The way each country in the Schengen area runs electronic checks for a Schengen-entering/exiting person varies a lot, even as there are some common requirements for the checks.
The national differences in how the electronic checks are done and even in what is retained from a check can lead to some bizarre situations at passport control. Case in point being that Dutch passport control thought that I was some Baltic-area crime lord, and that was even as no other Schengen country’s passport control has ever made that ridiculous mistake. My travel docs are clean and my biographical info has almost nothing in common with that flagged Baltic mafia boss, and yet AMS passport control would slow me down and had no complete picture of my Schengen entry/exit/stay history. Never had that kind of ridiculous flagging issue at non-Dutch, Schengen ports of entry/exit when using the very same docs.
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
My “Baltic/Eastern European mafia lord” Darth Vader “status” at AMS passport control this year wasn’t based on names, wasn’t based on a birth date/age, wasn’t based on a passport number, wasn’t based on a document issuance date and wasn’t based on face or any other biometric of sort. It was based on a number, all while ignoring the national issuing code and just about everything else beside a relatively short string of numbers.
Name-based blacklisting hitting innocent people with the same name or names calculated to be equivalent to the blacklisted is something that does happen with CBP — and with TSA — but at least with CBP they seem to not be so bad as to base the blacklisting on one number while ignoring the national issuing codes on docs physically presented to them. Yes, given the high proportion of Scandinavians with two names (or near equivalents) that are shared by thousands of others, name-based flagging can be a problem almost as much as it is for those with very common Muslim names and some other very common Asian names. But at least CBP doesn’t ignore national issuing codes for docs and the details on them when physically presented with them and accepted as authentic.