Encrypted Chat Developer Detained, Interrogated at US Border
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"The filmmaker: Laura Poitras is an Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, whose recent films include “My Country, My Country,” about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and “The Oath,” which was filmed in Yemen. Since 2006, Poitras has been detained and questioned at airports at least 40 times. She has had her computer and reporter’s notebooks confiscated and presumably copied, without a warrant. The most recent time, April 5, she took notes during her detention. The agents told her to stop, as they considered her pen a weapon."
...
"He [Jacob Appelbaum - a computer security researcher for the nonprofit organization the Tor Project (torproject.org)] has been detained at least a dozen times at airports: “I was put into a special room, where they frisked me, put me up against the wall. ... Another one held my wrists. ... They implied that if I didn’t make a deal with them, that I’d be sexually assaulted in prison. ... They took my cellphones, they took my laptop. They wanted, essentially, to ask me questions about the Iraq War, the Afghan War, what I thought politically.”
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/4/26/the_nsa_is_watchi...
* Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports [Video w/ Transcript] http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/detained_in_the_us_fil...
* "We Don’t Live in a Free Country": Jacob Appelbaum on Being Target of Widespread Gov’t Surveillance [Video w/ Transcript] http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/we_do_not_live_in_a
* Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails [Video w/ Transcript] http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_...
Alternatively it could be that 100% of the population fully supported the revolution leading to a universal popular uprising of the oppressed - just like Russia in 1917!
e.g. in 2002 Saddam Hussein was re-elected President of Iraq. He got 100% of the votes, and there was 100% turnout ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/16/iraq )
On top of that, numerous civilians, particularly those in positions of authority, were subject to a sort of low key terrorism, such as being dipped in hot tar or having their homes burned down. Even being a child of such an official was solid grounds for being attacked. And in the South, people were actually murdered for having Loyalist sympathies.
This was actively encouraged by the leadership, by the way, not some decentralized mob violence. On reports that this was happening in New York, for instance, a military official put an halt to it. On hearing this, George Washington immediately intervened to allow it and upbraided the officer for hurting the revolutionary cause.
Not actually making the case that American rebels were evil terrorists: just making the case that making such a case wouldn't be too difficult for someone with an agenda, given the standards of how we label things terrorism nowadays.
Can you volunteer a significant difference between Franklin and a modern-day terrorist from the establishment ruler's standpoint?
I don't think there's much to argue about here.
The modern terrorist is none of these things.
Not like the old historic terrorists, no, those lot had style. They were on our side for one thing, made us a lot of money in the long run. And they look bloody good in paintings. Oh look, the gins run out. I'll go find some rum.
Extremists not on your side are terrorists.
Extremists that lose are terrorists
If we aren't sure yet they are insurgents
If it ends with nobody winning and the leaders getting Nobel peace prizes (N.Ireland) then they were all just folk dancers that got out of hand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Williams_%28Nobel_laureat... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairead_Maguire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hume http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Trimble
It has been added to your profile and your thoughtcrime score has been updated.
We look forward to interviewing you the next time you attempt to cross the border.
So you see this border interrogation as part of a systematic policy to intimidate developers entering the United States with expertise in cryptographic dev? Gotta be honest, that seems like a wild and illogical extrapolation to me based on this anecdotal story. So the end game of the United States government is what exactly, in this effort? To keep people with cryptographic talent outside of the US?
1) Why? I presume your point is that the government is attempting in a very, very, very round-about way to stifle free speech? Please inform me if this is not your point, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
2) What would that accomplish. We live in an era of instant communication and transportation of software. Developers can work on products from anywhere in the globe. If this man was denied entry to the United States, what is stopping him from simply working for his company from abroad? The answer: nothing.
It would serve pretty much zero purpose to run a campaign of intimidation against an incredibly small subset of the developer population... Programmers with cryptographic expertise who frequently travel in and outside of the United States... I don't get it. What about all of those with crypto experience who are already in the US and don't travel. Aren't they a threat? Are they being targeted? Where are their stories?
Doesn't the government, when they are looking to either break or make these same crypto software, draw from the same talent pool as private industry here in America? Why would they run that talent out of town?
If the US government wanted to suppress cryptographic research or otherwise circumvent it in an effort to subvert Free Speech, don't you think there are more precise and non-haphazard-and-idiotic ways of doing it?
