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US Customs Destroys Virtuoso's Flutes Because They Were "Agricultural Items"
McGruber writes "Flute virtuoso Boujemaa Razgui performed on a variety of flutes, each made by himself over years for specific types of ancient and modern performance. Razgui has performed with many U.S. ensembles and is a regular guest with the diverse and enterprising Boston Camerata. Last week, Razgui flew from Morocco to Boston, with stops in Madrid and New York. In New York, he says, a US Customs official opened his luggage and found the 13 flutelike instruments — 11 nays and two kawalas. Razgui says he had made all of the instruments using hard-to-find reeds. 'They said this is an agriculture item,' said Razgui, who was not present when his bag was opened. 'I fly with them in and out all the time and this is the first time there has been a problem. This is my life.' When his baggage arrived in Boston, the instruments were gone. He was instead given a number to call. 'They told me they were destroyed,' he says. 'Nobody talked to me. They said I have to write a letter to the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. This is horrible. I don't know what to do. I've never written letters to people.'"
I never thought of flutes as an "invasive species."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Another whistle blower!
He's obviously a denialist and he got off easy.
The wood that he unscrupulously and capitalistically exploited for his burgeious profit contraption could have reduced ALGORE'S carbon footprint if he hadn't murdered it for his own selfish amusement. I'm just disturbed that this 1%er scum wasn't thrown into our enviromental reeducation camps for his crimes against science.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
...and recognize this for what it is. Fascism.
He shouldn't have had them in his checked baggage, since it's well known that checked bags often get lost. If something's that important, it should be in your carry-on.
...that going through US customs could ruin your life. DON'T DO IT.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Many musical instruments are made of wood. So I guess they are all at risk if the owners come to the US.
Each and every day that I read /. I become even more relieved than the day before that fate smiled on me by not making me a citizen of the USA, and not giving me any compelling reason to visit.
Not sure why this is on ./
The dude does have a very legitimate beef though, considering he's taken these around to probably dozens of countries and crossed several hundred borders with them. He apparently had some "raw" material with him to make new flutes, but that wood typically needs to be completely dry and aged. Either way the carved flutes were likely sealed and shouldn't have been destroyed without a very, very good reason, which I doubt the CBP had.
It think because it's about out of control security apparatus, so it's kind of topical?
I guess they will start siezing wood furniture from Ikea now, since,, you know, wood is an agricultural product.
US no longer stands for "Uncle Sam." Now it's "Uncle Stupid." Leather luggage comes from cowhide, isn't that an agricultural item? Fucking morons in charge.
and I never once have regretted that decision. Wouldn't go to dubai either for similar reasons. Toxic culture. I do feel sorry to anyone living there and do hope you are armed.
-
You... I like you
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
TSA agents have been know to do unscrupulous things.
Wooden pencils as well. As a side note I was once sent to Ag inspection for mentioning I had some sea salt. Customs people aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree.
He should definitely be compensated.
This is not even the first time this has happened. There have been a small but published number of other instances of musical instruments being destroyed without appeal. It is a flaw in the TSA`s procedures and a problem with how its authority is structured. If they were law enforcement they could not simply destroy things, but they are not.
That's what happens when you hire fast food workers into bureaucratic roles and give them absolute power over other people.
Futurist Traditionalism
I lived and worked in the US for a few years prior to 9/11, and travelled to many parts of the country. I still have a lot of good friends down there, and surely there are a lot of places that I'd love to visit again.
The problem is that since I moved back to Canada there have been a seemingly endless series of stories like this. Whether it's Mahar Arar being grabbed and shipped to Syria for torture and imprisonment; Jacob Appelbaum being detailed by US customs with no reason and no explanation; innocent people who are having their laptops and phones seized and copied with no warrant or explanation, or who are quite simply harassed at the border on the whim of any customs agent. - it just seems to be happening more and more each year.
Being innocent (whatever that means to Homeland Security) is no protection. All it takes is one renta-cop with a bad attitude.
To my American friends: I am honestly terrified by the thought of crossing your border, and I am not alone.
Three Squirrels
An important sentence was left out of the summary, which explained that customs mistook the instruments for pieces of bamboo. Judging from the photo accompanying the article, the confusion is almost understandable. It looks like a home made instrument that may or may not have been prepared properly given restrictions on agricultural products. (Example: they may not have been concerned about the bamboo per se, but rather invasive insects that may be in it since the reeds may not have been treated.)
The moral of the story is to verify that the stuff that you're taking across the border is actually legal for import or export. After all, it could have been much worse for this man. I would imagine that charges could have been pressed if they so desired.
Do they strip naked anyone who's wearing natural fiber?
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It think because it's about out of control security apparatus, so it's kind of topical?
