
“I was just asked to balance a Binary Search Tree by JFK's airport immigration” - z3t1
https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792
======
rjtobin
Once (also in JFK) I was quizzed a bit by the CBP officer. I told him I was a
math grad student, he said "well, then tell me about the Euler problem". I
explained that Euler was a fairly prolific guy, and asked if he could be more
specific. He didn't relent, apparently he had seen some documentary that was
all about the "Euler problem".

Eventually, we moved on to my background, and I mentioned I had done a masters
in computational neuroscience. He said something like "oh neuroscience, my
great aunt had that", I think he thought it was an illness? Was sort of
expecting the reality TV cameras to be busted out at that point...

He let me through though! Usually I clear immigration in Ireland (one of the
few places you can do the immigration before you leave), and those folks are
always much more pleasant.

~~~
yzmtf2008
I was once traveling back from Italy after attending PKDD conference. I was
really sick and had a really bad headache, so the following exchange really
scared me:

    
    
        "Why did you go to Italy?"
        - To attend a conference.
        "Which conference did you attend?"
        - European Conference on Machine Learning
        "Machine Learning? (smile) How do you learn from machines?"
    

I forgot the exact answer I gave, but I was pretty afraid that he had a
Wikipedia page on "Learning from Machines" and would not let me pass if I
failed.

~~~
squirrelgod
Are you sure he wasn't just joking around? I've had a TSA officer joke around
asking me if I hacked into their devices (I was wearing a hackathon t-shirt)

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Are you sure he wasn't just joking around?

One rule of thumb is that you _Never_ joke with the airport security (1). So
wouldn't that go both ways?

1) [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-
burkemans-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkemans-
blog/2012/nov/27/dynamite-advice-bomb-jokes-airports)

~~~
reinhardt
So you're saying I should better not sport my new t-shirt in the airport?

[http://www.tshirthell.com/funny-shirts/if-im-not-on-a-
watchl...](http://www.tshirthell.com/funny-shirts/if-im-not-on-a-watchlist-
someone-isnt-doing-their-job/)

~~~
bruceboughton
My then-teenage brother once went through US immigration wearing a t-shirt
branded with the initials of the then-popular brand, French Connection UK.

Needless to say the US immigration officials took some offense and asked him a
bunch of questions. I'm not sure they realised it didn't say what they thought
it did, even after we explained about French Connection.

These were obviously simpler times as I also as a teenager once went through
US immigration wearing a Threadless Community Party t-shirt:
[https://www.threadless.com/product/383/the_communist_party](https://www.threadless.com/product/383/the_communist_party)

~~~
sundvor
The dyslectic f*ck brand was and still is annoying. In Melbourne AU they had a
20 or 30 metre tall logo covering an entire wall of an industrial building.
Very glad to see it gone.

------
belltaco
I wonder if P = NP would end up being proven by someone who didn't want to be
sent back after 23 hours of traveling.

~~~
dwringer
I can see it now. In 100 years we will learn about how a TSA clerk who had
failed mathematics back in grade school went on to prove P = NP and become
synonymous with "genius" for generations.

~~~
samirm
I think he meant by a traveler who is stopped by a TSA agent.

~~~
advisedwang
Sure, but they gave the TSA Agent a copy of their proof...

------
egeozcan
More I read about things like these, even more I love Germany (my new home).
The officers in Frankfurt Airport are always nice and I never had any problems
nor heard about one. I hear it's even better in Berlin.

I don't understand why host countries don't try to make themselves the most
favorite country in the world for their guests. I believe, "not allowing
terrorists/drug dealers/illegal workers etc. etc. inside" is just the
marketing as I seriously doubt people who slip through the cracks of a saner
screening process would be a significant problem. Therefore, I wonder the
_real_ reason but can't think of any.

~~~
tn13
> "not allowing terrorists/drug dealers/illegal workers etc. etc. inside"

All three of those have an access to a very sophisticated immigration scam
operatives. Terrorist get extensive training in faking their identities, drug
dealers have huge network of contacts and insider moles and illegal workers
know the trafficking cartels.

The real reason of American immigration fiasco is deep rooted racism and
against primarily non-white people. You will barely hear anything from any
politicians about white people who illegally come and stay in USA from Canada
and Europe. If H1B beneficiaries were mostly British or Canadians US
government would have increased the limit 5x by now.

~~~
cloverich
> All three of those have an access to a very sophisticated immigration scam
> operatives.