This goes against the general sentiment of comments I've seen in this article, but I just have to say it. I think the idea is ridiculous and above all, completely inefficient for the goals everyone is ascribing to the border agents and the government here.
Logic doesn't really back this up. I can't imagine the point of this. I am not naive enough to think the government doesn't do some shady stuff, but I simply don't see the point and don't see this as an effective tool in whatever their war on developers is supposed to be.
But okay, given your argument, what do you think happened here, and why? Do you think this report is a complete fabrication?
True, I am assuming a certain level of logic and you are right, the world doesn't always work that way. But the above poster makes a lot more sense to me than some idea of a very, very, very ineffective campaign against crypto devs. The idea that we are targeting crypto devs really doesn't hold up when you think about it, it doesn't make a single ounce of sense.
And is it really that hard to believe that this man, whose job it is to monitor the flow of people and properties in and outside of the united states, would be interested? Is it a stretch to imagine any number of scenarios, including one where this man was simply overzealous? I understand the obvious sympathies we have to this man as a fellow programmer... I just don't see anything "there" there.
Agreed. This is simply a case of border control agents going overboard. I'm not defending it for a second (as a US visa holder, I despise the process I have to go through every time I enter the country) but these agents aren't technically inclined in any way.
When you arrive at their desk, they ask "what do you do for a living and what does your company do?". If you answer "The company makes chat software", you'd walk straight through. If you say "The company makes encrypted, secure chat software" then they are going to ask further questions. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a watchlist of words to listen out for, and "encryption" is one of them. Encryption is subject to export controls:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U...
This is simply a case of border control agents going
overboard
Suggesting it's because of something they said is ludicrous and aggravating. That's the same argument as suggesting that if someone didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have dressed skimpily. While you don't even know what she was wearing.
Perhaps there is also a law for how long it takes until someone attempts to dismiss an argument by introducing a red herring.
I think untog brings up a good point, which is that we don't know what the interaction was. And we do know that what you say can cause you to be further questioned.
Of course, this harassment doesn't accomplish anything. If these people were truly a threat, the FBI would stake them out, the CIA would make them disappear or the NSA would hire them. Them being harassed at the border once more illustrates the weirdness of the TSA and border patrol. Their employees seem to suffer from the group delusion that harassing people will keep them from doing security research or being a danger to the United States. I don't understand their motivation. They give the US a bad name and they achieve nothing.
The actual security agencies know better than that. You may disagree with their practices and beliefs, but they at least give the impression of being mostly competent and efficient in achieving sensible goals. The current news around a 0-day cryptographic breakthrough being incorporated in Flame doesn't result in "I never expected that", but in "Go figure".
Working on encryption software : Being questioned at the border !:: Wearing a bikini : getting raped.
It's a lazy argument and he was right to point it out.
I think it's the best known example, and hence the best illustration, of 'blaming the victim'. I would have used that description, were it not for the fact that I couldn't remember the name of the fallacy at the time. I remembered it after a good night's sleep. If you wish to attribute my usage of an example to lazyness, so be it.
I wasn't going to let "You get temporarily detained at the border? Well, you must've said something that alerted them." slide and I don't see how it is logically different from "You got raped? Well, you must've worn something that aroused them."
> He has worked for Greenpeace and has volunteered for the Ruckus Society and the Rainforest Action Network
> Appelbaum is known for representing Wikileaks at the 2010 Hope conference.
The US government has a long and well documented history of systematically harassing political dissidents.
Edit: my bad, skimmed the article and thought it was Appelbaum who was detained.
See the many other similar stories of detentions on this thread.
But also, just following the question of what's "wildly implausible", assuming the event happened, what's more plausible, that this was a sanctioned action based on US policy or that low-level airport security people have the ability to detain whoever they want based on criteria they make up and that they just happened to choose a crypt expert based on their personal interests in the subject?
I could probably mount a plausible argument that the end-game is to discourage talented developers/cryptographers from contributing to the sorts of projects that could be seen as "sticking it to the man". Especially since this isn't a singular isolated anecdotal story (and I know the plural of "anecdote" isn't "data", but still…)
If making that argument (and I'm not yet sure I'm convinced of it's "rightness"), I'd probably also point out it doesn't need to be on the scale of "the United States government" to exist or to be effective - it could be emergent behaviour of law enforcement agencies without being publicly chosen or acknowledged policy. A diligent "national security" agent might very well think it's entirely within their remit to "investigate" software like CryptoCat, and the Chinese Whispers propagation of that "I wonder what algorithms CryptoCat uses?" curiosity could easily end up with the observed "The NSA needs to know about your software" interrogation/intimidation behaviour by the minimum wage airport security staff.
