‘JFK Customs destroyed 11 of my instruments’ | Hacker News Reader

‘JFK Customs destroyed 11 of my instruments’

artsjournal.com

74 pointsmikegirouard22 comments

The biggest problem is that there doesn't seem to be any professional risk when customs agents "get it wrong". It seems that the agent could decided that your Sony Walkman is an agricultural product and take it from you and there will be shrugs all around.

With no downside whatsoever for overstepping bounds, added with the kinds of people that are attracted to this sort of job, its almost inevitable that bored agents will start hassling people when things get slow.

There's plenty of professional risk, but it's all present in going outside the lines. One of the first casualties of the terrorism scare was the ability of public employees to exercise common sense.

The (world famous) pianist Krystian Zimerman also had his concert grand destroyed by customs while on tour:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystian_Zimerman#Criticism_of_...

Bamboo instruments are agricultural products. So are the cotton and wool clothing I am wearing.

This country is doomed.

Even during the cold war, in all the slapstick portrayals in movies and and sitcoms, you would never see Soviet (or Nazi) border or other guard types acting anywhere near as stupid as the CBP officers in this case.

This was Customs, not TSA.

But yeah, I agree.

Fixed. Thanks.

I wonder who actually made the call to destroy these things? Does an individual customs agent have the authority to do this?

Looks like CBP's own guidelines explicitly allow dried bamboo products. https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/1359/~/importin...

A greencard is not just an employment permit. It is a permit to stay here permanently.

What are the chances this action was retaliatory, perhps in response to some political idea that someone in US Government didn't like?

What are the chances this is not the case? Pretty slim if you ask me, based on my expirences with TSA.

Every country has export/import regulations at their borders. They usually don't check that what you take out is permissable to bring back in.

If he didn't have the proper documentation or follow the rules, he's only got himself to blame. We'll have to wait for the whole story to come out.

'God bless you Customs agents for your service'.

Huh? I genuinely do not understand posts like this at all. You're blaming a musician for trying to bring an instrument into the US with the expectation that customs not break it for no reason? As someone else posted, bamboo products are explicitly allowed (https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/1359/~/importin...), but hey, why understand details or have compassion when you can just side with the government mindlessly at every opportunity...

What I said was if he didn't follow the rules then he's only got himself to blame. If he had followed the rules then he has been wronged. I didn't mindlessly side with the government but I did read the article.

If YOU had read the article then you would have known from the lack of detail it wasn't clear exactly what happened or why. The musician in question didn't seem to fight the customs agent which suggests to me that he acknowledged he had made a mistake.

You should also know from reading the article that it didn't say customs broke his instruments; they confiscated them (for destruction). But hey, it sounds a lot more exciting and outrageous to say they broke them.

I guess you mindlessly sided against the government. Chill out.

Why do people keep reflexively voting up any story about "Customs does something bad"? There's nothing particularly interesting or hacking-related here, it seems some people just want to promote the view that customs is out of control.

"promote the view"

Do you not believe that they are actually out of control? Breaking peoples stuff for no good reason and basically telling them to fuck off seems pretty out of control to me.

How you could think there is nothing interesting about the people we pay to make our country safe going out of their way to cause harm is pretty far beyond my comprehension really.

Do you really think you got the whole story in that blog post which itself admits it has no details about what happened?

Certainly not. This was an update from the artist who had this happen to him. A prior article is here: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/12/outrage-at-jf...

The parent article doesn't say much either, but I take it that the event happened, people are upset and the story is developing.

OP here. I think that a good portion of participants here are interested in this primarily because of the relationship with security. Admittedly, there isn't much here related with _hacking_ in the colloquial sense, but it is of interest to those concerned with their privacy getting hacked.

Because if they posted "Customs does something right", they would be posting something ordinary (something that actually represents the majority of the events).

And that does not serve their narrative... That you have to be a victim living in a repressive police state which spends it's days attempting to beat you down.

So they do their best to post outliners ... that simply happen due to the sheer size and magnitude of the dataset.

I've never seen so many cringeworthy projections in a row.

These people are paid employees of the United States government. Them doing something ordinary is exactly what they should be doing. Them breaking peoples things for no reason whatsoever (there are many, many examples beyond this) is becoming more and more common and ALWAYS results in zero discipline or compensation. Your expectation that people just pretend like this isn't happening is completely ridiculous.

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