Update: What happens when you refuse to answer passort control questions | Hacker News Reader

Update: What happens when you refuse to answer passort control questions

knifetricks.blogspot.com

18 pointsyarapavan9 comments

Yep, he's still a douchebag.

"CBP officers are not your friends. CBP officers treat returning U.S. citizens as potential criminal defendants. You should likewise treat them as if they were corrupt cops on a power trip, targeting you to goose their arrest statistics. The best way to protect yourself against their depredations is to refuse to speak to them or to answer their questions."

I wonder what he would say if he ran into an equally pedantic border security dude who pointed out that yes he can arbitrarily choose to exercise his rights to remain silent if he feels like it, but border security can also arbitrarily choose to exercise all its rights, including eight hours' detention, thorough searches of his baggage (including confiscation of some items until their legality can be determined) and of course the old body cavity search.

In theory, this guy should support them doing that too. After all, if you're legally entitled to do something then nobody else has the right to complain if you choose to exercise that right, right?

I don't mind answering a couple of questions so long as they are keeping our country safer. Some people (namely this guy) need to lighten up a bit. Did answer a simple question or two really effect his ego THAT much? Learn how to make people work for you, not against you. After all, people are your greatest resource.

Agreed. He's an idiot.

And he's still wrong about being polite. You can be firm without being rude.

Agreed, people underestimate the power of being polite. It can be the difference between 'yes' or 'no' in many situations

What's more, he doesn't see any value to being polite, since he thinks these people should be treated as if they're authoritarian drones instead of fellow human beings.

He then has the balls to complain when people call him a 'douchebag'. While the word 'douchebag' is the chiched insult of the last decade or so, it does seem appropriate to this dude's particular combination of self-righteousness and self-involvement.

This article is prominently linked from the article posted here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681721

This is therefore basically a dupe. Flagged.

good lord, I need my tinfoil hat.

"You say “business” (because you were at a conference) but the stamps in your passport indicate that you’re returning from a tourist destination like Bali. Now the officer can argue that you have made a false statement, have engaged in an attempt to claim improper business deductions under the Internal Revenue Code and have broken any other federal criminal law -- there are more than 10,000 -- which he can mold around the circumstances.

You and your travelling companion say “pleasure” but you’re returning from Antwerp, a city known for its diamond trade not its nightlife. Liars and smugglers! And, with two people involved, the feds can levy conspiracy and aiding and abetting charges"

There was a good thread here yesterday (and no doubt on several prior occasions) about the gap between what people should be worried about and what they are worried about. People tend to worry too much about certain incredibly remote possibilities while being under-concerned about much more likely events.

The probability that you're going to wind up in jail for a crime you didn't commit based on an innocent and truthful answer to a prosaic-sounding question strikes me as one of those incredibly-unlikely events that some folks (like this dude) spend entirely too much time worrying about.

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