customs

Tag Archives for customs.

You Have To Report When You Carry Cash Out Of The U.S. – Not Just When You Enter

Feb 17 2023

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!

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Château LaFake: Should Importing Counterfeit Wine And Other Luxury Goods Be Illegal?

Feb 04 2023

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.

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U.S. Border Agents Take, Store And Search Americans’ Emails And Photos At “Massive Scale”

passport getting stamped
Sep 17 2022

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.

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Woman Fined $1750 For Failing To Declare Half A Subway Sandwich At Customs

Jul 15 2022

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.

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Global Entry Raising Application Fee, Expanding And Making Children Free

passport
Sep 12 2020

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.

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US Immigration Wants To Collect DNA Samples, Iris Scans, And Voice Prints From 50% More People

Sep 12 2020

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.

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Federal Government Admits It’s Too Incompetent To Know Who Should Get Global Entry, Who Shouldn’t

passport
Sep 10 2020

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?

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US Border Patrol Says They Can Create Central Repository Of Traveler Emails, Keep Them For 75 Years

Aug 17 2020

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.

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