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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 mean
by 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 agoThey 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 agoHow 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.
- jpalomaki 10y agoOne way would be to use "known suspicious persons" as training material. Build the system used by the agent so that it does not immediately notify when the passport for such person is scanned, but instead let the border guard do the chatting and only indicate a bit later in the process this person should not be let through. A bit similar method is (or was) used to keep the X-ray machine operators at airport awake. Software superimposes images of prohibited items on the X-ray image [1] and operator is supposed to notice them. The other case (false positives) would be harder to tackle on the case or border agent. Maybe it would help if the same agent was actually involved in the detailed investigation and not just responsible of flagging suspicious people. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040116/full/news040112-15.html http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040116/full/news040112-15.ht...
- staticautomatic 10y agoAgreed. False confessions are an excellent example of this.
- Anderkent 10y agoOdds of them 'catching' someone who is just shy and nervous? Even higher - there's no negative feedback when you turn away someone who was just a tourist, after all.
- Anderkent 10y agoOdds of them 'catching' someone who is just shy and nervous? Even higher - there's no negative feedback when you turn away someone who was just a tourist, after all.
- synicalx 10y agoIt's not about recognising a terrorist, it's about recognising a liar and uncovering information.