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This is exactly correct. When I returned from a weekend vacation in New York a few years ago, Canadian customs asked me about the tourist sites I visited. It'

This is exactly correct. When I returned from a weekend vacation in New York a few years ago, Canadian customs asked me about the tourist sites I visited. It's not that they thought attending a musical and visiting the 9/11 memorial was suspicious; it was just a convenient topic of conversation while they watched to see if I seemed nervous or otherwise suspicious.

madeofpalk 10y ago
I don't know about 'Correct'. When you enter Australia you never even talk to anyone anymore - immigration is all done via self-serve kiosks.
- tajen 10y ago
  I went to Australia and there are still passport officers. The last one told me she liked the joke on my tshirt. But again, in Australia when there's a terrorist attack, they create an #illridewithyou trend on Twitter... Not everything is pink, but they at least have a good go at trying.
- viraptor 10y ago
  For the select few with the right citizenship. Everybody else queues up to talk to immigration. During busy time it can take 2h. The self serve kiosks are not the norm.
  - hobos_delight 10y ago
    This has become a lot better in the US now too - I can use my Australian passport at their self-serve kiosks when travelling on an ESTA that has a renewal. You still have to talk to the immigration officer though - everyone does.
  - hrrsn 10y ago
    Travelling to Australia as a New Zealand citizen is about as easy as it gets. My last flight from Sydney to Auckland I was at home 45 minutes after the plane landed.
- cperciva 10y ago
  Canada has self-serve kiosks for the paperwork, but they print a ticket which you hand in to an agent, and (depending on how long the line is) they usually ask a few questions before they wave you on.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    In Australia (for certain nations only apparently) you never talk to a person.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Though they still do the odd manual stop and search in my experience. When my son and I were returning from Singapore a couple of years ago, my son had bought a guitar over there and had it in a gig bag strapped to his back in the immigration line as we came back into Australia. Immigration let everyone through without question, but as soon as they saw him with the guitar they asked him to step forward to an inspection point. I went along to observe, and it was quite interesting. The guy and the lady at the inspection desk asked him to put the guitar case flat on the desk and open it to remove the guitar. While he did this, I noted that they never took their eyes off his face. They never even glanced at the guitar or the case. He was halfway through taking it out when they told him it was all OK and to stow it away again and be on our way. I had always heard that the officers watched for your reaction which 9 times out of 10 gives the person away if they are trying to hide something, but this was the first time I had witnessed it first hand.
- synicalx 10y ago
  They still swoop in and perform random tests and interviews on people, even happens when you're a Australian citizen LEAVING the country. Last time I flew to LA, I had a customs guy give me a really limp-wristed frisking.
krzyk 10y ago
I always get nervous when passing US border checks. Once I got asked how many times have you been here, I replied that this is my second time (thinking he means San Francisco), but he said: "It says here that you were in the US 3 times". That really got me nervous, I wouldn't like to get turned away and look for a flight back home. Do they think that a poor guy at the border can recognize a skilled terrorist? What they do is scare the hell out of ordinary people.
- cperciva 10y ago
  They know that people get nervous. But there's a difference between the nervousness of someone who is intimidated by authority figures and the nervousness of someone who is trying to enter the country illegally or smuggle something in. Odds of their screening catching a skilled terrorist? Pretty low -- although terrorists generally fall into the category of "bungling" more than "skilled". Odds of them catching people who are smuggling drugs, or entering as "tourists" but actually planning on working? Much higher -- because it's easy to learn to recognize the common cases.
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
    > But there's a difference between the nervousness of someone who is intimidated by authority figures and the nervousness of someone who is trying to enter the country illegally or smuggle something in. Is there? What's the difference if the emotion is 'nervousness' and the outward expression of that emotion signals 'nervousness'? Who is skilled enough to distinguish between the two degrees of nervousness?
    - cperciva 10y ago
      > Who is skilled enough Someone who spends 40 hours a week practicing.
      - joncrocks 10y ago
        How much feedback do they get from this practice though? If you were a 'bad' border protection agent, and you let everyone through, how do you learn? And equally if you select people for secondary interrogation that are allowed to enter, how does that feed back to you? I guess I'm curious to know a bit more about how the organisation is structured, as there's equivalent in tech discussions, "Ten years experience vs. one years experience ten times." Without some structure to know when you're doing it wrong or right, you can be talking to people for 40 hours a week and not get much out of it.
idiot_stick 10y ago
>it was just a convenient topic of conversation while they watched to see if I seemed nervous or otherwise suspicious. Is this acceptable? Is there any correlation between "criminal" or "terrorist" and "acts nervous at border"? Are common border guards trained well enough to distinguish these subtle cues if they exist? No.
- synicalx 10y ago
  It's very easy to spot when someone is nervous, there's nothing subtle about it. If you're twitchy, talking fast, sweating and can't answer questions accurately about your job or a place you've just visited, then yes I think that is absolutely suspicious and worth investigating.

