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Comment by SCdF | Hacker News Reader

Just don't travel there.

I'm sure I'd be fine: I've been fine a dozen times before. That was before they decided that it was OK to demand passwords and so on. Maybe now it would be worse. Or maybe my skin colour lets me off the hook.

Regardless, I'd rather just not waste jet fuel on flying to a place that treats anyone this way.

Your phone/tablet/laptop is, for better or worse, a gateway to your entire life. It contains your photos, bank account credentials, messages between friends, messages between you and your wife, photos between you and your wife…

Random border thugs absolutely should not have the right to rummage through it in another room.

There are plenty of ways to do meetings remotely. There are plenty of places in the world you can travel to for work meetups that aren't the US.

Just don't travel there.

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For me it's less the risk of being search than the massive queues in US airports that turn me off. Feels like queuing for food in Moscow in the Soviet area, just to take a plane.

The Soviet era.

But yes, I just traveled from Shanghai back to my home in the US. The queues in China were much, much shorter than those in the American airports. PVG posted a "25 minutes or less" target for all travellers to get through security and immigration. And they hit it, even at peak travel times with huge volumes of people. At American airports if you arrive less than an hour before boarding they might not allow you in until you rebook on a later flight.

You could see it in the architecture of their systems: The American facilities have huge snaking queues designed for as much capacity as possible, which lead to obvious bottlenecks. And when you arrive at the front of the line, a gruff immigration officer in tactical gear doesn't look at the line except to say "No line jumping!" while they're taking 10 minutes on one individual. In China, there's just not enough distance in the line to allow a long delay to form, there's no single point bottlenecks to slow down the system, and helpful people direct you to the shortest lines.

yeah, amazing China with longest flight delays in world, but yeah security check is pretty fast, for sure faster than in Chinese train station

Or even security checks in a metro station.

Flying into JFK from abroad, going through customs even as American is one of the more depressing things in life. It is such an unwelcoming sight and experience.

I've only been through JFK a few times, but every time it was a swift and uneventful experience, in as well as out. Maybe I was just lucky though.

People who have recently travelled to the US, what's the probability that you will be asked to unlock your stuff and have random employees search through it? Is it something that happens a lot?

It hasn't happened to me, but when I go to the US embassy in France they take my phone for the entire time I'm waiting there.

The US Embassies in the Netherlands explicitely disallow you from bringing most electronics* and they say they are unable to store things for you.

https://nl.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/amsterdam/access...

*It used to be no electronics, but now you are apparently allowed to bring a mobile phone provided you turn off Bluetooth.

The US Embassy in Paris did refuse to let me in with my laptop. I had to run everywhere to find a place that accepted to keep my laptop for me :/ you definitely get a reality check as soon as you enter the Visa process with the US.

The USA consulate in Rio de Janeiro is also like that. Of course, it's become a business opportunity: right next to the queue outside the consulate, there are several people who offer to store your electronics, for a price.

Contrast with for instance the Germany and France consulates a few blocks over (they're in a single building), where as far as I know no such rule exists.

Now I'm curious. Does anyone know why they ask you to switch off Bluetooth specifically (and nothing else)?

in France you have to turn off your phone, then handle it to them. I couldn't turn off mine (it was badly broken xD) so I just took the luminosity to the lowest and they didn't see anything.

Same for the German embassy in France, the phones are asked and kept by the security at the entry.

It has happened to me. They looked through my emails and text messages. It was extremely terrifying to experience.

Mind sharing your story? And, though it's unfortunate to ask, can you think of any reasons why you in particular were singled out?

I was just going to the US for a convention then staying for a few weeks afterwards. The question that arose suspicion was why I'd booked to stay in a hotel rather than stay at a friend's house. Ridiculous.

Anyway yeah, I had to collect my luggage and they then opened it up and rummaged through it. Asked why I wasn't taking a video game console despite ostensibly going to a video game convention. My response was of course that this would be quite impractical.

