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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty easy to lie to a border control agent. That's also pretty high on a list of bad ideas.

Also knowing Italy, nobody checks. Really.

I took a plane from Italy to Greece a couple of months ago: completely vaccinated and with the Passenger Locator Form ready.

Nobody, literally nobody, checked in a reliable way wheter:

- we had a valid COVID Certificate

- our PLF was filled correctly

The only moment during my trip where anyone checked was at Starbucks.

This doesn't mean that you are entitled to lie to the border control agents though.

I've travelled internationally maybe a couple of hundred times and never had my bags searched (that I know of, who knows for ones checked in at airports) until one trip a few years ago when I arrived back in UK and customs officers pulled me over to spend 15 minutes making me get every item out of both of my bags.

It's a bad idea to travel with false paperwork, as it's a bad idea to travel with anything illegal in your luggage, not because there's a high chance they'll definitely look into your situation, but because if they happen to choose you randomly then the punishment can be severe.

Yeah that’s the kind of thing I’d use a throwaway account to talk about …

Agreed, but I don't think the commenter you're replying to is claiming to have lied to border control agents. They're just pointing out that no one was actually checking their documents for validity, and the one automated check that happened wasn't even accurate.

This is correct. No lying was needed (we did do the tests, they were negative, etc.) Only I was forced to alter the documents because the automated systems kept rejecting mine due to my birthday being too close, but outside of the window (as evidenced by it immediately accepting it once I removed my birthday).

No, MrDunham didn't lie, not in any material way, but he made this comment: "After we arrived in Rome I realized I could have literally found a copy of the email on the Internet, put my name and test time in, and uploaded."

That's what I was responding to.

Depends on the country. I would expect Italians to be far more relaxed than Americans.

Fact is that people plainly don't know how official or authentic information looks like in case of anything Covid. Was at a barber last week and he has to check my vaccination status. I presented my QR code, she looked at it for a few seconds and then was already happy. You are supposed to scan it with another app but nobody seems to know this... Perhaps she can read QR codes in her head?

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