For me, the utter absurdity left me grateful for living in the Good Old Europe.
By the way, I'm afraid that there might exists a reason for customs people to go after people's hard drives -- USA has export restrictions on some encryption technologies. However, I did not find any similar import restriction, so I guess the TSA person thought something along the lines "By the looks of it, this hard drive is up to no good. We would better confiscate it."
#285 Leah Miller : I have an urge to print this out, frame it and hang it over my monitor or somesuch. Posts like this are great for putting out flames.
Sorry, I did not get the link code right. This should work.
The US is, unfortunately, not alone in this. I live in the Czech Republic and just yesterday an attorney refused to bring to a court a case of policeman who beat up a woman during a demonstration because she did not obey his order to stand back fast enough. It's a long story (and I can offer it only
in Czech) but there are quite a few common points: We have a video of the beating, the policeman tries to justify his actions by saying that he had to keep peace, there were several other policemen on the scene (including our brave hero's superiors) who did nothing and the police and witness versions don't quite match.
Here's what happened after the demonstration:
The police tried to justify the beating for a while but in the end they fired the policeman in question. Court actions started taking place. I thought that the battle on police violence was won. But now this attorney says: "Nobody is going to prosecute you for beating people." The legal battle is not over yet, but this does not look good. I hope California's justice will do a better job.
Btw, yes, getting a US visa is quite a humiliating experience. I'm waiting for the time when the encouraged response to immigrantion officer's yell "Jump!" will be "How high?".
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