They then demanded access to my phone and read through my messages. They couldn't find anything other than my friend asking when my flight would arrive and a photo of him holding up a bottle of vodka (he was under 21). I think they just gave up at that point and let me through.

Fortunately I narrowly managed to make it to my connecting flight but it was such a stupid thing to have to go through.

Were you just picked out when your passport was being stamped? When you handed your immigration form in? Did someone approach you in baggage reclaim?

Passport stamping. I'm on the Visa Waiver Program.

Was there a moment you lost sight of your phone, while it was unlocked?

No.

I've entered the US dozens of times. Visa waiver, 6 month visa, multi year visa.

Never been asked to show electronics. Never been to a special room. Most of the time they ask one or two questions, take my fingerprints, and welcome me to the country.

Now that my passport has a US address in it, even though I'm technically not a resident, they politely say "Welcome Back".

Last time I entered was on Monday. The lady was extremely polite, even smalltalked a bit while the computer was giving her trouble because my visa is in an old passport and my new passport is 7 days old. Guess she had to sync up the system.

Time from entering the queue to being in the country was 24 minutes. I ran a stopwatch.

That said, my visa process did involve checking my social accounts and internet activity because I explicitly listed it as an argument for why I qualify for an O-1.

Anecdata, I know. But that's my experience. I'm white and from eastern-ish europe.

Huh, really? My experience was roughly the same, except the border officers were generally acting very serious, and the queue took 1-2 hours. I wish I could enter in 24 minutes.

No random searches here either, though, but I haven't been to the US for at least a year.

I find they're nicer when you give them the passport in such a way that they first see your O-1 visa. Covertly letting them know that you're an "exceptional ability alien" right off the bat, sets the relationship off to a good start.

The time when I said "Oh just coming back from vacation" before the lady saw my visa ... well, she was much less nice about it.

Ah, I don't have a visa, I only travel to the US to visit friends, more or less.

The queue will depend on the airport and the number of border agents on duty.

A difference between 24 minutes and 1 hour is only slightly more than 2x, so it's not extremely significant in the grand scheme of things. Security lines on domestic flights can last longer than 24 minutes.

My wife and I have entered the US twice since President Trump came took charge. We're Indians, I'm on H1b and wife's on F1. The second time was a breeze, the agent was in a great mood and we just chatted about how she loves my company's product while she did her stuff.

The first time was more difficult, because I said something (technically correct) about my documents that confused her (understandably) for a while, so she had to lookup some extra stuff. She also asked my wife a lot of questions, because she was under the (wrong) impression that her school was blacklisted. That was seriously incompetent IMO, but she apologized after her supervisor (or some other superior) explained things to her. She also marked that we needed to go through customs, which the first time I've had to do that in almost 10 entries. I chalked this as a negative experience because of the customs thing, we felt she did that just to inconvenience us in some way. I cannot link this in anyway to President Trump, however.

Both times, we were one of the first people to be off the plane's economy section, but the wait before we got to the counter was 1+ hour. SFO is ridiculous.

My worst experience came when entering during President Obama's tenure (but nothing to do with his policy) in 2016. The agent went through my entire 9-year old passport, asked me why I had visited country X in 20YY, why I lied to my visa officer back when I got a F1, etc (that I'd go back home after studies. I did not lie, I happened to get a job and the employer happened to want to apply for a H1. I did not even know back then that there was a real or fake "shortage" in tech workers).

Hopefully more anecdata helps. If you're on the fence about visiting the US as a tourist I hope you end up deciding to come!

> That was before they decided that it was OK to demand passwords and so on.

I understand that it was not decided, that it's just a proposal (a terrible, stupid, terrible proposal — but just a proposal).

Only rational explanation: the current POTUS is a closet ecologist, decided to use scare tactics to reduce needless CO2 waste. (unlikely, but still...)

This started long before Trump

The only ration explanation is that the policy is what it claims to be: racial and nationalist discrimination. After all, that's what the huge pre-election rallies were cheering.

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