Chile Forum

LastGryphon wrote:

RWS wrote:I've been able to steer clear of CBP/ICE with simple means learned long ago in another context.

Any other "simple means" you would like to elaborate on?

Have you ever acted? "Improv' theater", perhaps?

admin wrote:. . . . So, what is the point other than intimidation?

Shhh, Charles, don't say it so loudly!

Quote admin: "If you gave me just one 100 GB or 200 GB drive to examine for "bad things", a fast check would take me all day. That would not be a detailed report, but just a fast scan to see what is obvious and not even just sort of hidden say by renaming a file as something common. Anything with even the weakest encryption could take weeks, if almost impossible to break. Even with just a few mb, an encrypted file takes a lot of horsepower to crack by brute force."

but still it's not that expensive and difficult to store all this data and use it sometime when... it's almost like andy warhole's five minutes of fame. nobody is not that unimportant that his personal data are not worth of storing. especially in case when everything is legally destroyed, which means that there is a god chance everything will land in non governmental hands.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:I rest my case.

Anyone else want to share their experiences with CBP when reentering the USA?

When I went back to Oregon last July The Customs guy was scanning my passport in the machine and said, "you were supposed to be here yesterday?" I was a bit taken aback but I guess he was maybe just making conversation? I told him yes, there was a delay in the Lima aiport of 11 hours because of weather. I'm sure he knew that already.
I told him I felt like Tom Hanks in that film and maybe I should start building a fountain in the mensroom there . He laughed and I guess he decided I wasn't a terrorist. The Customs people seem professional but the TSA is a bad joke.
This was at LAX. Never go there if you can avoid it, it's a 5 ring freakshow, zoo, and full employment agency for unemployable inner-city 'yoof' all rolled into one.
I've posted about my LAX experience on another thread here. If you gave me a choice between LAX and crawling across 50 yards of broken glass I'd have to seriously consider the broken glass option.

Yeah even on FlyerTalk LAX gets a bad rap for CBP/ICE processing.

I'm still a big fan of DFW.

Need recent reports from MIA, JFK, ATL please.

My bad experiences via MIA many years ago have made me intentionally route all flights into the USA via DFW (I'm an AA elite).

I didn't bother to post but in Jan I got stopped again at LAX for another 1 hr secondary screening session. I now know the shift supervisor and he knows me by 1st name. Every time he comes out of his office and sees me, he rolls his eyes and takes my pp himself to resolve the latest "flag" thrown up by my entry. Hey, he's trying but the system is bulls%^t.
What happens when this guy retires? I don't want to find out.

MikieO wrote:. . . . What happens when this guy retires? I don't want to find out.

Don't wait -- emigrate!

Chuck J 3.0 wrote:. . . . If you gave me a choice between LAX and crawling across 50 yards of broken glass I'd have to seriously consider the broken glass option.

I had to visit Los Angeles a few weeks ago. Friends advised me to fly into Burbank, but (as a frugal Yankee) I chose a less-costly flight into LAX instead. I can tell fellow AllChileans that for domestic flights, and aside from the ubiquity of foreigner workers (taxi drivers, sky caps, etc.) who either are ignorant of the lay-out of the airport or feign ignorance out of the distrustful perversity so common in the third-world countries from which most come, LAX appeared no more troublesome than concommitant with being simply another overbig airport.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:. . . . Need recent reports from MIA, JFK, ATL please. . . .

Because I live in Connecticut, most of my international flights are from and back to JFK; occasionally, when flying to or from South America, I go through MIA.

'Sorry for the lack of detail, but I would say that both JFK and MIA are more or less equally bothersome, though processing through JFK sometimes seems both more orderly and more time-consuming. If I could conveniently avoid both, I would.

I have a zinger story for you all. I have just received proof of how much everything is being monitored.

I bought an airline ticket last night for my niece to travel to Las Vegas from Idaho using my expedia.com account that I have bought other airline tickets on for myself. I used a U.S. based credit card, and the only thing that is different is that I accessed expedia.com from my computer in Chile.

When my niece arrived at the airport today to pick up the e-ticket and get on the plane, security was waiting to interrogate and search her because they knew that the ticket had been bought online from outside the country.

Now, this is not a major technical trick, accept for the fact that you consider how much computer tracking data has got to be involved in that considering nothing accept my IP address was out of the ordinary. Expedia bought the ticket from the airlines (two different ones), on my behalf and I have an account that has been previously used to buy airline tickets without a problem for myself. That information would make it down to level of the ticket girl at the counter is a sign of just how monitored and integrated their systems are.

We might most of us guess that such things would happen sooner or later. What surprises me, slightly, is that it's occurring so much sooner than we might reasonably have anticipated.

I did not give them credit for that level of competence. I am surprised, unlike many here, pleasantly so.

Hyre

well, this really is just another case of false security like opening laptops. Spoofing an IP address is childs play in the computer world and is easily defeated by proxies and encryption. If that is all they are going on, you should be very afraid. Another case of psychological intimidation of the population, rather than providing real security.

I lived in another country that did this. It was called China. They really don't have the technology either to monitor a billion people, but they sure can make everyone think they do.

I would encourage everyone to use proxies and double encrypt your spam for one simple reason: it will force them to provide real security, not this political sideshow.

Proxy site:

http://www.samair DOT ru/

Constantly updated. Still need to be careful. Some of these open proxies might be honeypots.


Encryption:

Anyone want to exchange PGP Public Keys?

Drat! Here I thought our security people might actually be developing a degree of competence, now I am back to assuming they are not really on top of things. I think I will go watch the Sopranos, that always makes me feel better.

Hyre