While that is true in many cases, in many others it is not. I lived on a
border town for a few years and made friends with some DHS agents there.
Listening to their stories re drug trade I got the impression that many of the
people carrying drugs over are actually poor, uneducated, uninformed, etc.
While some of the techniques may be sophisticated, I got the impression that
the traffickers themselves frequently were not. I would imagine basic abrasive
interrogation techniques would be reasonably effective.

~~~
galdosdi
Devil's advocate -- maybe the poorly educated, poorly trained traffickers were
overrepresented in the sample of traffickers border agents encountered,
because, by definition, a successful trafficker is not caught or observed
trafficking.

------
jpalomaki
In a away this actually makes sense. Instead of relying on automatic systems
and algorithms, you rely on people, namely the agent performing the interview.
A short chat about selected topics might be actually quite revealing. Point
not being if you know the exact right answer for the BST question but more how
you react and if there are inconsistencies in your story (most people are
pretty bad at lying).

All of this could be backed by the personal data has been collected before
hand.

The old (and often linked?) article about airport security in Israel[1]
describes how the actually rely a lot on people being able to spot strange
behavior.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-
air...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-airport-
secu_b_4978149.html)

~~~
cperciva
This is exactly correct. When I returned from a weekend vacation in New York a
few years ago, Canadian customs asked me about the tourist sites I visited.
It's not that they thought attending a musical and visiting the 9/11 memorial
was suspicious; it was just a convenient topic of conversation while they
watched to see if I seemed nervous or otherwise suspicious.

~~~
madeofpalk
I don't know about 'Correct'. When you enter Australia you never even talk to
anyone anymore - immigration is all done via self-serve kiosks.

~~~
viraptor
For the select few with the right citizenship. Everybody else queues up to
talk to immigration. During busy time it can take 2h. The self serve kiosks
are not the norm.

~~~
hrrsn
Travelling to Australia as a New Zealand citizen is about as easy as it gets.
My last flight from Sydney to Auckland I was at home 45 minutes after the
plane landed.

------
peterkelly
This happened to an Australian guy recently. Was asked to code up some stuff
in Python.

[http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-
stori...](http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/travellers-
stories/aussies-weird-immigration-interview-in-the-us/news-
story/8222c65d2f12e6691ef27c9b1753e821)

~~~
John23832
I'm sorry, but after the stress of traveling though an airport, I'm not coding
anything until after I get home (or to a hotel) and rest.

~~~
xiphias
You are always allowed to get home if you prefer that as long as it's outside
U.S.

~~~
John23832
Sure, defend the ridiculous.

~~~
rspeer
Note the bonus assumption that legal immigrants don't matter and the US isn't
"really" their home.

------
orless
Around 2002 we (a group of Russians) were returning with friends from a ski
trip in Austria back to Germany. There happend to be a police control in the
train. Then I've realized I had no passport with me. The best ID I had was my
business card (of course, no photo on it).

So the policeman looks at it and says "Oh, the database department. Which
databases do you guys use?" Basically I was able to identify myself with some
Oracle and knowing who Scott Tiger was.

The policeman appeared to be an IT drop-out who switched to police.

------
pfarnsworth
I'm going to wait for more information before believing this. There have been
so many cases of fake twitter outrage that it makes sense to wait a day or two
before taking out the pitchforks.

What's sad is that in this climate it's not completely unbelievable that
something like this could happen.

~~~
username223
I'm not sure it would be cause for pitchforks if true. Immigration officers in
general tend to act aggressive and ask weird questions as some sort of attempt
at behavioral screening. Canada only cares that tourists have enough money to
leave and don't plan to work, but the last time I went, I got asked why there
was mud on my car. Seriously.

------
gk1
Something similar happened to me around 5 years ago. I'm a white 20-something
male and was returning from Colombia on my own, with no bags except a small
backpack. I guess that seemed suspicious enough that I was asked specific,
quiz-like questions about my profession, and then sent to secondary screening.

In other words, this does not seem to me like anything new.

------
wrasee
I think there's been quite a bit of overreaction here.

Part of their job is simply to determine that you are who you say you are.
They do this every day - within reason I expect they can ask you any arbitrary
question related to you and your life to observe how you respond. They just
want to catch those out that aren't, for whatever reason, being genuine about
their story. I think there's a false assumption here that somehow @cyberomin's
ability to actually _solve_ a BST was in some way tied to his likelihood of
entry. That's obviously ridiculous. I imagine his response was still genuine
enough that they believed him. Frankly as another commenter joked, I think
they could have asked him to prove P=NP. It's when you reply confidently with
an 'obvious' solution that they might raise an eyebrow.

