Recently traveled abroad and was shocked at how dystopian moving through borders is anymore. Scans after scans of passports, fingerprinting, face scans, questions about intentions for visiting, paperwork, cameras throughout airports that are surely doing untold amounts of biometric analysis with some bullshit AI…in some of these places you get laughed at if you ask about opting out. It almost isn’t worth it.
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Yes, I’ve had similar experiences recently and similar thoughts. Crossing land borders in Asia is more stressful than it was a few years ago. Lots of redundant security theater and biometrics everywhere. Of course, China is on another level to everyone else. At the immigration booth, your conversation with the official is now translated and subtitled in real time on both sides. And face ID is now so universal in China that I suspect the fingerprinting has become an afterthought. Everyone is being filmed and tracked pretty much everywhere. Not just cash but even ticket numbers are now redundant. Everything is attached to your personal ID and cameras decide whether you enter public buildings, train stations and so on. The day their government decides to really abuse all that power, they’re in deep trouble.
In my experience the border thing is clearly worst in Asia, but with the exception of China it’s mostly just tiresome theater.
By contrast I crossed into the Schengen zone from Turkey this summer and was surprised by how little security there was. But then I noticed the police all but dismantling a bunch of heavy goods vehicles in their search for illicit migrants. That was absolutely not security theater.
PS. This subject got me thinking. I’ve seen a ton of borders because I like to travel by land. Different regions of the world definitely have different priorities at borders. In Asia it’s drugs and contraband. They care what’s in your bag. In Europe and North America, it’s you they care about: why you’re here and when you’re going to leave. In police states like China, borders are a golden opportunity to harvest a ton of data on suspect individuals. In much of the rest of the world, Latin America for example, borders are mainly just an employment scheme, bureaucracy for its own sake.
According to my dad, 9/11 pretty much changed air travel for good. Everything afterwards became extremely strict.
Yep, I flew regularly in the 90’s, it was much easier and relaxed.
To be clear, 9/11 didn’t change anything. Governments used 9/11 as an excuse to violate our privacy
Not for good. For bad.
it did. in the 90s i was on a plane with my family and a guy sitting near us got drunk and was telling people he had a bomb in his briefcase. all that happened was that he got chewed out by the flight attendant. I could swear she said “we will turn the plane around if we have to!” it was incredibly amusing to watch as someone under 10 years old.
Where are you experiencing this ? I have not experienced personally this in South America or Europe. It is usually just the immigration who look at the passport and let you through once you say you’re visiting or whatever
Japan. It went full 1984.
Ah that explains it. They have their own way of doing things over there. Thanks for sharing your experience all the same, it is good to know.
You are never going to cross a border anonymously. The extra checks are to prevent people crossing borders under a false identity. If you are travelling under your own identity, then you are no less private than you ever were. They’re just taking extra precautions to prevent people from using false identities.
I disagree. I had to scan my passport 3 times in the same room before I could exit it. Shit is insane. I’ve traveled quite a bit and never experienced such things.
Did you consider your privacy invaded any more after the third time than the first?
The fun part is that you don’t have to do all that stuff if you have a long term visa.
Seconded. I was just traveling to Japan from the States. While it was more or less painless, it was pretty invasive.
What are they doing these days that is invasive (I have been wanting to go back to visit friends)?
The only time I have visited Japan was back in 2012 and all I remember was just waiting in a line and handing over my passport to a customs/foreign visitors person. I also might have had a paper slip with my dates of arrival and departure, that I wasn’t bringing in more than $9999.99 in cash, and the address I was officially planning to be staying for the bulk of the time there (and name of my friend that was already living there on work visa). I don’t remember ever being stopped to check my bags or answer addition questions. Though I might have just been lucky to have not been picked for additional checks.
In addition to all that you get funneled through a thermal camera section for quarantine reasons, and then you have to stop at a machine where they simultaneously scan your passport, you put all your fingers on a reader and you look into the camera (without glasses) for biometric scanning. After that you go through passport and customs.
