Originally Posted by
goaliemn
If everyone was wearing a nametag, then they could just grab the person they were looking for.. Since airlines don't issue those, they checked everyones boarding pass. They can't pick people of a certain race/ethnic background based on name/information in APIS, so everyone gets checked.
As far as the guy refusing to answer their questions, customs has a right to do an outbound inspection. You can refuse, but you'd, more than likely, be detained. You can try to make their life difficult, but they can do it back to you 10 fold.
You are presuming something incorrectly in making your excuses for these fishing expeditions.
Contrary to your included claim above, names don't matter often (nor would nametags) because they aren't looking for a specific named person on the flights whose passengers are being subjected to these outbound control questions -- often they are looking for a "type" rather than a person whose name they already know.