Yeah, I think an editor went a little knee-jerk. It's customs, not security. Customs has been pissing people off since the Union was founded.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This wasn't the TSA - it was US Customs.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well then, explain how this article relates to science and technology. What's that? It doesn't? Shut up then.
If you go through US customs, the tools you use to do your job may not make it with you. Like your phone, laptop, textbooks, thumb drives, or hand made wooden flutes.
Wooden pencils as well. As a side note I was once sent to Ag inspection for mentioning I had some sea salt. Customs people aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree.
In this particular case, you are giving Customs people way too much credit for comparing them to something as bright as any light bulb.
Rocks more come to mind. You know, like the ones rattling around in the idiots head that could not identify a handmade instrument.
Why in the hell do we put up with such incompetence? Do we not pay enough into the TSA to not hire utter morons? A man's livelihood was destroyed in a matter of hours. Someone should be held accountable, and NOT be able to stand behind some bullshit policy that prevents terrorists from importing rare wood, or whatever the hell we were attempting to prevent here with total destruction.
You make much over-use of the "we". You do not speak for me or for the reasons why I come to slashdot. Take your doltish, bigoted views and STFU.
I read slashdot because I am interested in science and technology, and because I am also interested in anything others with similar interests find interesting. I do not use slashdot as a mirror that would let me pimp and preen in what I already know; I also value its use as a periscope that looks around corners I am unaware of to show me things of interest I would never otherwise see.
This story has value on slashdot.
Will
/. has for the longest time covered articles about politics, civil rights and stupidities of the government.
This in my view isn't a story about customs protecting agriculture but rather about a civil servant removing equipment which belonged to someone and without notice or recourse destroying that equipment.
I guess it's not as fun sounding as the TSA confiscating a laptop and not having due process to get it back, but what's really the difference?
Stuff that matters is part of the slogan so they can post non tech stories sometimes. Seriously, get the fuck over yourself. You do not own /.
Funny, last time I went to the states they nearly refused to let me in because of an "Arab" stamp in my passport. Well I did fly Emirates, and I did have a free hotel in Dubai since it was a 9 hour stopover the first time.
By the way I feel safer travelling through Dubai than the USA. The culture may be toxic but at least it is a local and well known culture. Don't want to end up in jail, don't pretend western laws apply in Dubai.
The sad thing is the same comment about western laws these days can be applied to the USA.
I used to work in a port. We once received an automobile from Thailand in a 20 ft shipping container. The auto was tied down with ropes and the ropes were tightened by twisting with shafts of bamboo (which, by the way, is about the crappiest way to tied down a car and very non-standard). When we opened up container, the bamboo was riddled with holes from some kind of Asian woodborers that had chewed their way out during transit. Anyway, we had to call the Department of Agriculture inspector (this was before the ag inspectors were merged into customs) who had us fumigate the whole container.
So the moral of the story here is, based on experience, if I opened a box with reeds full of holes originating from a foreign land , I'd burn it too.
Why in the hell do we put up with such incompetence? Do we not pay enough into the TSA to not hire utter morons?
Absolutely not! TSA agents are mostly people who couldn't pass the US Postal Carrier exam. Several people I knew who were not "bulbworthy" were getting jobs at the TSA shortly after 9/11. They have a very low bar for entry.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Along with the concerns already mentioned, there is also a legitimate concern about the method of destruction. I'm pretty certain that TSA does not keep a yard debris chipper at each customs station. So what are the odds that these primitive artifacts were destroyed by distribution through craigslist sales, curio shops, or to fill somebody's Christmas shopping list?
This whole thing stinks. It definitely has relevance to slashdot: we are talking about persons with no understanding of a technology being put in positions where they can destroy the artifacts of that technology. Would I have trouble taking my collection of slide rules and 1970 era hand calculators through customs? I guess probably so.
Will
" It is a flaw in the TSA`s procedures..."
This was customs, it had nothing to do with the TSA whatsoever.
Polish pianist Kristian Zimerman had his Steinway grand piano seized by the TSA twice: the fist time around they destroyed it, the second time they just detained it for a week: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystian_Zimerman
No, they didn't confuse it with a vegetable---apparently Zimerman recently modified his instrument and the piano smelled of glue. As a result he ended up travelling with just the mechanism, fitting it by hand to the boxes at concert halls he plays in.
I guess they will start siezing wood furniture from Ikea now, since,, you know, wood is an agricultural product.
Since when is Ikea furniture made out of wood?
Why do we as Americans give up our 4th Amendment protections if we fly?