And as a long term play - putting even a little pressure on young up-and-coming developers when they're deciding what projects to start or contribute too would "work". "Should I contribute to this borderline subversive open source crypto project? But what if I get a startup off the ground later that requires a lot of travel? Maybe I should work on my commercial mobile app idea instead…"
I addressed this in one of my earlier points: I don't quite understand what you are talking about. We are computer programmers. We can build a product from anywhere in the world. Why would physical borders stop us?
This is not the only inference you can make. Something that I've noticed about domestic law-enforcement, which I think successfully extrapolates and pertains to the DHS and TSA, is that outlying behavior is discouraged, especially outlying behavior associated with volatile keywords. How many times have I done something unusual, and stopped when the police come by because I just don't know if it's legal or not, and I don't want to get hassled?!
The law is so extensive and arcane that enforcement relies almost entirely on precedent and patterns rather than direct application, especially when dealing with rarer violations.
The result is systematic harassment with no end-game required. It's a policy that kind of sneaks up on institutions as big as the US Govt: discourage interesting, dissenting behavior; encourage boring, mainstream behavior. It doesn't require passing a law - it's an emergent behavior that only requires extra scrutiny of behavior that is outside the experience of the enforcer. This will tend to get worse with scale and the application of technology because a) more people are scrutinized and b) more of their life will be scrutinized, increasing the risk of finding outlying behavioral points.
"Cognitive dissonance" is better and doesn't use other people's actual conditions as pejoratives.
Just a pet peeve I have, don't mean to call you out or anything. :)
"Hypocrisy" or "self contradiction" would IMO be even better.
- They asked him what he did for work (as they pretty much always do at a border crossing, in my experience). - He said he developed software. - They asked what kind of software. - He said CryptoCat. - The officer, knowing that there are export restrictions on cryptography, gave him a longer secondary interview.
I don't think they're targeting anyone here, though I wonder just how much knowledge the interviewer had about cryptography specifically.
Disclaimer: Never been to the US, don't plan to do it, limited insight into the laws over there.
How are export restrictions relevant for people entering the country? Aren't US export restrictions only affecting US citizens or corporations? According to his twitter page that guys from Montreal / Beirut? And how does the whole idea of export restrictions for decentralized internet projects work?
I do believe this might've been blown out of proportions, but your answer seems a little too naive/easy, from this armchair here.
Did they ask him about cryptography? They probably did, but I'd bet dollars to donuts he brought it up first.
[1] https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/210363454954016769 [2] https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/210367538759086083 [3] https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/210386514369191936 [4] https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/208388821346299904
Also, do we know if he was detained by USCBP or CBSA (i.e. Canadian Customs)? You did mention he was detained as he was leaving the country, and unless they were running a special program that day (which happens every so often), usually the US side doesn't examine people leaving.
The comment "It’s an open source encrypted, private alternative to other services such as Facebook chat." and then the comment from an alleged interrogator, “The interrogator (who claimed 22 years of computer experience) asked me which algorithms Cryptocat used and about its censorship resistance.” really set off some bells.
If it's open source, then git/svn/cvs pull a copy of the repo and read the code. No need to interrogate the guy. And second the DHS doesn't have any history of going after folks simply because they write some open source software.
Now could the guy be detained for other reasons? Sure. But this feels more like a troll to generate buzz for his app which seems to be on a few warez sites. My quick look at Github and Sourceforge didn't find it there.
From cryptocat front page: "Messages are encrypted inside your own browser using AES-256"
Link to source on top right: https://project.crypto.cat/
That's the second Google search result for Cryptocat.
While I understand what you're saying here, I can't help but think of how many times my co-workers asked me something they could have easily looked up via Google. I can easily extrapolate that to a border guard, especially if there's an added benefit of harassing a guy you don't like.
My BS detector was pinging though that they even knew this guy had an open source project. If they were hassling him because of that, they had pre-knowledge of it and would know the answer to that question. If on the other hand they just pulled him out of the line and started giving him the 3rd degree because he 'looked like the type' and then got this 'crypto thing' and then tried to exploit that for some other reason, well that would be more like typical TSA protocol.
