In practice, the incidence of official CBP investigations (of any sort) after the fact is tiny compared to CBP questioning (of any sort) at the point of entry. Unless the rate of harassment based on a profile is vastly higher for the former, the latter is the primary case people should worry about.

Using a GE automated entry kiosk reduces the odds of profiling based on individual immigration agents' prejudices to near zero; I'd imagine that's also true for APC, but those date to after my getting GE.

GE also gets you out of standing in the longer lines for a kiosk, sometimes a shorter line at customs, and a presumption of trust both at the kiosk and at customs.

Clearly GE won't work for everyone as some folks aren't eligible, but given how inexpensive it is I would literally pay for it even if I planned to only use it once in the 5 year period. As someone who was frequently profiled for screening on a non-racial basis because of where I traveled, it has been a huge time-saver.

 

It's not CBP investigations that most commonly result in innocent passengers getting blacklisted (for haraSSSSment or additional "research" purposes) in one way or another for "fitting a profile". It's other things that mainly drive that.

If only all of the above were always true, but it isn't. I've seen GE kiosk users questioned when presenting a normal kiosk print-out that wouldn't get other GE users questioned. Sometimes this happens before baggage claim, and sometimes it happens at or after baggage claim. Much the same for APC kiosk users.

The kind of profiling used by CBP becomes more readily observable when it involves declaring things like food -- whether using GE kiosks, APC kiosks or just staffed CBP counters -- and transporting the same stuff repeatedly but the travel party consisting of different types of constituents.

 

More random statements of "yes and yes" with nothing to back it up. You made the claims, substantiate it with some facts!! Sorry, I'm not asking for spoon feeding, just a single fact.

 

It's not my claims, and I've already had the claims substantiated. You can try to do so on your own.

 

^^ Some FT posters have lots of imagination in their minds; "know it all" and get pleasure from spreading fear on people.

--J

 

I think it's driven by paranoia.

 

+1 It makes reading their posts about as pertinent as reading the back of a cereal box.

 

I don't know about that, but certainly his impressions seem to be in discord with mine; as a frequent traveler who was being consistently flagged for extra inspection at west-coast points of entry (must less often at Midwestern ones), GE eliminated that entirely.

 

This was your claim. And your words. "Rather, I've said on this subject that travel to Turkey increases the probability of innocent people ending up temporarily on US blacklists."

You've been asked for information to back up that statement so that people understand. Why don't you?

 

The haraSSSSment flagging is driven by governmental paranoia.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trust...ways-ssss.html

GE members can get haraSSSSment boarding passes too, including some who are blacklisted after visiting Turkey.
Try not to stay confused, for passing along information (as I did) is not the same thing as making up a claim (which I did not do).

 

Example given mentions Beirut, which is likely a bigger red flag (as noted in that thread as well.)

Also, GE is only indirectly related to domestic security screening by also qualifying most members for PreCheck (and rolling the $85 application fee into the GE application); not everyone with GE gets approved for PreCheck, but most do. Going from precheck to regular SSSS would be a bummer.

 

Did you read the whole thread that I provided you? You should look at it more closely either way.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirh...imal-activism/

GE KTN is directly related to TSA screening/PreCheck outcomes.

 

Skimmed through it; I missed that there were two different data points (perhaps more; my interest level is still at "skimming," as I have no intention of visiting the middle east any time soon) and that at least someone involved had PreCheck and get SSSSed at least once (sucks for them.)

Still seems a bit short of a trend. I'm also not sure how with data mining using an APC (or GE) kiosk would help at all; the issue is very much separate from the kind of casual visual-profile driven selection which can also be a problem at the immigration/customs or security checkpoints where avoiding manual interaction with a immigration agent would be a plus.

(I'd also think with data mining they could see the difference between flying to Turkey and a port of call on a cruise ship pretty easily.)

Is it somehow better than the old FFP-initiated PreCheck memberships, or the KTN you can get applying for PreCheck directly?

(If so, all the better to pay the extra $15.)

 

I�m normally a lurker here, but I can add my personal experience as another data point for this discussion. I�ve spent about six months of the last year in the Istanbul metropolitan area and completed five roundtrips to the US during that time. Since I�ve started residing part time in Istanbul, I�ve been getting a truly bizarre mix of SSSS and Precheck (I�m a paid Precheck member) on my US domestic flights. The 4S inspections have varied in their thoroughness; in one memorable episode they had a very serious interest in whether there were any wires embedded in my socks and underwear�

Over the past year I�ve also had two planeside stops from USCBP Immigration Advisory Program officers at European airports. One was a Frankfurt layover on an award ticket IST-PHL and one was on a ticket that originated in Madrid (though I�d flown Ataturk-BCN a few days before). I�ve searched far and wide for information about IAP and what could cause a USC to run afoul of them (and, not that it should be relevant in an ideal world, a very Anglo one who is definitely not a �person of faith�). I�ve come up with very little, which makes me wonder if either I have found myself in a very high risk category, or if others have encountered IAP and just didn�t know that they were talking to CBP. Both IAP officers (agents?) wore business attire and had nothing to distinguish themselves other than a US flag lapel pin; in each case they seemed genuinely surprised that I recognized them as CBP.

I won�t hijack the thread with too much detail about my IAP stops, but one officer asked point blank if I had been to Syria (think I screamed back �hell NO!� so loudly that the entire gate area heard it�) and another made a cryptic remark about it being important that I had not visited any countries that did not stamp me. Each encounter was followed by a secondary referral upon US arrival including some personal questions about my travels within Turkey, family and religion (or, more precisely, lack thereof).

Honestly, reading this thread and some of the other speculative posts relating to Turkey on Flyertalk makes me feel a lot calmer about my situation. I�m trying to arrange a visa for my wife (Iranian citizen with Turkish ancestry & residency, met on a backpacking trip last year) and return to the US as soon as possible within the constraints of the ongoing National Visa Center backlog. For a while I was certain that my difficulties while flying were a harbinger of problems to come with that process, so it�s actually a bit of a relief to read that being an Istanbul-based flyer might be a red flag in and of itself.

 

I've visited far "worse" places than Turkey, which as others point out is not at the top of a list of suspicious countries even considering the recent concerns over ISIS, and never experienced any problems with CBP or future haraSSSSment.

I have GE, and the kiosks only ask you to confirm the originating flight. As a result, CBP likely isn't aware of many places I've been, including some of the sketchier ones (and indeed a FOIA request seemingly confirmed this) as they were land crossings/via other "off the grid" methods. Still, I had to list some of them when applying for NEXUS, and was not asked any questions—if Iran, Sudan, and Lebanon didn't get me in any noticeable trouble, it seems to me highly unlikely that Turkey would, absent some other compounding factors.

My approach with CBP, and the government in general, is to disclose nothing more than is explicitly asked. In the case of a paper customs declaration, I would list Turkey; if using one of the kiosks, no need to volunteer the information. Even if you were to omit Turkey from the written form and get caught, I find it unlikely anything seriously bad would happen: I'm certain that people who are on cruises that stop in many countries, or who are traveling within the Schengen area, forget or fail to list some all the time with no repercussions.

In any case, you have nothing to worry about.