Once I got asked how many times have you been here, I replied that this is my second time (thinking he means San Francisco), but he said: "It says here that you were in the US 3 times". That really got me nervous, I wouldn't like to get turned away and look for a flight back home.
Do they think that a poor guy at the border can recognize a skilled terrorist? What they do is scare the hell out of ordinary people.
Odds of their screening catching a skilled terrorist? Pretty low -- although terrorists generally fall into the category of "bungling" more than "skilled". Odds of them catching people who are smuggling drugs, or entering as "tourists" but actually planning on working? Much higher -- because it's easy to learn to recognize the common cases.
Is there? What's the difference if the emotion is 'nervousness' and the outward expression of that emotion signals 'nervousness'? Who is skilled enough to distinguish between the two degrees of nervousness?
Someone who spends 40 hours a week practicing.
If you were a 'bad' border protection agent, and you let everyone through, how do you learn? And equally if you select people for secondary interrogation that are allowed to enter, how does that feed back to you?
I guess I'm curious to know a bit more about how the organisation is structured, as there's equivalent in tech discussions, "Ten years experience vs. one years experience ten times." Without some structure to know when you're doing it wrong or right, you can be talking to people for 40 hours a week and not get much out of it.
A bit similar method is (or was) used to keep the X-ray machine operators at airport awake. Software superimposes images of prohibited items on the X-ray image [1] and operator is supposed to notice them.
The other case (false positives) would be harder to tackle on the case or border agent. Maybe it would help if the same agent was actually involved in the detailed investigation and not just responsible of flagging suspicious people.
[1] http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040116/full/news040112-15.ht...
Is this acceptable? Is there any correlation between "criminal" or "terrorist" and "acts nervous at border"? Are common border guards trained well enough to distinguish these subtle cues if they exist?
No.
If you're twitchy, talking fast, sweating and can't answer questions accurately about your job or a place you've just visited, then yes I think that is absolutely suspicious and worth investigating.
Immigration let everyone through without question, but as soon as they saw him with the guitar they asked him to step forward to an inspection point. I went along to observe, and it was quite interesting. The guy and the lady at the inspection desk asked him to put the guitar case flat on the desk and open it to remove the guitar.
While he did this, I noted that they never took their eyes off his face. They never even glanced at the guitar or the case. He was halfway through taking it out when they told him it was all OK and to stow it away again and be on our way.
I had always heard that the officers watched for your reaction which 9 times out of 10 gives the person away if they are trying to hide something, but this was the first time I had witnessed it first hand.
You still have to talk to the immigration officer though - everyone does.