None of this was optional and everyone had to go through it (at least for foreigners).
That does sound like a pretty big difference, but I guess it makes sense given it has been so long since I went. The only other nation I have visited was Canada, and that was back when you just needed a valid US driver’s license/state ID. I believe they now need a passport. Interesting to see how things like that change over time. Kind of like how we could go all the way into airport terminals to greet people you were waiting to arrive back in the 90s. The “war on terror” really pushed a lot of extra shit into travel.
I went to Japan earlier this year. Filled the travel related paperwork online in advance, and at the border they took fingerprints, compared face to passport (which I assume included a photo) and that was it. Not any different from any other developed country.
I imagine that most nations would have started doing that extra stuff. Still good to be aware of it since it isn’t something I think about often. And since my friends over there have a different process and might not know off-hand to mention.
Interesting, I didn’t have this experience a couple of years ago. I wonder if they’ve just upped it to try and “automate” things more with the crazy amount of tourism they’re suddenly getting. Also I’d be curious on which airport you went to, Haneda or Narita?
If the scans and such were in the states, I’ve requested opting out and no one really cared, they just said okay. Funny enough, it actually made me go through quicker than it was taking everyone who did the face scans, contradicting the sign claiming it’s quicker.
Same, though its been two years since my last trip to europe (Spain specifically), it didn’t feel much different than when I went as far back as 20 years ago.
About the only real difference was the EU passports, and how much easier that was for people. Wish I could get one! Would also be a great backup plan for a return of insanity here in the US, but I don’t think I can qualify for any of them. Missed by one generation for citizenship by descent…
Anyway. Seems it was Japan in this case, Europe and South America (though its been maybe a decade or so since I went) dont seem any different to me. The middle east trips used to be kind of wonk, and I bet still are, but I’m not going to that area again anytime soon.
I guess it probably depends on where you’re going. I went to the UK earlier this year, and my experience was mostly painless. Landed in Manchester, and they basically had self-checkout customs. I scanned my passport and looked at a camera once, and that was it. It was actually more of a hassle and more invasive coming back home and getting back into the country.
It might be automated, but OP’s point still stands, you’re being tracked and scanned like never before.
You’re being scanned like never before everywhere else too
I grew to be mweh about PhylosophyTube, but they did a good entry video into that discourse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyzd_a6vLWY
9\11 and other attacks turned security measures to 11, it’s hard to roll them back and you’d be criticized if you want them to.
Dont you mean security theatre
I’d call it both. Hassling people for taking sunscreen or water onboard is probably mostly theatre. All of the tracking and scanning is probably what they actually use to find any naughty people.
Generally i don’t think they catch too many people this way. If they had they certainly would have been talking that up during the Bush administration when they were looking for anything they could find to hype up the terrorist threat but they barely ever had anything to show for it. Some shoe bomb thing that didn’t even work, i guess.
Meanwhile, it’s well known that this stuff fails to catch weaponry and other dangerous objects regularly. I could link a story but i, myself, experienced this once: I forgot to take a 4" knife out of my backpack before flying and sure enough, they didn’t find it even though they “randomly selected” me for a manual search. (They were too distracted by the multiple laptops and phones is my only guess, but the knife was buried in there deep and i didn’t find it when packing either.)
I didn’t even notice until i was already at my destination and so i didn’t have much choice but to bring it back through security a second time and hope they didn’t catch it. Sure enough, they missed it the second time.
Fundamentally, the TSA is an organization that tries to replace skill and attention with technocratic rules following but you’ll never have a successful security operation that way. This isn’t the fault of the people doing the work, they’re treated like McDonald’s employees but they’re being asked to
hassle everyonesafeguard our flights. The primary motivating factor for this appears to be fear–both fear of bad things happening and a desire to instill that fear in others. That is also not an effective organizing principle for a security operation.Why the tracking, then? That’s simple: it, too, is theater but it’s also a form of control. It gives the state more insight into and control over our personal lives.