There's a whole line of reasoning behind their questioning tactics that extends beyond getting to the facts. That's why the best legal advice is simply to not say anything, because they are not in any way shape or form on "a quest for the truth".
they also need to engage the subject in a conversation and may ask most banal/unrelated questions, as well as keep asking the same question in a different way.
Whatever that means, it could just as well be 22 years including VB, Fortran, C, in areas unrelated to crypto, or for what it's worth, Solitaire and Excel. If he's an old-timer he may not even have heard of version control or that opensource means that code is public for anyone to read.
Let's not trivialize real totalitarianism in our haste to condemn stupid airport security theatre.
If DHS is targeting people when they travel just because they work on information security, that's pretty chilling.
Guard: "What do you do for a living?" Dev: "Software developer on a secure chat app"
Dev later claims he was interrogated about his work.
In regards to the specific question about the algorithm and the interrogator knowing something about computers, isn't it possible that he was personally interested in and asked while he had the chance to talk to someone who was familiar with that stuff?
If he had computer science experience he may have had a legitimate interest in it. That said, he may not have been a programmer, thus the open source part eluding him.
If it was the government they could just...look at the source.
It is not a fear that legally I can't talk or do things. It is fear again irrationality and against bureaucratic mistakes. You pissed off one police officer or one border patrol agent and now you are on some kind of secret database or black list for life.
Government border checks are a bigger problem than religious terrorists?
And the answer is yes.
And my answer would simply be no. In no way do I see monitoring the flow of humans into our country as a bigger problem than religious terrorists whose sole intent is to murder and maim as many innocent people as they can. shrugs
Which terrorist?
So by your logic, because there was a fanatical religious terrorist at some point in time, it is perfectly ok for this country to start prying into everyone's (public and private) accounts, infer who knows what from what they read there ("You write on twitter you are going to have a _blast_!? in Boston" "Ok, step over here please"), and then proceed to interrogate people at the border.
It seems like the guy was added to some black database somewhere. Are you in that database too? Can you check who is in there? Do you know how one gets added or removed from it?
Are you prepared to justify all the groping, and x-raying going in airports because because of a religious terrorist. What else are you willing to sacrifice because of this religious terrorist.
I am, for one, also very disappointed to see that you and others have drunk the cool-aid that has been flowing from Washington D.C. (This is a War on Terror, Be Afraid, Be Prepared for More Attacks, We Must Invade etc. etc.)
Or, a much more simple explanation as was outlined in a post above, is that they asked what he does for a living, and he mentioned cryptographic technologies. Which is a controlled export in this country. Which would naturally raise the curiousity of someone whose job it is to monitor the flow of humans and properties in and out of this country.
Someone who enters and leaves this country frequently, who works in an area that is a defined controlled export of this country...
Tell me, if your job was a border agent, would you be curious? Would you interview that person? Wouldn't you be horrible at your job if you didn't?
How many people are scanned (using information that's, in spite of your advice of 'not putting things in public', readily available to the US immigration and border control)? How many of those are terrorists?
The simple border checks are symbolic in nature. It means we are intentionally excluding people from our conversations. Eventually those people will form a new dialog without us. Think about Pakistan, they are our allies in name only. The population doesn't like us, government actively works against with states who are not our friends.
But you can rest assured that this viewpoint you're disappointed by is much more common on internet forums than among people with actual power.
What exactly does the kind of software a person develops have to do with whether they should be allowed entry into the USA?
Another poster, untog, made an interesting point I agree with. He said it better than I can summarize, so let me copy/paste:
"When you arrive at their desk, they ask "what do you do for a living and what does your company do?". If you answer "The company makes chat software", you'd walk straight through. If you say "The company makes encrypted, secure chat software" then they are going to ask further questions. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a watchlist of words to listen out for, and "encryption" is one of them. Encryption is subject to export controls:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U... "
Encrpytion is subject to export controls. Obviously, if there are controls on such a product, and you are an individual coming in and out of the country frequently, working on crypto for an American company... They are going to be interested. It's their job to monitor, inspect and even restrict the flow of humans and controlled properties in and out of the country. They'd be terrible at their job if they didn't want to hear more about a controlled export.
