Via Declan McCullagh's politech list: William Knowles writes about a Canadian blogger who claims he was harassed and strip-searched by US immigration officials when he told them his profession was "blogger." Snip:
This sounds like an unbelievable story, but it happened to Canadian blogger Jeremy Wright last week. As already reported on quite a few blogs, Jeremy was detained and interrogated by US Immigration when he arrived in New York last week for a meeting with
McGraw-Hill(Ed. note: an unnamed media company — see update) to discuss a great business opportunity for Jeremy in the area of blogging.It appears that the immigration people simply did not believe that Jeremy could make a living as a blogger. And they gave him the third degree – including an humiliating strip search – as a result for some hours. And banned him from entering the US. Incredible. Jeremy wrote detailed commentary on his blog about his experience, but he's now pulled those posts (this post explains why). While the details aren't yet clear on exactly why Jeremy had such an awful experience at the hands of the guardians of freedom and liberty (hard to get true irony here), this appears to be disgraceful behaviour on their part.
I met Jeremy in the US in January. Shel and I interviewed him for a podcast. You couldn't meet a nicer and more honourable bloke!
Link to William's post, and link to an update posted by Jeremy Wright on The End of The Story.
