How The TSA And INS Are Killing Business
A post on Reddit:
Why I stopped travelling to the US and I largely stopped doing business in the US.With every trip I've taken to the US over the past 30 years, things have gotten a little worse every time. Things are now so bad that I have stopped visiting the US and i no longer have any clients in the US. Mostly because having clients in the US means having to go there. And I've grown to really dislike going to the US.
I'm a photographer. I mainly do street photography now, but i still do the odd bit of contract work. I travel with expensive gear though not that much of it. I like to travel light. The INS do not like that. If I turn up with just my camera backpack and a small bag of clean underwear for a one week stay I usually have to spend a lot of time being interrogated for my lack of a huge suitcase. (I guess they suspect I live in the US illegally. Which borders on comical since nobody knows more about my travel patterns than the US government. Besides, my passport is usually filled with stamps that should tell them that I travel a lot and that even if I lived in the US, I spend most of my time flitting around the world)
Paranoid as the INS are, the TSA are even worse. Mostly because they are a huge bureaucracy where nobody seems to be accountable and their on-the-ground personnel are mostly people who had to choose from a range of other low paying jobs. On several occasions I've had expensive gear disappear from my carry-on during security checks and last year a TSA agent dropped my Canon 1D Mk3, smashing both the lens and the camera body. No apology, but more importantly: I was never compensated. I'm not rich and that camera (and the lens) was important to my livelihood. An expensive piece of kit lost that meant that I basically didn't make any money that month.
Oh, and of course, now you have all this nonsense with pat-downs and backscatter X-rays which increases security with exactly zero percent and makes an already tense atmosphere even more tense. Well played.
Taking pictures in the US is another hassle. After 9/11 everyone is utterly paranoid and everyone from security guards to police, and even random passers-by, have hassled me. Claiming that I am breaking the law (I am not) or demanding I explain why I am taking pictures. Believe me, I have spent a lot of time figuring out what laws apply to photography in various states, but on the ground and with a camera in your hand, that means absolutely nothing. Explaining the laws in effect to a law enforcement officer only gets you into more trouble.
I've been to Russia before the cold war ended. I've been all over the middle east. I've been to China. I've travelled all over Europe. I've been to Cuba and I've been to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua.
What all of these places have in common is that going there was a far more pleasant experience than going to the US. Yes, you read correctly: going to the US is more unpleasant than going to Soviet era Russia or even Iran 10 years ago. Sure, you sometimes have to bribe people, but at least I've not had gear stolen off me during security checks or had people break my gear without at least compensating me.
And taking pictures. Well, let me put it like this: you are 20 times more likely to get hassled for whipping out your camera anywhere in the US than in, say, downtown Teheran.
I offer this as an observation from the outside. The US is isolating itself and it is becoming a very, very unpleasant place to visit. I often talk to fellow travellers and even a lot of business types in nice suits often relate how they'd rather not travel to the US if they could help it and that they'd rather work with people in Europe or Asia. I can relate to that.
via @ariarmstrong
If I travel to Europe, I get my passport stamped and maybe a question about my purpose in visiting (so far, the latter only in England). My colleagues who travel here get fingerprinted, eye-scanned, and subjected to a long and hostile interview about their intentions. It's ridiculous and embarrassing.
Astra at February 18, 2011 5:30 AM
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." -- Frederick Douglass
When you bend over for the agents and mouth, "If it makes me safer,..." -- then Mr. Douglass was talking about you.
Everybody thinks they are immune to the social diseases which have turned burgeoning nations into hell on earth. Nope. TSA is on passenger trains. It won't take much more to require papers to travel the highway. Just a political party of national socialists...
Radwaste at February 18, 2011 6:37 AM
This. We decided not to travel to the USA in 2011, even to visit family. The TSA is only a symptom. The real problem is the crawling subservience of nearly the entire bloody population to anything the government decides to impose.
I ask my family why we should have to put up with the TSA, and its "to keep us safe". As though the TSA has anything to do with safety, or as if dying in a terrorist attack is actually more likely than dying in a traffic accident.
It is the same craving for a perfectly safe world that leads schools to outlaw tag and eliminate swings. The "land of the brave" has become the "land of the pathetic".
bradley13 at February 18, 2011 6:54 AM
It's interesting that so many people say things like "Our security should be more like Israel's! Look for terrorists, not bombs!"
...and then they take issue with being interrogated for, frankly, something that looks suspicious -- traveling abroad without luggage.
When my sister was in her "like a rolling stone" phase, she traveled to Israel. She was coming from Kenya, and she had nothing but a pair of nasty sandals and a small duffel bag with 3 changes of clothes. She was interrogated extensively at the airport in Israel (I forget which one) about her lack of luggage, her background, her reasons for travel, and the condition of her sandals. Questions were repeated multiple times, in attempts to catch her changing her story.
...as for what he says about the TSA, well, I still can't bring myself to defend them. That sucks about his camera.
sofar at February 18, 2011 9:43 AM
If this crappy situation with the TSA and, frankly, our entire government structure, doesn't change, and change soon, we will be well and truly screwed. Oh wait, we ALREADY ARE well and truly screwed! It's either time for a revolution or a zombie pandemic.
