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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!
...and recognize this for what it is. Fascism.
...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.
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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.
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
the unfortunate thing (that I have learned to my regret) is that certain things are not allowed in carry-ons and will be confiscated anyway. and you *have* to check them. any useful tools for example. I've nearly had pliers and screwdrivers confiscated, (and that was before 9/11.)
one entertaining example (from 2004) was the day I traveled with a devil stick, (juggling toy,) that looks a bit like a disassembled pool cue. at the checkpoint they asked me if it was a pool cue, I said no and they said okay, but if it were a pool cue they would have had to confiscate it.
now mind you it looked just like a pool cue, weighed about the same as a pool cue, made out of similar wood to a pool cue, but because it wasn't actually a pool cue, they didn't have to confiscate it. if it had been in checked baggage, it wouldn't have been an issue. but it probably would have broken.
due to traveling with some odd juggling toys on a semi regular basis, I have taken to writing long, detailed notes to the TSA, explaining what all my props are and leaving it in the suitcase with the props. I have never failed to get a 'your bag has been searched note' and I haven't lost anything, (yet.) incredible pain in the ass.
on the other hand, I was once driving back into the US from Canada, where I had bought a flute to play. (normal metal type of flute.) and I nearly got penalized and the flute confiscated for not declaring the flute as a 'commercial object'. oddly, they said nothing about the 10 packs of peanuts that it was sitting on when they found it searching my car. I'm beginning to think Customs just has a thing for flutes...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
/. 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.
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.
> 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.
One tactic I've heard of in the US is to buy a part to a gun (something small and convenient like a grip or a trigger or something). Then get a nice big lockable gun case and place it and everything else you care about inside. Declare your "gun" at the counter (gun parts are treated the same as assembled weapons). They will direct you to someplace to have your luggage screened in your presence, and then you lock it up and keep the key (which doesn't have to be TSA-approved). The case will generally not be opened outside of your presence.
You'll still need to pay any fees you'd pay for other checked bags (by weight/size/number/etc), but you'll avoid having your stuff go missing on you. While the TSA doesn't mind your valuables disappearing they don't like the idea of having guns used in crimes traced to them, so gun cases are exempt from the "we can cut/open any lock" policy. The airline probably feels the same way and will probably give the case extra care - even if just to make sure it is secured/etc.
The reason you use a gun part and not a gun is that while parts get the special treatment from the TSA, they're usually exempt from local gun control laws (though obviously you need to check).
None of this will do you any good for international travel though, which is what the original article pertained to. I'm sure there is lots of paperwork around importing/exporting weapon parts from the US, and that is probably nothing compared to what most other countries would impose.
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.
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.
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.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.