Yes it would be unreasonable if their ignorance actually lead to you being
denied entry. But in not one of the experiences here, or with @cyberomin, was
that actually the case. The thing is, of course, that they're aware of their
ignorance and the absurdity of their questions. You see, they know that
they're bluffing. That's kind of the point.

It is, perhaps rather unfortunately, part of their job to make you feel
uncomfortable, ask probing questions and weed out inconsistencies in your
responses. Isn't that part of professional questioning? I can understand the
frustration at the abruptness of the questioning, and it's hardly a friendly
welcome. I've been angered leaving immigration before and I have to remind
myself that ruffling my feathers is all part of the act. When first
complaining to a friend she asked, "what did they insult you or something?"
Actually, no. They just asked me lots of questions.

Clearly I'd like to think some questions are off-limits - I know there have
been justified concerns about this - especially recently. And I understand
this is hot topic right now - precisely why I think we should be careful -
more careful than ever - not to overreact. From what I observe: The guy
arrived, he was asked questions about his profession, his answers were
evidently sufficient and he was let in. It happens to thousands of people
every day. Honestly? I don't think there's a story here.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
The problem is that there are infinitely better questions to ask - like, "oh,
what's your day-to-day like?" or "who do you work for? what do you work on?"
\- rather than terrible technical questions.

=====

> I think there's a false assumption here that somehow @cyberomin's ability to
> actually _solve_ a BST was in some way tied to his likelihood of entry.
> That's obviously ridiculous.

You just got off a plane. You've been in the air for the past 23 hours. The
agencies in charge of border security at your arrival airport have a
reputation, and a well-deserved one at that, for (1) harassing foreigners, (2)
having unclear policies, and (3) more recently, having no idea what the actual
law is (or actually outright disobeying it).

Still think it's that ridiculous?

=====

On top of that, there's a long history in our industry of people reading
questions and answers off pre-prepared lists and saying "oh, your nuanced,
_correct_ answer doesn't match up with what I've got written down here -
sorry, I'm trashing your application".

While it would absolutely disgust me to see the TSA/CBP use something like
that, I would also be completely unsurprised to see it happen - especially if
it happened to a non-US citizen, since they have next to no legal standing in
the U.S.

~~~
wrasee
I think this gets to the heart of how so much of this discussion misses the
point. The question is not about solving CS problems. It's about determining
the authenticity of the passenger's story. In this example, provided that the
border agent is at least sufficiently aware that a BST question is a 'hard
problem', the question may have simply been posed to observe if the passenger
reacts appropriately to that. Even if the answer is "look, I've just been on a
plane for 23 hours! you couldn't possibly expect me to..?", You're right, the
agent couldn't. Tick! The response is consistent with the passenger's story.

It's a bluff. Which is to stress a more important point: it's not for us to
second guess the subtleties of a border agent's questioning. That's part of
their professional training. -- That is of course, unless we have cause to
believe the questioning is in some way unethical. And you raise (1), (2) and
(3) that are clearly examples of unethical behaviour. But with respect to this
story - where is the evidence that any of this happened? [1]

This is _precisely_ why we should be careful not to generalize and be accurate
in our criticism - if we are to be taken seriously in an area where there is
understandably much cause for concern.

[1]: To be clear: A technical question about a passenger's stated profession
is not unethical. Yes, it would be unethical if the quality of the _technical_
answer was somehow tied to admittance. But again there's no evidence that that
happened.

------
everybodyknows
Returning from Canada back in the 90's, I was asked what I had been doing
there.

"Attending a conference on computational geometry."

"What's that?"

Pause for thought -- several seconds.

"Applying computers to solving problems in geometry."

This got me waved in. Co-workers told of the encounter later on proposed an
alternative reply: "You wouldn't understand." Given the tone of the agent,
those might have been very costly words.

~~~
cperciva
Could have been worse. If you had been at a conference on _algebraic_
geometry, you might have been the mathematician who started talking about
blowing up points on the plane while in the security line up...

~~~
pjc50
You can do algebra on a plane, but don't do algebra on an aircraft:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/iv...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-
league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/07/italian-
mathemati...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/07/italian-
mathematician-taken-off-flight-after-fellow-passenger-al/)

------
fahimulhaq
I want to joke that CBP might be looking for referral bonuses by referring
great candidates to tech companies.

However, if it's really true, it is depressing. He was actually given an A4
sheet to balance a BST. Wow.

What if he failed the test? I assume that CBP cannot deny you entry because
you didn't brush up on your algorithms and data-structures during your flight.
But, they can still keep you detained for secondary screening.