If you were a nuclear scientist working on energy research in America, and nuclear components and intelligence properties are a controlled export... Would you be surprised if someone stopped you at the border?
My point is not to equate crypto with nuclear research, it's to equate crypto with another controlled export.
to further expand, let me copy/paste my first response to this entire situation:
"1) Why? I presume your point is that the government is attempting in a very, very, very round-about way to stifle free speech? Please inform me if this is not your point, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
2) What would that accomplish. We live in an era of instant communication and transportation of software. Developers can work on products from anywhere in the globe. If this man was denied entry to the United States, what is stopping him from simply working for his company from abroad? The answer: nothing.
It would serve pretty much zero purpose to run a campaign of intimidation against an incredibly small subset of the developer population... Programmers with cryptographic expertise who frequently travel in and outside of the United States... I don't get it. What about all of those with crypto experience who are already in the US and don't travel. Aren't they a threat? Are they being targeted? Where are their stories?
Doesn't the government, when they are looking to either break or make these same crypto software, draw from the same talent pool as private industry here in America? Why would they run that talent out of town?
If the US government wanted to suppress cryptographic research or otherwise circumvent it in an effort to subvert Free Speech, don't you think there are more precise and non-haphazard-and-idiotic ways of doing it?
This goes against the general sentiment of comments I've seen in this article, but I just have to say it. I think the idea is ridiculous and above all, completely inefficient for the goals everyone is ascribing to the border agents and the government here.
Logic doesn't really back this up. I can't imagine the point of this. I am not naive enough to think the government doesn't do some shady stuff, but I simply don't see the point and don't see this as an effective tool in whatever their war on developers is supposed to be."
Now imagine that as government policy instead of an isolated incident.
"Quantity has a quality all its own."
Even if someone has their papers easily accessible, it's a very scary thought that if you're driving from one city to another, the government officer has the right to stop you and demand you show your papers for no reason. And that's assuming everything going on is above-board. If he came across a corrupt cop, it's pretty terrifying to think about the possibilities of what could happen.
And this is becoming the norm, simply because we as a society have decided that virtually everything is permitted to "protect our borders."
2) Your example of a corrupt cop: What is your point. If you come across a corrupt law enforcement officer, they can do whatever they want to you. They can plant enough drugs to put you away for a decade. Does this mean we should get rid of police officers? Of course not. Because there is a possibility of corruption in the police forces of AZ that may lead to a few edge cases where people are mistreated and improperly detained, does that mean we should not have peace officers protecting the border at all? Does this mean we should not, when someone commits a crime, be able to ask if they are legal citizens of the United States of America?
My view is that this is not unreasonable. I know many of you disagree. shrugs
3) Why do you put "protect our borders" in quotes. Do you think that the idea of a sovereign block of land with the ability to restrict the input and output of human flow in that area of land is a farce?
The point is that we are slipping further and further into the realm of handing over control of our lives to government bodies whose purpose is neither our safety or freedom, but power.
(sorry, I know this is rather flippant and intended to be humorous/tongue-in-cheek.. I simply don't see this radical expansion of slippery-slope philosophy that many of you do.)
Yeah, if you plan on getting pulled over for speeding. Or accidentally getting your car towed, or accidentally getting into a bar fight. Or getting pulled over for driving, ahem, suspiciously. If those things, you should definitely always have your papers on you.
Or witnessing a crime. Or being a victim to a crime. Definite situations where you should plan to have your papers on you.
Most people are not violent criminals. Most people still have run-ins with the police at some point in their life.
Particularly if you have darker skin.
That's why my housemate can't go into Arizona, despite being here legally.
The Soviet Union also had perfectly valid reasons for requiring that everyone have their papers on them at all times. There were genuinely foreign spies moving around, and the government of the Soviet Union had a genuine interest in doing everything necessary to capture and neutralize them. That doesn't change the fact that it's a terrifying encroachment on your freedoms if you've always got to have your papers on you. Particularly if you're a dis-empowered minority.
By the way, I carry my documentation every single day. As do 99% of all of you. It's called a drivers license. You can't operate a vehicle without one, and it's valid proof against Arizona's immigration laws that you are not an illegal alien. So if your friend is pulled over for any reason, he's going to have his proof right there.. Please stop with this baloney that your friend can't enter the state of AZ. It's just silly. If he doesn't want to go to the state as a form of protest against the law, so be it.