The US Army conducts an IQ test as pre-employment screening to determine which job(s) you may apply for, assuming you cross a minimal threshold, and you may hold an infantry position with the lowest acceptable score. Time and trial have taught the military that lower scores make better better soldiers at positions like 8 hour foxhole guard duty.
There exist occupations, within the military and without, where greater cognitive ability is a distinct advantage.
But there are some that ain't.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The relevancy is this: if a musician can't get a set of flutes through Customs without having them ruined, what happens when we travel with our laptops and other techie devices?
TSA Public Relations representative Grebnedlog released the following statement regarding the incident: "We look for things. Things we need. Things that make us go. We need help. We look for things."
TSA Enforcement Officer Mongo added, "Mongo like candy."
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
The army has learned that stupid soldiers aren't good soldiers.
So those too stupid for the Army are sent over to the TSA, right?
While I question this thread even being on /. in the first place, from personal experience, the concern was for the possibility of wood boring beetles or other insects hiding in the wood. I once brought back from China 4 sets of large, disassembled picture frames. If it hadn't been one of the first flights back from Asia after 9/11, the inspector would have summarily destroyed them, but he was apparently feeling sorry for all of us on the flight and took me and the frames to the side. He looked up and down each piece looking for any indications of what could indicate any kind of infestation (given that they were solid wood, any penetration should have been visible to the naked eye). Not finding any, he let me continue on with my frames. But if he hadn't had a week or so off, I am quite certain I would have left frame-less and not quite as pissed as this guy has every right to feel.
Given that the inspector knew he would have had to have had the hollow tubes X-rayed to do a proper inspection followed by fumigation almost certainly led him to take the short cut and summarily destroy them. However, the fact that they were (probably) not freshly made musical instruments to anyone with a modicum of intelligence should have led the inspector to do a more detailed inspection, at an absolute minimum questioning the guy about the provenance of the wood sticks.
The bigger concern is that nearly all non-digital musical instruments (and some digital instruments) contain agricultural products by such a loose definition. Almost every oboe, clarinet, stringed instrument, etc. worth more than a hundred bucks is made out of wood. Even brass instruments and metal woodwinds (e.g. saxes and flutes) use cork for pads, for stops on keys, for tunable joints, for the ring at the top of trumpet valves, for water key/spit valve corks, and so on (though in some cases, it may be a synthetic cork). Even the felt used in various parts of the instrument may be made from agricultural products.
What this effectively means is that the United States government has declared all musical instruments to be illegal contraband that may not be transported into the United States. Musicians around the world would be advised to avoid travel to the United States and its territories for any reason, or if you cannot avoid travel to this country, arrange to rent an instrument after you get here. It simply is no longer safe to carry your own instruments across the borders of this country until Congress passes a law explicitly forbidding these acts of grand theft.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It isn't a case of human rights, illegal searches or ethnic profiling or anything like that.
As far as I'm concerned this is just another misplaced slashdot article.
I think that destruction of valuable personal property is sort of a big deal. Why does customs have the right to destroy personal property with no apparent recourse? Or do they?
It may sound strange, but I absolutely consider the sanctity of personal property as something of a human rights issue. When you destroy or steal someone's valuable property, you are in essence stealing someone's life. In the most abstract sense, this man had to exchange a portion of his life energy in exchange for that property, and by taking it from him, you're also robbing him of his sacrifice. Our lives are the most precious things we have, and if you look at monetary exchanges in terms of people exchanging portions of their lives in exchange for purchasing power, you can understand a little bit as to why personal property is more important that you might have previously thought.
It's very easy to say that one person's misfortune isn't a big deal when it's not YOUR misfortune. ANY personal loss isn't a big deal in the "big picture", because the world's big picture is pretty damn big. Let us know the next time something bad happens to you, and I hope I'm not nearly as callous as you sound right now.
The excuse of "but look what could happen if..." could be used to justify nearly any sort of human-rights abuses in the name of safety. We must always balance the issue of the greater societal good with the rights of the individual. In this case, the government clearly overreached its bounds in the name of what are undoubtedly valid concerns over agricultural protection issues. As such, we shouldn't be blaming the individual or shrugging our shoulders, but looking for ways to improve the system.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
> So those too stupid for the Army are sent over to the TSA, right?
Are you saying TSA stands for The Stupid Army?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In most U.S. ports, it's not Customs that makes the decision to inspect, it's actually ICE.
In the olden days, back when I worked as a contractor for Customs, entry into the U.S. went like this:
1. You went to Immigration Control first. Pre-ICE (US Immigration Control) checked your passport and entry form, OK'd you to enter, and then you reclaimed your baggage (whether you were traveling onwards or not).
