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Comment by piokoch | Hacker News Reader

"Thomas Ormerod’s team of security officers faced a seemingly impossible task. At airports across Europe, they were asked to interview passengers on their history and travel plans"

It is so sad that nowdays it is not seen as absurdal that some kind of policeman is asking passangers about their travel plans. The journalist get excited that new methods of catching "cheating passangers" are beind developed.

Apparently in the brave new World we have created this is considered normal.

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Have border guards not always asked those questions? I'm pretty sure it's been like that since before the 20th century.

Border guards and passports as we conceive them didn't really exist until the 20th century. The historian Paul Fussell wrote in his book Abroad:

"[B]efore 1915 His Majesty's Government did not require a passport for departure, nor did any European state require one for admittance except the two notoriously backward and neurotic countries of Russia and the Ottoman Empire."

And it wasn't until 1945 that Americans were generally required to hold a passport to travel abroad during peacetime. [1]

[1]: http://www.archives.gov/research/passport/index.html

Thanks, I was vaguely aware that it was around the turn of the century that these things came in.

An american in 1940 may not have needed a passport to leave, but would they have needed one to get in somewhere else? Surely the nations of europe at that time would have been suspicious of basically everyone?

Maybe not passports, but border guards? Establishing the customs service was literally the fifth act of congress in 1789.

Apparently the brain-washing works well.

>Have border guards not always asked those questions?

People used to laugh at the Iron Curtain countries for asking such questions...

In the 60s you could board a plane without even passing any metal detector...

What do you mean nowadays? 20 years ago if you wanted to drive from Poland to Germany, the Policeman would spend no less than 20 minutes interviewing you and everyone in your car about every single detail of your journey. In some cases they would order you out so they could unpack all of your luggage and look around the car for any contraband. Nowadays? Nowadays you get in the car and drive through the border, passing the "Bundesrepublik Deutschland" sign at motorway speeds. For flying - I wave my national issued id at the agent, they don't even bother scanning it. No need to have a passport either. Years before the agent would carefully examine your passport and ask questions like - I see a stamp saying that you visited Russia 5 years ago, why? It really is easier to travel nowadays,but people will keep finding problems and saying how much better it was years ago - it really wasn't.

Certainly your experience of a journey from communist Poland to Germany was full of Brave New World experiences. Now that that regime is gone, your travel is easier. The GP is pointing out that the rest of the world appears to be adopting the tactics that you encountered 20 years ago. Traveling to the US or Israel, for example.

Or traveling to the US, for that matter. I still don't understand why border guards ask incoming US citizens where they are going and what is the purpose of their travel.

I like to take things as I go (at least when planning seems like overkill, e.g. for non-critical things). This caught me by surprise the last time I flew into NYC from Europe. I had intended to get into the city and then call a friend I was staying with to meet up and go to their place from there. Naturally I didn't get the address before hand. They wouldn't let me into the country without an address on my dis-embarkment card. I had no signal so I couldn't call or look one up either. Absolutely ridiculous. Any address as long as it wasn't a fake one that they would notice to be fake once they entered it in the system would do. What an exercise in futility. It's unlikely that someone who intended to do something seriously criminal would give the correct address, therefore it is just a big waste of time and resources.

The UK does the same thing when you fly there, in my experience.

Yes it's not unique to the USA. Doesn't make it anymore reasonable/useful though.

Flying to UK from where? When flying to the UK from Europe or USA nobody has ever asked me about the address where I would be spending the first night. USA does ask that.

Every time I've flown to the UK from the USA, the entry card has asked for an address in England. The first time (in 2005) I left it blank and they wouldn't let me pass immigration until I filled it out.

I got in to England without listing my friend's address, but the border guard seemed extremely suspicious and really grilled me about my travel plans, etc.

Something similar happened to me when I was about to take the train from Paris to London. I didn't have a reservation because I was planning my trip on the go. The agent was not pleased at all with that, but as the train made the last call to board, he just scolded me, told me that next time I really should make a reservation before visiting England... and then let me pass.

When I flew out of Chile recently they wanted to know the name and address of where I had stayed the previous night. Crazy that I may not have been able to leave if I couldn't remember that.

Japan as well.

So what did you do on the airport? Did they let you in? Every time I traveled to the US I wondered how possible it is for them to not let me in.

You're a US citizen? Just asking because the parent comment talked about hassles entering US as a citizen, so I am wondering if they really make it that stringent yet simultaneously pointless, even for citizens.

Yes

Communist Poland didn't exist 20 years ago, Republic of Poland was established in 1989.

I said 20 years ago - after the fall of communism. The situation looked like that pretty much until we entered the EU in 2001. Funnily enough, passing the border was easier during communism,because so few people did it that the guards assumed that since you are holding a passport in your hand you must have gone through a very stringent process of obtaining one, and would mostly have a look at your picture, your visa if you had one and let you go quickly(passports also had to be returned to the government upon return to Poland, you had to apply again if you wanted to leave again). Then after 1989 anyone could get a passport whenever they wanted,so border controls became a lot more strict.

My mistake in misunderstanding your original point. However, my point stands in that travel within the EU, which for most countries is like traveling from one state/province to another, does not quite represent the increasing cumbersomeness of international travel to some countries.

Israel has had military police psychologically-profiling travelers for its entire history.

The technique described in this article - an article years ago described Israeli military using this technique to screen air travelers there.

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