Flynne at February 18, 2011 11:31 AM
It DOES take paperwork to travel the highways if you are stopped by a police officer. As a passenger in a vehicle that has been pulled over for driving less than five miles over the speed limit, I was asked for identification. I wasn't detained when I couldn't provide it, but I have heard a few horror stories from fellow passengers that couldn't provide identification to their detriment.
Cat at February 18, 2011 11:32 AM
Cut us some slack already. We did get rid of the telephone tax levied to pay for the Spanish-American War of the 19th century.
We'll have this TSA business sorted out by 2200, honest. The government is on it.
MarkD at February 18, 2011 12:28 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/02/18/how_the_tsa_and.html#comment-1846667">comment from MarkDThey'd tax thoughts if they could.
Amy Alkon at February 18, 2011 12:28 PM
"They'd tax thoughts if they could."
They are in office because we think that all we have to do is pay money to fix something.
And we punish people for telling the truth. If the President says something which is WRONG in a nationally televised speech, it is NOT the fault of the guy who calls him on it.
Radwaste at February 18, 2011 3:03 PM
"Paranoid as the INS are, the TSA are even worse. "
The INS hasn't existed since 2003. That makes this guys pretty sound comment sound stupid. But that's a blip.
But generally it's Europeans and their mini-mes in Canada who are complaining about this sort of thing, and face it, Europeans don't matter much when it comes to "isolating itself". I doubt you get this kind of complaints from Chinese travelers, or Koreans, or Indians who do matter a great deal more, and will matter even more in the coming years.
The compalint is still valid, but Europeans have to face up to the fact that they have stupidly granted citzenship to people who pose a danger to us, and as long as those people can travel on thiose pasports, people with those passports, all of them, are going to remain suspect.
If Europeans want to correct this situation, they might considering restricting citizenship in European countries, and the passports that come with it, to actual Europeans. And when it comes to assimilation of immigrants from really distant places and really alien cultures, they should leave that to us. We're the ones with the track record of making it work, at least to the extent that so few of ours turn into mass-murdering jihadis compared to theirs.
Jim at February 18, 2011 3:09 PM
Jim, what the devil are you going on about? TSA imposes its idiocy on everyone, not just Europeans. In particular, it imposes itself on Americans, which you presumably are.
Work with me here a minute. Picture John Wayne in one of his films. Imagine his reaction to a TSA groper feeling up his legs until they meet "resistance". That is the reaction every red-blooded American ought to have - the entire TSA should be in the hospital with a collective broken jaw.
bradley13 at February 18, 2011 11:00 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/02/18/how_the_tsa_and.html#comment-1846919">comment from bradley13Save for the violence, I'm with bradley13 all the way.
Amy Alkon at February 18, 2011 11:49 PM
Save the violence?
What do you expect?
Police are forced to do things by their superiors that they know aren't just, and sometimes it's a cultivated "us vs. them" at work.
This country wasn't founded by talk, it isn't ultimately protected by talk. It can only be abandoned by talk.
What do you think if the whole nation refused to fly on one day, say, "Empty Plane Day"?
Won't happen. People will whine, then drop their pants for the TSA inspector, because they're being told what to do.
This will continue until it becomes too expensive, not because talking fixes it.
Radwaste at February 19, 2011 9:03 AM
FYI, the Electronic Privacy Information Center's (EPIC) lawsuit seeking to suspend the scanner program is in front of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. It has been briefed. Oral argument is March 10. http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanners/epic_v_dhs_suspension_of_body.html
I'm so hoping the court sides with EPIC.
Gail at February 19, 2011 1:31 PM
"If this crappy situation with the TSA and, frankly, our entire government structure, doesn't change, and change soon, we will be well and truly screwed"
Yes well Americans seem to really want their country to change all the time, except the day they go mark their X at the ballot box, then vote for one of the same two groups of crooks that have spent decades trampling their liberties and raping their wallets. Almost everyone seems mad as hell about these TSA infringements. So mad that 90% vote for either the same guys that created these infringements or extended them. It's as if there is a mental disconnect between the act of voting, and the rubbish we end up with in power - a gap in comprehension that there is a causal relationship between vote, and vote outcome.
Of course part of the problem is the two-party voting "system"; voting for a smaller candidate is considered a "wasted" vote, so this self-fulfilling prophecy means everyone votes for the same two big-government constitution-stomping parties. A better system would allow you to tick multiple boxes indicating all acceptable candidates, and then counting the total votes proportionally.
A more strict adherence to Constitutionalism would also prevent such infringements of the Bill of Rights. Currently if you pass a bad law, the worst that happens is it gets slapped down or expires. It should be made a punishable crime for a politician to pass an unconstitutional law, one that gets the politicians jail time.
Lobster at February 20, 2011 2:04 PM
Since the TSA is part of the Federal Government, it is covered by the Federal Tort Claims Act. If they damage your camera or anything else, you will usually get paid for it, if you file a claim. When an Air Force plane crashes on private land, the first or second person to show up is an Air Force lawyer with claim forms.
Retired Air Force
ken at February 21, 2011 11:47 AM
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