Tag Archives for customs.
U.S. Customs has seized cash from 13 travelers who were departing the United States just at Washington Dulles airport in the first six weeks of the year.
It’s widely known that you have to declare when you’re bringing over $10,000 in cash into the United States. You have to do the same when you’re leaving. Most people have no idea, and wouldn’t even know how to do it!
Interesting in U.S. law you cannot protect the recipe for wine. You can only have intellectual property in its packaging. If the wine tastes identical, then customers are really getting what they expected right? And it’s just the famous brand that isn’t making profit off of it.
If you look at once high quality brands that have been acquired and watered down their products… think Tumi in luggage, Dom Perignon in champagne (not every vintage should be released, and once wouldn’t have been!)… then the brand is actually what’s lying, communicating to consumers a quality that turns out not to be delivered.
They’re adding “contacts, call logs, messages and photos” from the devices of tens of thousands of people per year and “much of which is captured from people not suspected of any crime.”
“2,700 CBP officers [can] access it without a warrant” according the office of Senator Ron Wyden, while the agency clarifies it’s actually 3,000 officers.
A woman picked up a Subway sandwich in the Singapore airport before her flight to Perth, Australia. She only ate half of it – and for some reason brought the leftovers with her. Perhaps she wanted to find out first hand just how sick an unrefrigerated fast food sandwich will make you after a five hour flight.
She failed to declare the remains of her foot long at customs when she arrived back in Australia, and was fined ~ US$1750.
U.S. immigration deported an Australian woman after repeatedly asking her whether she’s had an abortion. They suspected her of planning to cat sit while vacationing in Canada as well as on a future visit to the U.S.
The U.S. Border Patrol claims the right to search traveler laptops, thumb drives, cell phones, and other devices capable of storing electronic information. They can keep all your data. And they can do it anywhere within 100 miles of the border… except , now, in these 9 states.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bureau is planning to raise the price of Global Entry, making it $120, and raising the price of other similar program so that they match as well. However children under 18 whose parents are part of the program (or who apply together) will be free, and CBP plans to expand Global Entry to immigration preclearance facilities (or at least make the rules consistent with practice) and to U.S. territories.
A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has been published by the Department of Homeland Security authorizing a significant increase in biometric information that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be able to collect.
The government redefines biometric to include behavioral characteristics along with biological characteristic that can be used to identify someone. And it outlines new types of biometrics that they plan to authorize themselves to collect.
The federal government submitted false statements in court to defend terminating global entry applications for New Yorkers. Now the government said they just didn’t know what they were talking about when making the claims, rather than intentionally lying.
The real question here is whether’s it’s a bigger problem if the federal government lies to the courts, or if the people responsible for trusted traveler programs do not know what information they’re receiving, or what information they need, in order to determine eligibility?
The U.S. government has taken the opportunity during the global pandemic, when people aren’t traveling out of the country much, to roll out a new platform for storing information they believe they are entitled to take from people crossing the border. A new filing reveals how the U.S. Border Patrol will store data from traveler devices centrally, keeping it backed up and searchable for up to 75 years.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