~~~
nevi-me
This is what happens when you have a populist president, people start
disregarding the law and listen to the President even if he/she is wrong.

Imagine this happening at the time when companies are starting to accept that
you can't interview candidates solely by asking them to solve algorithms on a
whiteboard, then some inexperienced staff go to Wikipedia and expect people to
be able to recite it.

The question's what happened as he said he was too exhausted, does he get
flagged for secondary screening? The travel ban is suspended AFAIK.

We are witnessing self-division at sad levels. We had a flare up of xenophobic
attacks in South Africa last week. In an earlier incarnation of such attacks
in 2008, mostly Zulu people would ask you what certain things are in Zulu, and
if they perceived that you don't know what they are, they would accuse you of
being a foreigner, and anything could happen to you. An example that became
popular was "what is an elbow or knee in Zulu?". I'm not making this up, and
this happened in a country with 11 official languages.

The point I'm getting at is that this lawlessness started because a populist
president and other leaders started shooting from the hip, making inflammatory
statement and playing political football with our lives.

Trump is worse IMHO as he signs an Executive Order and things go crazy until
the courts can act. You should worry when your first citizen is not well-
acquainted with your Constitution like our dear Jacob Zuma and your Donald
Trump are. The country ends up being run through the courts, and the courts
don't act expediently.

~~~
lacampbell
> This is what happens when you have a populist president

Spare me. This stuff was happening pre-Trump, and it will happen post-Trump.

~~~
morgante
Care to provide a citation for people being asked hard algorithmic questions
by CBP before?

To be clear, I don't think Trump is directly responsible for this. But I think
he's sent a signal to fascists and racists around the country that America is
for white people and it's okay to throw your weight around. He's a bully, so
he's emboldened other bullies (which, unfortunately, dominate law
enforcement).

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _But I think he 's sent a signal to fascists and racists around the country
> that America is for white people and it's okay to throw your weight around_

You have that exactly backwards. He was voted in legitimately by the right and
center because the left failed to do anything to address their grievances,
justified or not, and circumstances.

Trump (and Brexit, etc.) is the signal that the public is sending to the left
and may heaven help us all because we're sure going to need it.

~~~
morgante
I think the reasons Trump won and the message he's sending in office are, in
fact, different things. There were a whole lot of unhappy Trump voters (people
voting for him despite lots of reservations about his policies and demeanor)
and a lot them were due to the left not addressing their grievances.

That doesn't change the fact that his rhetoric _has_ emboldened hard-right
fascists and bullies. It's inarguable at this point.

------
misja111
Not as spectacular, but 4 years ago when I arrived at SF airport after a 11
hour trip the immigration officer asked why I was there. I told them I was
visiting a software conference. To my surprise he then asked me to write 16 in
hexadecimal. Luckily I didn't screw up.

I asked him how come he knew about that stuff and he told me that in a former
career he was working in IT as well. I thought it was funny.

~~~
officelineback
I was just overcome with anxiety...the answer is 10, right?

~~~
misja111
yes :)

------
sAbakumoff
December 2016, I arrive in JFK from Moscow and a border officer asks me about
the purpose of my visit. I explain that I attend the business meeting in NC.
She wants to help and informs me that I have to pick up my luggage in NYC and
then check it in for my next flight. I smile and reply "fortunately I don't
have any luggage". Immediately she becomes suspicious of me and asks "But you
are here for a business meeting, where is your business suit?" I explain that
I am IT and everyone in my company is OK with a casual style". She nods and
let me go. "Thanks God IT does not really care about my clothes" I think and
successfully enter the land of the free.

~~~
baursak
Plot twist: she knew you didn't have any luggage all along. That information
is available to her when she pulls your info up on her computer.

~~~
sAbakumoff
In JFK there 2 modes of going through the passport control : the old one
involving an officer with a computer, fingerprints scanner and camera and the
new, automated one that involves you interacting with a kiosk that prints some
kind of voucher at the end. This voucher then is given to an officer who does
not have a computer, but she usually asks a couple of extra questions. I used
the new way, I like it. So perhaps she didn't know anything :-)

------
vickychijwani
I have a theory on how CBP is trained to scan people, that seems more
plausible without assuming malicious intent: they're not expecting you to know
exactly how to balance a BST, but just enough to hold a conversation about it
while they look for telltale signs. My guess is that even a reply like, "Look,
I'm a self-taught web developer and I don't deal with algorithms day-to-day,
sorry. But you can ask me web dev questions if you wish." would work.

