|
You know what really annoys me? When I get picked out of line for "special treatment" - which seems to happen a lot recently - and there's no good reason I can think of.
It's always when I'm flying to the US. I'm always flying from the UK. I always have a return ticket. I always depart on a direct flight from London. I pack no suspicious items, and have one carry on & if I have to, one checked item. I have a visa in my passport from when I worked for a US company, and always ensure I fill in an I-94 rather than an I-94W waiver form and enter on my visa. This I do voluntarily (I'm still entitled to enter on a waiver), because I'm all for biometric screening at the point of entry and exit from a country and waiver bearers don't have to do it. So I'm voluntarily getting fingerprinted and photographed by the nice immigration guy when I don't have to. I have a full UK passport, which has 3 years left to run on it and contains a variety of stamps from various points of entry into the US and Canada over the last 7 years. I dress casual-smart, and do not wear a hat for check-in or screening. For what it's worth, I'm a white caucasian male.
At no point have I blown up or crashed any planes.
So why, oh why, do I get searched, swabbed for explosives and made to take off my shoes when there's no goddamn seats available, every time I fly to or from the US for the last few trips?
What bothers me is not so much that they keep searching me; I wouldn't mind if they searched everyone. What bothers me is that every time they're spending their time searching me (and about 50% of the time, my girlfriend who's travelling with me - otherwise, she strolls through and waits for me) they're not searching someone who might be a terrorist. I mean.. am I really such a high match on their profiling that it's worth searching me to the exclusion of other people, over and over and over?
If so, I humbly submit that their profiling algorithm is crap.
|