No, actually I almost got arrested at the US-Canada border for laughing and making a smart comment when they suggested that my then 18 month old needed to be checked for weapons. There was no place on herbig enough to hide a weapon!
I am sorry if it came across as a killjoy comment. Which I suppose it was. The fact that a joke can get you arested just really pisses me off and I couldn’t help it.
How so if they do not check your ID against a list of bogeymen?
That sounds like an empty threat of arrest. What would they have charged you with?
On the other hand they did catch that British geezer a couple of years back trying to board an aircraft with explosives in the heel of his shoe.
Depending on how long the list is and who is on it, they might very well be. They need not necessarily compare your name and picture to a name and picture on a checklist they keep in their other hand. Also, if they are on the lookout for a suspected middle-eastern terrorist, I seriously doubt that James or Heinrich or Akira are going to get more than a glance to make sure they didn’t just flash their library card to try and sneak into the courthouse.
Almost all people who check IDs think they are a lot better at detecting “strange behavior” than they really are. Overestimating ones abilities is a decrease in security. In addition, you have to put up with a lot of false positives. I know a lot of black people who were pulled over (and sometimes even arrested) simply because they were a block or two away from a recent crime.
The Really Good Bad Guys can talk their way thru anything without the security guy realizing a thing. Think of Ollie North types. Americans in particular fall for “sincere” types.
I am in the middle of reading Mitnick’s The Art of Deception and it’s amazing. I think Uncle Beer should read it.
Interference with official acts is always a popular one. If you piss off authority figures, they can arrest you for almost anything. Charges don’t always stick, but they can arrest you.
You mean this guy?
As near as I can tell, he was arrested 2 years after he decided NOT to go through with a bombing plot. Caught by detective work, not an ID check at an airport.
DS-156: Nonimmigrant Visa Application:
I wonder if anyone has ever checked yes.
Really? I didn’t realise that. When did the US turn into the Soviet Union?
No I mean this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-01-29-reid_x.htm
But it looks like I was wrong anyway. He was arrested after being overpowered on board the aircraft so it looks like he got through the airport security.
Given that a lot of the people filling out the form aren’t native speakers of English, I bet it happens failry frequently by accident.
You didn’t realize that if you annoyed an officer you could be arrested for disturbing the peace or resisting arrest or …whatever? Trust me, this is not new news. And we’re not the Soviet Union (sic) but we’re not angels either. (I once was arrested for jaywalking and spent four hours in jail, but that’s another story. Don’t piss off a motorcycle cop.)
How about the security guy who has looked at hundreds, or thousands of these questionnaires, and by the end of the day, his head is buzzing and locked onto seeing just ‘no’ answers?
On a lot of questionaires like that which I’ve seen, there’s usually a “yes” sprinkled in there to make sure the test-taker is paying attention. Usually mutually contradictory with one of the “No” questions. Also, the one “yes” answer should normally stick out anyways, just because you haven’t seen it in a while.