (because cops just took everything).…

You can't plead guilty to (what sounds like) a trafficking charge and then claim to be innocent and expect to be freely admitted to other countries. Canada has no way of knowing you're innocent so your logic is that they should just let you in anyways? I think countries have very good reasons to keep people with drug convictions from entering regardless of whether or not you believe drugs should be decriminalized or legal.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#348

Post by throwaway91872 »

Macross8299 wrote: post #347
throwaway91872 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put things into perspective for you. Cops raided the wrong house (battering ram and everything) which happened to be where I lived. They ripped up floor boards and broken holes in the wall -- they found $300 worth of personal weed. So they confiscated everything I own because it could possibly be related to drug money. I'm also incarcerated without the ability to post bail (because cops just took everything).…

You can't plead guilty to (what sounds like) a trafficking charge and then claim to be innocent and expect to be freely admitted to other countries. Canada has no way of knowing you're innocent so your logic is that they should just let you in anyways? I think countries have very good reasons to keep people with drug convictions from entering regardless of whether or not you believe drugs should be decriminalized or…

> I think countries have very good reasons to keep people with drug convictions from entering regardless of whether or not you believe drugs should be decriminalized or legal.

What you are really saying is that you think countries have very good reasons to keep people that are not well off from entering. People that are well off would/do not have the same legal outcomes, and thus your measurement of law-abiding is not reasonable.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#349

Post by mikeash »

behringer wrote: post #345
mikeash wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.

Then nobody cares if you support or defend the Second Amendment in terms of your being a "true american" or whatever.

The person I replied to originally seemed to be implying that this was somehow a requirement, hence my question.

Re: Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops

#350

Post by DigiMortal »

wang_li wrote: post #334
alex_hitchins wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you left the /s from that post. I don't believe you can seriously believe such statements.

Ignoring the silly stuff the parent poster wrote, the facts available indicate that by millions of people's analysis the US is the best country on Earth. The US naturalizes a million immigrants every year and has done so for the last thirty years. There are more than forty million non-citizens living in the US. No other country has that number of immigrants. Plus there is no country to which more Americans emigrate t…

If I'm the parent poster...there is nothing silly about R&D, patents, currency, rights, military, or technology.
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