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posted by on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-the-government's-data-already dept.

CNN and a a lot of other outlets are reporting that JPL engineer Sidd Bikkannavar, an American-born citizen, was detained at the border when returning from racing solar powered cars overseas.

The border guards demanded he turn over his government-issued NASA phone and its PIN and held him in their detention area.

Bikkannavar also was interviewed by The Verge:

"It was not that they were concerned with me bringing something dangerous in, because they didn't even touch the bags. They had no way of knowing I could have had something in there," he says. "You can say, 'Okay well maybe it's about making sure I'm not a dangerous person,' but they have all the information to verify that."

Bikkannavar says he's still unsure why he was singled out for the electronic search. He says he understands that his name is foreign — its roots go back to southern India. He didn't think it would be a trigger for extra scrutiny, he says. "Sometimes I get stopped and searched, but never anything like this. Maybe you could say it was one huge coincidence that this thing happens right at the travel ban."

Land of the free? Home of the brave?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:08AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:08AM (#467258)

    These days, more like land of the craven, home of the slave.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:21AM (#467264)

    Yup, assumption of guilt and expectation that interrogation will reveal all hidden information. I overheard a border agent discussing this, and the reply to "what if they're innocent" was "innocent people don't end up in that situation."

    This is the biggest problem around. "Innocent people don't run. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear." Etc etc. Its a bunch of garbage not fit for a free society. Bring evidence of wrong doing if you want to detain someone. Sure this let's some bad guys slip through, but those bad guys will learn how to evade anyway so in the meantime mostly innocents suffer.