~~~
Main_
Agent: "wrong answer,you are not allowed entry, good bye".

~~~
umanwizard
What reason do you have to believe this would happen?

~~~
deskamess
In many government jobs, the criteria for moving a task forward is the ability
to check off a tick box. So you do not admit you do not know the answer; you
give a plausible answer that lets the officer check the box. That's the case
for most govt questions. Very little depth is required in the answers as not
everything can be validated in the timespan of an interview. So admit you know
what a binary tree is and talk about it in high level terms. Unless the
officer was a previous programmer, the checkbox gets checked.

When you say you do not know or answer a different question, it makes it
harder to check that box off. Most officials just want to check a box and move
you (and themselves) on. Don't make it difficult for them.

~~~
rlpb
You assume that the box says next to it "can answer questions about his career
specialism correctly". It probably doesn't. More likely it says "does not
appear nervous when asked about his career specialism, and appears to know
topics he claims to know" or something more like that.

------
zwischenzug
Not even close, but similarly: travelling to Israel for work some years ago I
was asked what I did for a job. Software engineer, I said. 'Where is your
laptop?' I explained I didn't have one, that I worked only on desktops. It
took some persuading the guy that you could be a software engineer without a
laptop.

------
mstade
I flew to the USA late last year, through London. When going to the desk for
my connecting flight at LHR, the gentleman there did some sort of pre-
authorization and asked me a number CS question. Nothing as specific as the
above, but things like what languages I used for work, specific tooling, who
my clients were etc. It felt quite strange to be asked these things, it's
never happened to me before when traveling anywhere including stateside.
What's more, this was a person hired by American Airlines, not some CPB
officer – or, at least, it seemed that way.

~~~
umanwizard
Is it possible the person was just curious/interested?

~~~
mstade
I thought so at first as well, he seemed curious but kind of prying, so I
asked whether the questions were necessary. He answered politely but sternly
that yes, yes they were. After that, it was a bit awkward and stiff but still
quite polite. It all just seemed very strange, I've never been questioned like
that before.

Once I got to the states however, the only problem I had was that lines were
long. The CBP officer handling me and letting me in to the country was very
nice and polite, and after the usual "business/pleasure?" and "how long are
you staying?" questions etc. I was let in to the country with no issue.

------
Corrado
At first I thought this was a joke, but after reading some of the comments
here I'm truly scared of traveling abroad. I've been programming computers for
25 years and I don't think I could build a binary search tree, let alone
balance one. :O

~~~
umanwizard
So what? Neither could the guy who tweeted this, and he was still allowed into
the country.

------
ankurdhama
Potential answer: "Call the balance method on the BST object"

~~~
John23832
While cheeky, that answer gets you at least 3 hours in the cage.

------
dorfsmay
The best CS subject to talk about in such context would be "race conditions"!

~~~
bbcbasic
Deadlock holiday

------
khazhou
Google's recruiting tactics are getting ridiculous!

------
somberi
I have been asked something similar about 7 years ago, when I went to renew my
Green Card, few days ahead of my scheduled appearance. The agent, a math major
with a sense of humor, asked me to do 12 factorial and then he woulde
accommodate me. I did, and he held his side.

But I kindly doubt this guy's binary search claim.

------
BWStearns
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=US&q=binary%20search%20tree)

Looks like people are studying up?

------
rsynnott
Are they doing this for everyone? "Oh, you work in a slaugherhouse? Disembowel
this cow."

Absolutely absurd.

------
ezoe
This is a story I've read it somewhere.

"At the airport, When I said I am Japanese, the officer handed me a Japanese
newspaper and asked me to read it aloud. The newspaper had really rare name of
the place I couldn't read it. The officer suspected me."

------
Grue3
That's pretty impressive that the immigration officer knew what a binary tree
is. People who can't code a FizzBuzz but faked their way through an interview
should be concerned.

~~~
thomasahle
It seems they just had a sheet of questions to which you had to give the exact
answer they had written down.

~~~
bbcbasic
Like a real interview then.

