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I carry a US passport from being a US citizen, and I get similar treatment every time I enter the country, due to refusing to answer their voluntary questions about what I do for a living, where I'm going inside the USA, what I do in the country in which I live (Germany), etc.

They have to let me in and they know it, so they exercise their power by detaining me for 2-8 hours and going through all of my stuff. It's always a real half-assed search, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Wouldn't it be easier to answer the questions in a friendly manner ?

Wouldn't it have been easier for Rosa Parks to just go to the back of the bus?

Not really. One is on video (and presumably audio) from a bunch of different angles, and even a tiny accidental mis-statement or contradiction is grounds for them to arrest you.

Watch the linked video. It's a VOLUNTARY interaction. The only legally prudent thing to do is to STFU.

It's a well written article, good to see on a site like nytimes.

I have to also agree with your statement. I have been to the states 3 times, first in 2006 where I flew into JFK and was "randomly selected" (woooo, I won!) and then detained for additional questionning for 5 hours.

What did they ask me? Name, DoB, place of birth (all info IN MY PASSPORT ALREADY!), fathers/mothers name, address, what job I did, where I was staying. I have no problems them asking me, but it's the way they treat you. I got put in a waiting room, told to sit down and answer these question in an "application" form. Having filled this in they just told me to sit down. When I got up to ask what was taking so long, "Sir, would you please sit unless you are called". As if the sir makes it polite. Eventually they stamped my passport and I was through.

Flash forward to July 2010, first stop Atlanta. Same deal. I'l also been backpacking for 6 months. That raised an eyebrow when he looked through all the stamps. I hadn't gone to any of those "terrorist" countries though. I was born in Bangladesh and have in the UK since I was a year old. I did get asked though - Did you have any military training before you left? - Have you been to country X, Y, Z - Why did you go to X, Y, Z. Do you not have a job? How did you get time off? - I even got asked why I left Bangladesh. Really?!? I was a year old mate, didn't really have a say in the matter!

The last time I went was December 2011. That time was a breeze. Flew into Newark, I was already on the system now (I had a change of passport between first 2 visits). I STILL however got briefly questioned in the queue to the counter, I have no idea why, but colour of skin is the only thing...

My brother went to Peru a few years back, he a his girlfriend had a stopover in Miami for a couple hours. Note they were not "entering" America, this was a compulsory refuel stop I guess. He gets hauled in, his girlfriend is sitting outside WTF is going on. He misses his flight due to the delay, they barely get him on the next flight but now his girlfriend has no fight since she was not hauled in. The airline to their credit were good, swapped their flights and his girlfriend took his flight and they gave him another flight yet several hours later. The most ignorant part of this though, when questioned "where were you born" my brother said "London, UK", "But your passport says Kingston", "Yes, Kingston Upon Thames, near London, UK", "Well the only Kingston I know if Kingston, Jamaica". This delayed things a bit. Yes, the world is bigger than that corner of the earth!

</rant>

But the people their are some of the friendliest and hospitable people I have met, and I've travelled around a fair bit!

> What did they ask me? Name, DoB, place of birth (all info IN MY PASSPORT ALREADY!),

They ask because folks using false papers occasionally don't know what their papers say.

They didn't ask me this face to face, they asked me to write it down after they had told me to sit down. If this was the case, I would have just copied it from my documents... yes, they had taken my passport, but I would have a photocopy in case it got lost right....?

It's worth noting that there's no such thing as not entering the US on a route like that with two exceptions. The US doesn't have transit on international itineraries through a US airport except in the cases of Tahiti-LAX-Paris on Air France and Auckland-LAX-London on Air New Zealand.

Any other transit between two international destinations through a US airport requires entering the US just like any other visit.

Unfortunately he didn't know that and being from the UK did not think he would have any issues with immigration in any country in the world, least of all the US!

I thought transit was different from entering a country for a stay, for example I know that people from most countries need a visa to visit India, but if you are transiting through then you are just waved through. Same with most other countries as far as I am aware...

Regardless, he is now not keen on visiting US in any circumstance and would rather pay more/take a longer flight than transit through the US.