I agree on the point of security theatre. I think the tracking stuff provides more actual useful information, but I also imagine it’s more for reactionary investigations rather than pre-emptive protections.
I could be wrong, though.
Laugh in European
shrugs in Schengen
(Until germany shows up and fucks it all up)
‘The end of Schengen’: Germany’s new border controls put EU unity at risk ☞ https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/10/the-end-of-schengen-germanys-new-border-controls-put-eu-unity-at-risk
Fifteen years ago I was traveling to the US. I had a stop in Germany and Chicago before I reached my destination. Every time I was on a ground I was questioned, I had to fill several documents, I had a full body scan and I had to power on all my devices and perform some basic tasks, e.g. I had to take a photo with my camera and show it to the agent.
The showing that devices work seems to be the weirdest thing. Like somebody couldn’t put a large enough amount of explosive into a cell phone simply by shrinking the battery down to give it like 5 minutes of run time.
My old Note 4 had a zero lemon battery pack. It made the phone an inch thick.
Back then I was both surprised and creeped out by the idea some stranger would look over my shoulder when I use my device. Nowadays, you need to hand out your device and provide the pin to unlock it. I honestly miss the good old days.
You probably can’t fit a large enough explosive in a cell phone battery compartment to reliably crash a plane by exploding it anywhere in the passenger cabin, though that seems like more of an airport security thing than a customs thing.
If you use phone to carry explosive, and a separate device to direct the explosion you can cause a lot of (directed) destruction.
But maybe not crash the airplane as a result.
to carry explosive, and a separate device to direct the explosion you can cause a lot of (directed) destruction.
But maybe not crash the airplane as a result.
We’ve seen them lose a door and the front third fo the roof before, they’re surprisingly robust
Aloha air? 1988? Yeah man that one lives with me on how safe planes really can be considered.
As long as it doesn’t have an auto pilot feature that makes you nosedive to counter a completely mismanaged weight and design flaw.
We recently got a demonstration of that with the “spicy pager” attack Israel pulled. A laptop could be even more devastating.
gotta that post 9/11 public migration sentiment and the massive consequences of the patriot act.
Is your skin brown, by chance?
Where the fuck did you go, Arstotzka?
Jorji?
What’s that
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papers,_Please
“jorji” exists nowhere on that page.
Usually my experience when opting out has been great. They just smile and wave me through.
Most countries don’t have opt out options.
Oh no. You wanted to enter another country and they wanted to know who you are in case you do something illegal while there?!?! How very 1984.
This is a country that doesn’t even allow you to sell to used electronics stores without a residency card so that you can’t scam them.
This seems like a really dumb gripe to have that you had to enter immigration in a other country. Complaining because you got detained in Singapore or China cause you complained about the government or handed out some VPNs on a USB (I did the delays were fun) is commendable but this seems like yelling at shadows.
You see, money is more important than people, after all. As the saying goes, “The game was rigged from the start”
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Travel is a scam, I can collapse the foreign nation state from the comfort of my bedroom. Just tell them you’re going to their shitty disney land, bring a fake digital life and a fake phone while crossing the border. It’s not hard to look like a normie as long as you’re fat and white.
Really you have to question why you’re going there, it probably could have been an email.
Is it marketing brain rot telling you to travel across our dying planet ? Just visit it through Wikipedia. The real thing will be a disappointment anyway.
I don’t think you pointed out the reason why you care? Also some of those things are not anything new so are not at all supportive of the point you try to make.
I tried to make sense of this comment and I got a headache.
I hope that was sarcasm.
People like you are the reason why we have to suffer these indignities.
I am by no means disagreeing. I am just saying there is an argument that could be made better. Asking a reason for traveling or verifying passports in absolutely nothing new and makes the point the user is trying to make seem disingenuous to a degree. Also a personal reasoning as to why they would like more privacy in the modern era would make the post much more relatable.