2. You then had to clear Customs, which looked at your itinerary (e.g where you'd been), your bags (i.e were they bulging, smelly, etc.) and your face and non-verbal cues to determine if you warranted a further inspection. If you did have something questionable, there were actually expert (!!!) customs agents available to determine compliance.
Today, it goes like this:
1. You go to Immigration (ICE) first. Based on your facial expressions, non-verbal cues, and passport history, they determine if (1) you're OK to re-enter the US, and (2) if you need further "assistance" with customs. They make a mark on your entry form, which you later turn in to a customs agent, to indicate if you should be further "assisted". The decision regarding inspection and possible seizure of goods is left almost entirely with ICE, who specialize not in Customs enforcement but Border Control.
2. You move on to Customs Enforcement, which looks at your ICE-noted entry form and either inspects, detains, seizes, or lets you go based on ICE notes on your entry form. If ICE didn't mark your entry form for further scrutiny, you move through Customs very quickly.
The reason for the change? Efficiency. Most people re-entering the US don't need any re-entry assistance, and Customs agents are otherwise very busy. Giving ICE the job of determining 90% of Customs work saves time for travelers and money for the government. But the downside is that most ICE agents aren't trained to sniff out the difference between a guy with handcrafted musical instruments made of foreign raw materials from a guy bringing foreign raw materials into the US with the intent of defeating embargoes and/or tariffs.
The point is, it's not Customs that are dim, it's ICE... and as long as it saves most travelers some time at the desk, it probably won't change.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I have a second cousin who plays with a big name orchestra in Denmark or somewhere, (upright bass) Anyways, he, and most other big time orchestral music people say that If you travel with your instrument, you buy a seat for yourself, and one for your instrument, and it comes on the plane with you. NEVER trust it to baggage handlers, or any other person you can't see. It never leaves your line of sight. (like the article says, that object is your living, it is your life, treat it as such.)
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Yes, but one can simply walk into Mordor. Not so much with the US.
What can you do? Require that the owner is informed of a possible problem before any action is taken, and also require them to be present to witness and acknowledge in writing the destruction of any items. The first condition would vastly reduce mistakes, the second takes care of theft disguised as seizure. I know checked baggage doesn't always take the same route as the passenger, but if something is found in an en route search that doesn't pose an immediate threat to the aircraft the luggage item could be tagged (say, a big red sticker) and the matter dealt with at the final destination.
The problem isn't that customs inspection is pointless, I think it actually does serve a valid purpose, so shutting them down is the wrong solution. The problem is giving civil servants the power to summarily destroy property more or less at whim and without consultation; that's a bug which can be fixed without nuking the entire system.
Blank until
This was customs, it had nothing to do with the TSA whatsoever.
Customs has been a division of the Department of Homeland Security since 2003, which is the same happy family as the TSA, Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (you know, that group that likes to illegally seize people's domains for the copyright cops), and others. I think the only decent division of it is likely the Coast Guard. Other than that It's become a nice little beehive of government out to control people in the name of fighting "the terrorists".
Yup, a bunch of sticks tied together in a bundle
That sounds more like a faggot to me.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
By that kind of loose definition, you're clothes (cotton, wool, silk, etc) are 'agricultural products', unless of course you're wearing all 100% polyester or other synthetics. Of course, that also means they can now confiscate your leather briefcase, and so many other items they've been wanting to steal for ages.
I'm sorry, did I say steal? I meant to say confiscate and 'destroy'.
(I know they aren't supposed to do things like that, but it actually happens a lot.)
Really? Guess you don't travel across borders very often. It happens on a regular basis. Also, there are lots of incidents of 'confiscations and destruction of confiscated goods' that are the agents taking a liking to something, and then taking it home. It happens, I've seen it happen, and I've even talked to a retired agent that told me a bunch of stories of this exact kind of theft and lies. Whatever agency was involved will even go along with the whole official excuse just to try and pretend they did nothing wrong so they don't have to make an apology and reimbursement. Of course, that makes the situation worse on a legal standing with much greater possible repercussions, but it's a bitch to sue them and get a criminal investigation into it.
IMO, the musician should sue them for the instruments, and the loss of income since he's definitely not going to be able to participate in at least 2 concerts. After all, it's not like he can just go down to the pawn shop and pick up that exact type of rare hand carved flute. And no, the metal ones or different types will not sound/play the same, just ask a musician trained in wind instruments. (It's kind of like if your Cellist loses their cello, it's not like a bass guitar is a comparable substitute. I know, those are string instruments, but the idea is the same.)
I've had an account at /. for over 15 years; you don't even have an account. So shut the fuck up and go to Techdirt if you don't like it. /. has never been solely about "science and technology". It's always had a very strong political part to it, and this cock up at US Customs plays to that part of the site.
Don't like it? Too bad, we won't miss you.
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