My sister-in-law was re-entering the US from Canada with her husband. She looks very different from her awful passport photo, and the border agent spent some time quizzing her about facts on her passport, even asking leading questions with incorrect information: "And you were born in July 1975" "Yes... no! 1976!"

My Aussie passport looks very faded, especially the picture, from Venice. I have had problems in a few countries, Vietnam and Turkey, but never in the USA. I have been there quite a few times before hand, and I always expect the worst now, but have been quite lucky.

Well it sounds like a success though - you didn't manage to blow anyone up, did you? :-)

FWIW, I'm not wild about these "righteous indignation" articles on HN. This is one of the better ones I've seen, and I agree with it wholeheartedly, but... I feel that perhaps they're just better left to other sites.

This article feels completely fitting with the hacker mindset. It's about people having a bad user experience. Trying to fix inconveniences and unpleasant experiences seems right along the same lines as the hacker ethic and entrepreneurial spirit to me. I'm sorry if you disagree.

True.

There's also interesting discussion to be had about "hacking large bureaucratic systems - building in incentives for polite but effective behaviours or traffic flow analysis or what not.

You're playing 6 degrees of hacker news:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242484

The problem is that these kind of articles breed - first it's this, then it's some other thing, then it's Mitt Romney, then it's Ron Paul, and in the end you're saddled with a lot of politics.

And none of it is "intellectually stimulating". When I read the article, it just makes me irritated about the US policies and practices in place, but it's all information I already knew.

Also, to me, the "hacker mindset" works a lot better for things you can just go fix, or avoid altogether. Fixing a large, messy, political problem in a large country is anything but that.

Yeah, politics, that must be it ... if everybody in your country would've just voted for the other guy the problem would've solved itself by now, wouldn't it?

You sound exactly like one of those higher educated Chinese college kids arguing that whole censorship thing really isn't as bad as they make it sound ...

Or, rather someone defending their abusive husband. "It's just a lot of poltics" == "Sometimes, he's just had a really rough day at work, you know?"

It's sad how we managed to reduce the concept of Politics to the bickering between parties. Politics is so much more than that.

This is politics, and there's nothing wrong with that.

What are you talking about? I'm very involved in politics. Last fall I got to talk for a few minutes in the press room of the Italian equivalent of the White House about this:

http://srlfacile.org/ (lowering the costs of creating a company in Italy).

I'm also passionate about bicycle racing (Milano San Remo tomorrow!) but that doesn't mean I feel a need to talk about it here.

As a startup guy, this seems totally relevant to me. The extent to which foreign clients, partners, and potential employees can deal with America is important for a lot of businesses. It's embarrassing to have them feel like they're entering a third-world dictatorship every time they come to the US.

So are health care, labor laws, education, taxes and many other things that cause interminable debates on the internet that generally add nothing new.

Maybe they don't do much for you. But hearing about those things definitely influences how I vote and what I say when I contact my elected representatives.

> Maybe they don't do much for you.

I don't think you quite get my angle; it's a bit subtler than "this stuff isn't important". I think it's extremely important. Far more important than pretty much everything considered 'on topic' on this site: people live or die due to the health care system in their countries, for instance. Therefore, if we start posting this stuff, it could easily crowd out the 'hacker news' content. Problem #2 is that most of these things are either something where 1) pretty much everyone agrees (like this article), or 2) it because episode 3391913947165 of "libertopians vs lefties" on the internet, trotting out the same tired stuff and not resolving anything.

I think your horizon is a little short here.

I'm ok with talking about things where we all agree, in that it can still deepen understanding and spur people to action. For example, most people here agree about the idiocy of TSA's security theater. But when I took a flight this week, I opted out of what I could partly because I know that some of my fellow nerds are doing the same.

I'm also ok with talking about things that don't seem to get resolved right away. A lot of major issues take decades to get sorted out. But I don't think they get resolved by ignoring them. Well, they often do, but I don't expect they'll get resolved in favor of my position that way.

Not discussing them on HN != ignoring them!