Comment by 2muchcoffeeman
11 hours ago
Once at a security checkpoint to a museum in Shanghai, they saw my water bottle, and then told me to take it out and drink from it.
11 hours ago
Once at a security checkpoint to a museum in Shanghai, they saw my water bottle, and then told me to take it out and drink from it.
In the 90's USA was sensible. I was flying with a thermos of hot coffee in my carry on. As soon as they took out the thermos and felt the heat radiating from the lid the agent said, "I don't think they would heat it", smiled and passed me thru.
Now when I fly I have to be careful. When they ask purpose of visit I say sightseeing. I used to say tourist, but with my accent that once caused alarm when the agent thought I said terrorist.
I wonder how many actual terrorists they pick up for saying "I'm here for terrorism"
On the other hand, if somebody said "I'm here for terrorism" and the immigration officer laughed that off, imagine the shitstorm if that person turns out to be a terrorist.
For the individual employee the cost of wasting someone's time by escalating the case and detaining them is zero, the potential cost of letting someone slip by is realistically tiny but potentially huge
3 replies →
> I wonder how many actual terrorists they pick up for saying "I'm here for terrorism"
Its like those stupid questions on US immigration forms, e.g.
"Do you intend to engage in the United States in Espionage ?" or "Did you ever order, incite or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person ?"
It's like, really ? Do they seriously think someone who should answer yes will really answer yes ?
Might as well just turn up at the immigration desk, slap your wrists down on the counter and invite them to handcuff you .... why bother with the form !
12 replies →
Believe it or not it’s a question on the pre-clearance form for travel to the US: ”are you or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organisation” - I always wondered what the rationale for that was
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There were no liquids rules in the 90s.
The US embassy in London do this. You can take liquids in, as long as you drink from them at security.
I am a strong believer in the "low-tech" solutions for this kind of thing. I seriously doubt the terrorist suicide bomber knows if drinking the explosive is going to prevent them from taking the mission to the end (ie. they will die in 5 min, in 30 min or in 24h), so they will start panicking when asked to drink from the bottle.
Was it just you? Or do they apply the same policy for every visitor with a bottle of liquid?
Just a guess but at a museum I assume they're looking out for vandals. If it's a water bottle the counterpart would be something like concentrated sodium hydroxide in which case a single sip is sufficient.
Not sure how they would handle dye in a paper coffee cup though.
This is/was fairly common, I've experienced it on the Chinese subway a few times and I've seen a few clips of it happening online. No idea if it's official policy or not, though.
I saw them do this to a few others in line.
So if a suicide bomber can drink explosives, they will be fine. As long as it's not poisonous within a few hours, should be no issue.
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That is the way!