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US Customs and Immigration computers went down at various airports around the US yesterday, causing some havoc for travelers returning from holidays. It left hundreds of folks stuck in lines for a couple of hours in a part of the airport where there's normally not a lot to do. The agency didn't say what caused the problem, but said "there is no indication the service disruption was malicious in nature."
As Reuters notes, a similar outage occurred at the same time last year, so it might be that the customs systems were slammed with Christmas travelers and couldn't handle the excess traffic. Agents were still able to process passengers using an alternative system, albeit at a much slower rate.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/02/a-us-customs-computer-snafu-caused-major-airport-delays/
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday January 02 2018, @10:25PM (2 children)
You are probably forgetting that every incoming person has to be checked against a thousand databases. For your own safety, of course.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday January 02 2018, @10:31PM
I did notice a sudden rash of major terrorist attacks on US soil as soon as the system went down. I am really glad it usually works.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday January 02 2018, @10:33PM
Not to mention bags inspection if the computer "randomly" selects you for that, and one guy with dodgy documents can tie up a line for a long time.
Its only fast if they know you are coming well ahead of time, (returning flight, visa travel, etc).
If I wanted to put my tin foil hat on, I would say they could arrange such a failure any time they needed to slow the system to a crawl because they know something we don't, or were expecting something/someone was trying to sneak in. Or I would suspect the Russians because its the in-thing to do these days.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.