Because "how it works" is indeed that people get randomly stopped because they have brown skin. For example, driving while black. You're white so you ignore this, but other people can't. If you cared to understand this, the knowledge is trivially available.
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
This is standard procedure, and it is not a bad thing. If you are a border control agent and you want to assess if a businessman coming through is a security threat, you don't ask him, "Are you a security threat?" No, you ask about his work and get into his conversation. If he's honest and straightforward, you move on. If you catch a discrepancy in his story or he is oddly defensive (as it sounds was the case here), you ask some more questions to figure out what is going on.
Personally, I enjoy talking about my work. I cross a lot of borders and it can be a pleasure to converse with an agent who is honestly interested. Yes, 45 minutes to an hour would be annoying, but it isn't that terrible and in this case he may have brought it on himself, we can't know.
I regularly hear about people detained for far more than that, and it wouldn't be difficult for Border Control to hold him far long than that.
Come on, don't be so naive. Everybody knows that the border guards google your name when you're taken aside. That's probably how the guy with an "Arabic sounding name" ended up on the first page of results with his encrypted chat pet project and therefore got "interrogated" by border patrol by asking one question.
The 1-hour extended interview with border patrol is not detaining someone, it's just common practice. Happened to me several times.
I mean, this is a guy who is, by what appears to be his own admissions on twitter, a "internet freedom activitist," who just got done talking at a conference about his software. This would be a great PR icing on the cake. I'm not saying it's manufactured, but I have just as much evidence for that as I do to the contrary based on the information presented.
I remember in my college security class our prof recommended that if we left the country we didn't bring any sort of cryptography work with us. I'm not a lawyer so I don't quite understand the legal ramifications.
For the US there is a wikipedia post at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_...
Some folks here might not be familiar with the plight of Phil Zimmerman, who had the bright idea to invent PGP when there was a real chance that ALL crypto in the US would be fiercely regulated by the federal government.
For his trouble, he was under indictment for something like 3 years while the federales were deciding if he had broken any laws or not. His supposed crime: someone managed to get PGP out of the US. Not him...someone else. I guess they thought he helped them.
SO this sort of thing isn't new; it's been going on for a while and there are lots of stories around about folks who decided to write books about secret crypto-loving agencies in the US and almost got arrested for doing so.
To ignore the reality of the government's position/actions on this is to invite trouble. Your best answers to an agent of the government are always the ones that provide a true but ultimately useless answer. Never lie.
I'm an US citizen, served in the military, and middle aged. On my last trip back from Toronto, I got flack from the border agent because my flight out was from LaGuardia but I was connecting through Philadelphia on my return. Border agent gets all inquisitive and asks how I'm supposed to get from PHL to LGA as if I'm trying to be subversive about it. I roll my eyes and show him my ticket from PHL to LGA and all of a sudden he realizes he's an idiot. Bear in mind, NONE OF THIS MATTERS. I'm a goddamn US citizen and I can enter anywhere I damn where please. Of course, I didn't ARGUE with him, I just showed him and went along my way.
The less upset/indignant you act when being questioned, the less suspicious you look. That goes even if you've done nothing wrong and are completely within your rights.
Or I pastebin'd the article for you or anyone else curious:
While it very well may be true, this is shoddy journalism at its finest. Take this sentence, for example: "Apparently, a trip to the US now allegedly features a frightening round of intense interrogation by American border guards."
Apparently? Apparently!?! Are you kidding me.
Do some real journalism and stop quoting twitter.
Getting stuck at the border for an hour is a sufficiently short time, in the bureaucratic system, that we can assume they didn't really care. In all probability it was just some random border guard who really did have a CS background and was excited to get a chance to use it.
Work in the military for 20 years (ok, 22) in a communications or IT capacity, retire, collect pension. 20 years of military computer experience doesn't necessarily make you an expert or even employable, sadly.
You then get preferential hiring for other positions in the government, especially law enforcement. Working for ICE/CBP wouldn't be a horrible job (if you could do it for a few days a month, I think it would be fun -- you're basically the first contact a visitor has with the US, and you get to meet lots of interesting people from around the world. In most countries, this is a particularly well respected job, a whole lot better than being deep in the bowels of government bureaucracy.)
I am wondering, they have a database that connects your name with the OSS project you're on(or any projects for that matter)? and it pops out once they input your passport number? quite surprised.