madeofpalk 10y ago

I don't know about 'Correct'. When you enter Australia you never even talk to anyone anymore - immigration is all done via self-serve kiosks.

tajen 10y ago
I went to Australia and there are still passport officers. The last one told me she liked the joke on my tshirt. But again, in Australia when there's a terrorist attack, they create an #illridewithyou trend on Twitter... Not everything is pink, but they at least have a good go at trying.
viraptor 10y ago
For the select few with the right citizenship. Everybody else queues up to talk to immigration. During busy time it can take 2h. The self serve kiosks are not the norm.
- hobos_delight 10y ago
  This has become a lot better in the US now too - I can use my Australian passport at their self-serve kiosks when travelling on an ESTA that has a renewal. You still have to talk to the immigration officer though - everyone does.
- hrrsn 10y ago
  Travelling to Australia as a New Zealand citizen is about as easy as it gets. My last flight from Sydney to Auckland I was at home 45 minutes after the plane landed.
cperciva 10y ago
Canada has self-serve kiosks for the paperwork, but they print a ticket which you hand in to an agent, and (depending on how long the line is) they usually ask a few questions before they wave you on.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  In Australia (for certain nations only apparently) you never talk to a person.
cyberferret 10y ago
Though they still do the odd manual stop and search in my experience. When my son and I were returning from Singapore a couple of years ago, my son had bought a guitar over there and had it in a gig bag strapped to his back in the immigration line as we came back into Australia. Immigration let everyone through without question, but as soon as they saw him with the guitar they asked him to step forward to an inspection point. I went along to observe, and it was quite interesting. The guy and the lady at the inspection desk asked him to put the guitar case flat on the desk and open it to remove the guitar. While he did this, I noted that they never took their eyes off his face. They never even glanced at the guitar or the case. He was halfway through taking it out when they told him it was all OK and to stow it away again and be on our way. I had always heard that the officers watched for your reaction which 9 times out of 10 gives the person away if they are trying to hide something, but this was the first time I had witnessed it first hand.
synicalx 10y ago
They still swoop in and perform random tests and interviews on people, even happens when you're a Australian citizen LEAVING the country. Last time I flew to LA, I had a customs guy give me a really limp-wristed frisking.

krzyk 10y ago

I always get nervous when passing US border checks. Once I got asked how many times have you been here, I replied that this is my second time (thinking he means San Francisco), but he said: "It says here that you were in the US 3 times". That really got me nervous, I wouldn't like to get turned away and look for a flight back home. Do they think that a poor guy at the border can recognize a skilled terrorist? What they do is scare the hell out of ordinary people.

cperciva 10y ago
They know that people get nervous. But there's a difference between the nervousness of someone who is intimidated by authority figures and the nervousness of someone who is trying to enter the country illegally or smuggle something in. Odds of their screening catching a skilled terrorist? Pretty low -- although terrorists generally fall into the category of "bungling" more than "skilled". Odds of them catching people who are smuggling drugs, or entering as "tourists" but actually planning on working? Much higher -- because it's easy to learn to recognize the common cases.
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  > But there's a difference between the nervousness of someone who is intimidated by authority figures and the nervousness of someone who is trying to enter the country illegally or smuggle something in. Is there? What's the difference if the emotion is 'nervousness' and the outward expression of that emotion signals 'nervousness'? Who is skilled enough to distinguish between the two degrees of nervousness?
  - cperciva 10y ago
    > Who is skilled enough Someone who spends 40 hours a week practicing.
    - joncrocks 10y ago
      How much feedback do they get from this practice though? If you were a 'bad' border protection agent, and you let everyone through, how do you learn? And equally if you select people for secondary interrogation that are allowed to enter, how does that feed back to you? I guess I'm curious to know a bit more about how the organisation is structured, as there's equivalent in tech discussions, "Ten years experience vs. one years experience ten times." Without some structure to know when you're doing it wrong or right, you can be talking to people for 40 hours a week and not get much out of it.

idiot_stick 10y ago

>it was just a convenient topic of conversation while they watched to see if I seemed nervous or otherwise suspicious. Is this acceptable? Is there any correlation between "criminal" or "terrorist" and "acts nervous at border"? Are common border guards trained well enough to distinguish these subtle cues if they exist? No.

synicalx 10y ago
It's very easy to spot when someone is nervous, there's nothing subtle about it. If you're twitchy, talking fast, sweating and can't answer questions accurately about your job or a place you've just visited, then yes I think that is absolutely suspicious and worth investigating.