Hacker News Reader

Comment by Canada | Hacker News Reader

What can they do? Strap you in front of it like it’s clockwork orange? You can refuse to respond to it. Cover your face with your hand and say “operator operator operator” or some other nonsense. Say it’s creepy or ridiculous to talk to such a thing. They will let you go.

View on HN

If it's mandatory if you want to enter the EU (as a non-citizen), I'd guess they would deny you entry.

Nope. It's for customs, not immigration. You're already in the country, they just need to figure out whether they need to search your bags for contraband.

So then if you refuse to answer they will just search your bags.

Customs agents are supposed to do that. How else do you think smuggling gets stopped? It's pretty much universal that your belongings can be searched (then there are some countries expand that to searching digital data, but that's a bit of a perversion).

This is being used by literal customs agents.

That's the point. If you refuse then they do a thorough search.

If you answer suspiciously, or refuse to answer, then you get the full search.

This is similar to how you can refuse body scans at the airport, but if you do then you get the full pat down search.

The purpose of the process is to decide whether they need to search your bags for contraband.

If you act very weirdly, like you are suggesting, then they will just make the decision to definitely search your bags.

Targeting people who act weirdly is kinda the entire point, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com