

Bitcoin befuddles US customs agents, thwarting visit by digital currency guru - calbucci
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/bitcoin-befuddles-customs-agents-thwarting-seattle-visit-digital-currency-guru

======
umright
Advice for crossing the US Border.

1) You are there on a holiday. Telling them you are self employed and going to
work in an office you are renting there is only asking for trouble. It
confuses the hell out of them. You think where you do the work from doesn't
matter, they think you need a visa. You lose.

2) If you are going for a conference, print the badge off before your flight
and have it with you.

3) Email or upload all your files to dropbox/some server in a TrueCrypt
container, and wipe all devices you will be crossing with, including your
phone. What do you need them searching through your stuff for? Who knows what
they will do with it. It's just asking for it.

~~~
Astrohacker
This is good advice, but of course it's pretty absurd that anyone has to take
these steps to avoid the overly invasive US government.

~~~
jrockway
This is pretty much true of clearing customs in any other country. The reason
we hear so much about the US is because it's a really big country.

(As an American, I hate crossing the UK border just as much as crossing the US
border. What's the point of being in the EU if you aren't going to act like
it? :)

~~~
liedra
The EU isn't Schengen, that's why.

~~~
sesqu
But that's pretty much only because of the UK. There are a few countries that
are supposed to be in the schengen area but aren't, a few countries that got
in because it would have been impractical to keep them out, and the EU
countries except the UK and Ireland (who are only out because of the UK).

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joezydeco
Nothing in the story says he was flagged for deeper interviewing because of
his involvement with Bitcoin. He told the agent he was saying for two months
on $600 USD and, making an assumption here, no credit cards or anything else
to supplement his stay.

How do we know he wasn't flagged under a different rule, such as "$100 a week
in the US? Maybe he's taking a temporary job. Let's look further". Border
agents _hate_ finding out you've come under a tourist visa when really you've
come to work.

~~~
CaveTech
I think you're confused about the definition of befuddle.

be·fud·dle

1\. To confuse; perplex.

2\. To stupefy with or as if with alcoholic drink.

Customs agents didn't flag him for his involvement in bitcoin; they didn't
understand what it was and how he could possibly fund his trip with it.

~~~
mullr
I DO know what bitcoin is, and I don't understand how he could possibly fund
his trip with it. Doesn't seem like the top of the list for liquid assets,
i.e. what you need when travelling. Part of their job is to make sure you can
fund your trip. This guy couldn't, from a variety of reasonable
interpretations.

~~~
westicle
You genuinely don't understand how he could possibly fund his trip with
bitcoins?

Or are you exaggerating to make a point?

I think it is conceivable that he could fund his trip by bartering for the
majority of his food and/or lodging using bitcoins. That is, it is a
possibility that there are people in the United States who will accept
bitcoins in return for providing food and/or lodging. And presumably as a
"digital currency guru" he would be able to identify those people and effect
payment with the agreed upon medium.

He even has a fallback option of cash if there is something he cannot acquire
through the use of this bitcoins.

~~~
mullr
Indeed, I exaggerate a bit. But I think @praptak above expresses the issue
admirably. It's not a question of possibility so much as one of trust, and
it's a customs agent's job to be wary.

------
abalashov
I am most concerned about why they made copies of his iPhone and iPad. I'm not
going to sit here and pick apart whether they had a "right" to do that -- it
has long been abundantly clear that customs Gestapo can arbitrarily assign
whatever rights they want to themselves, with full legislative and judicial
blessing, in the name of security theater. But why? What did he do that earned
this treatment?

~~~
mike-cardwell
This confused me as well. What possible reason could they have had to do that?

~~~
StavrosK
"Why not?"

~~~
Astrohacker
That's probably the right answer, since they have the power to do this. But of
course it is disturbing and unacceptable that they would violate someone's
personal property with no crime or even a suspected crime having been
committed (or even if there had been a crime committed). Unfortunately the
only practical way to change this that I see is to wait for the US government
to collapse due to its unsustainable financial policies.

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vessenes
I worked out the plan (well, mostly just said "okay") when Nefario suggested
coming out to Seattle to try and launch a Bitcoin Incubator.

Knowing him a little (over skype), I'm not surprised things went badly at the
border -- he's got a sort of sweet naive / anti-banking system mix in his
persona; from what he told me, it was a tough and stressful spot --
interrogation tactics at the end of two+ days of travel..

I'm bummed, though. I was thinking that it would be excellent to have a
physical location for bitcoin development in the US as a sort of center of
gravity. mckoss was kicking in some office space at StartPad, what wasn't to
like?

I'm not clear now what a good plan would be.

~~~
joelthelion
Maybe he can come back with dollars in his pocket this time?

