Quote:
Originally Posted by jolinar of malkshor
You seemed to have a hate on for customs people...
The individual displayed non-verbal indicators from original questioning until they found the drugs. You can't just ignore that. As previous case law has stated a person is not considered detained will a routine examination is being conducted but they also cannot leave.....why are you mad about that? You think that they should be able to leave if they want to?
Just like any other job, people know what is normal and what isn't. These officers can pick up on peoples behavoir when it is not normal. The officer questions hundreds of people and hour....they all act pretty much the same and then comes buddy who is nervous. They are going to pick up on that.
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On the detenion issue, I've read the case law and agree it was applied properly in this case. However, I'm sure you can imagine a situation where an officer is conducting an examination tha is, in effect, nothing more than a fishing expedition. There is no reasonable suspicion but the officer continues to dig based on his instinct or "spidey sense". Those situations are entirely wrong in my opinion and occur much more often than they should (or so I've heard).
I disagree that CBSA officers are capable of perceiving subtle psychological clues that indicate some shenanigans are afoot. Not maintaing eye contact may be an indication of nervousness but it is not exclusive to the nervous condition. As well, nervousness may be indicative of being up to no good or concealing illegal activity but there are also dozens of harmless/legal reasons that a person may be nervous. On top of all this you have to consider the individual differences across CBSA officers in their level of training and expertise plus the natural differences in their ability to objectively observe human behaviour and judge it against the norm. Then there's the possibility that an officer may be biased towards a particular observation.
All of this adds up to a great deal of unreliability in my opinion. I would not be opposed to diverting some resources from personnel towards more detector dogs and x-ray/ion scanners. Those tools are far more reliable and objective and less subject to bias than relying on humans.
And I don't hate Customs officers, I just don't have a lot of trust in them and their ability to responsibly use their broad powers.