------
remx
Some of the replies in the Twitter thread are hilarious

    
    
        whiteboarding, it's the new waterboarding? ️Furious /@AnnieTheObscure

------
kitsuac
I really don't see the problem here. They likely need an anchor for enough
conversation to "vet" a person's story. If someone is utterly clueless about
their stated career, it should be a red flag enough for some further
questioning.

Folks have a hair trigger about being offended by this sort of thing but it
seems completely reasonable to me.

------
daveheq
Thankfully he didn't get shot.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/24/killing-
of-i...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/24/killing-of-indian-
man-in-kansas-bar-investigated-possible-hate-crime)

------
elif
I wonder if they are that insistent on people whose occupation is porn actor.
I imagine so many lines of questioning there could be legally considered
sexual harassment that the interviewer would decide to let you go out of self-
interest.

------
throwaway_374
What is the point of CBP? Can't their jobs just be automated away by
immigration kiosks? Surely there's no human value they actually add. What even
is the effectiveness of these routine "randomly selected" checks beyond
sniffer dogs for cocaine mules.

------
thierrynyc
Border agent : "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is
proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then
thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60
seconds. What do you do?"

------
jwilk
For those who wonder what the optimal algorithm is:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day%E2%80%93Stout%E2%80%93Warr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day%E2%80%93Stout%E2%80%93Warren_algorithm)

~~~
cousin_it
Yeah. I learned about the Day-Stout-Warren algorithm today, after reading this
discussion, and it's beautiful.

------
jplayer01
... This is odd considering that a disproportionate amount of terrorists are
engineers.

~~~
jlebrech
"so you're an engineer? can you design me a bomb?"... either answer .. "haha,
busted"

------
crypto5
And looks like he didn't give answer:
[https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835997085916872704](https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835997085916872704)

------
relics443
I don't understand the problem with this. In Ben Gurion airport in Israel, if
you look like a religious Jew you'll most likely get asked questions regarding
the Torah portion of that week.

------
arif_abdullah
In 2004, when I came to US for the first time as a student, I was asked by an
immigration officer at JFK to make the XOR gate using OR and AND gates on a
paper.

------
aregsarkissian
Obviously the correct answer is "you type the question how to balance a binary
search tree in stack overflow and wait for an answer"

------
quiyile
I would say I had just got off a flight and I was tired and needed a shower
and I was not in the mood to work as I was on vacation.

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handedness
Back when the IRA was detonating bombs with regularity, one completely
harmless redhead I know was detained and questioned for hours nearly every
time she traveled from the US to London (which was often).

On the one hand, it's definitely a serious problem that needs solving, on the
other hand it's neither completely irrational, nor a new problem.

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lz400
If you answer with your hourly rate they let you in?

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ma-nu
if I wrote a program to draw a doughnut, will they be able to make out that I
just pulled their leg :) ?

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samsonradu
Could be that they're hiring.

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oh_sigh
Anyone want to take odds on this story being fabricated?

~~~
umanwizard
It sounds plausible. Guy claims to be working as a programmer, border guard
googles "basic programmer interview questions" or similar and asks them to see
how the guy reacts. If he is totally lost, the probability that he's lying
about his profession increases.

~~~
bigiain
Experienced devs and dev managers (me included) fuck up consistently in
recruiting - employing people who "interview well" but drag the team down, or
overlooking or excluding great potential team members 'cause they don't
perform well "programming a whiteboard" \- and now we expect some minimum wage
rent-a-bully to accurately assess a "programmer's" skills based on reading
wikipedia entries?

I'm _reasonably_ certain my best front end dev probably doesn't even know what
a binary search tree is. Same with half of my mobile devs, they probably
vaguely recall them from college, but have never used them in 5 or 6 year
mobile app dev careers. Should _they_ be denied entry at a border because they
can't regurgitate some wikipedia page completely unrelated and mostly
irrelevant to their specialisations?

~~~
WildUtah
CBP agents get good wages and great benefits. They do not make minimum wage.

~~~
bigiain
Apologies...

I'd like to issue a correction:

" … and now we expect some reasonably well paid rent-a-bully with great
benefits … "

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nippples
inb4 turns out to be complete bullshit

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jlebrech
"i'm a CS phd", "prove it" .. non-story.

but i think they should have asked him to spend a bit of time writing cool oss
code (maybe before his flight)

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beedogs
Still waiting on the impeachment proceedings. Any day now.

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noobermin
Sounds like grounds for a suit of some kind.

~~~
umanwizard
Why?

~~~
dpark
Because in the US, frivolous lawsuits are as expected as frightening border
control overreaches.