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SageRaven
I found the part about them copying data from his phone and iPad more
troublesome than the whole bitcoin thing. Why would a self-described
"cypherpunk" travel with non-encrypted digital devices, anyway?

~~~
dublinclontarf
Just to be clear, the phone and iPad had been wiped before coming and had just
enough information on them to complete the trip, i.e. a map to the
startpad.org office, and the needed phone numbers, nothing else.

The U.S. has internet access, so upload everything to the cloud(encrypted) and
then sync when you get there, which is what the plan was.

Also having an encrypted device is useless if they can hold you until you open
it.

Finally I was talking to someone about this yesterday evening, they had their
laptop taken off them for about 10 minutes by the border agents, in that time
they installed a rookit on it to track keystrokes.

~~~
khafra
> ...had their laptop taken off them for about 10 minutes by the border
> agents, in that time they installed a rookit on it to track keystrokes.

Really? How certain is he that the keylogger was a recent addition? I have a
hard time believing that an ordinary border agent is that technically
competent, even if he just had to put in a usb device and select a few menu
options.

~~~
dublinclontarf
Quite certain.

------
nivertech
I was in Seattle a month ago for AMD Fusion conference. Here my dialog with
the Immigration Officer:

    
    
        I.O. - "What's the purpose of you visit?"
        me   - "I come to the AMD conference"
        I.O. - "For how long do you visiting US"?
        me   - "8 days"
        I.O. - "How many days is the conference?"
        me   - "3 days"
        I.O. - "So why do you come for 8 days??"
    

;)

Re: "Dr. Nefario" - I can't believe he has no credit card.

~~~
jrockway
Here's a word everyone speaking with an immigration officer needs to know:
sightseeing.

------
andrewpi
I wonder if the customs agents also had a problem with him trying to do work
in the United States while here under the Visa Waiver Program?

~~~
zzygan
As an Australian citizen who has recently traveled to the US under the Visa
waiver program with the sole purpose of working (I was sent to the US by my
employer), I can say pretty definitively that they dont have an issue with
working as long as you have a return ticket (which they checked out in my
case)

~~~
praptak
Work is definitely not allowed under the VWP, only "tourism and business":
[http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html#...](http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html#travelertype)

Maybe a trip when you work on behalf on a foreign employer counts as
"business".

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edkennedy
How would this be any different from bringing an equivalent value in "goods"?
(whether they are digital or physical)

~~~
bdonlan
You would declare the goods you're importing (which brings with it its own set
of issues when importing high-value goods). That said, it's unclear when or if
bitcoins would be 'imported'. And it's also unclear whether, for example,
someone bringing in $5000 worth of gold bullion via a passenger jet would be
able to come in via visa waiver (they may classify selling it as a form of
work).

Anyway, the visa waiver program is for ordinary tourists. Doing something way
out of the ordinary like that is just asking them to deny your visa. At the
very least, apply beforehand and explain the situation to the immigration
agents.

~~~
dublinclontarf
The bitcoin is on a server, and is only "imported" once you download it.

------
ma2rten
His blog post itself had already been discussed before here, but it looks like
the link is dead.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2802257>

------
kiba
Wow! My Bitcoin Weekly interview with Doctor Nefario got mentioned in a news
source.

Lucky lucky me!

------
heyimfromreddit
Not surprising. They employ people with below average intelligence who are
convinced that the U.S. is such a brilliant country and every single person
they come into contact with is from such a terrible shithole that the only
reason they could possibly be "visiting" the U.S. is because they plan to
illegally overstay so that they may enjoy a much better life in the greatest
country on Earth.

...And that's if you _are_ white.

~~~
esrauch
Pretty sure you are overgeneralizing there.

~~~
heyimfromreddit
Of course I am. But there is still some truth in there. Some CBP officers are
friendly... many are not.

Upon entering the U.S. you effectively have no rights whatsoever. Whether or
not you're allowed to enter the country is entirely at the discretion of the
CBP officer you happen to get, and you have no right to appeal their decision.
Run into one who's having a bad day and doesn't like the look of you and
you're screwed.

~~~
colinplamondon
That's the awesome thing about sovereignty- we get to run background checks
and see if someone's been hanging out in Pakistan Frontier Provinces or Yemen
lately. If someone looks sketchy, we boot them out.

Coming to an expensive first world country with $600 for 2 weeks is pretty
clearly sketchy.

CBPs make wrong decisions sometimes. This wasn't one of those times.

~~~
owenmarshall
>Coming to an expensive first world country with $600 for 2 weeks is pretty
clearly sketchy.

Bingo.

Entering the US with $5000 in Bitcoin would be equivalent to crossing the
border with $5000 in Somaliland Shillings. They are both currencies that are
bought and sold every day, but you can't take either to your neighborhood bank
and convert them to USD. They have a very limited -- hell, even zero --
utility outside of circles that deal directly with them.

As such, CBP was rightly suspicious.

