Bizarre Hypothetical Experience at UK Customs

mountainyman

What do you think of this?

A (hypothetical) coach party passing through Holyhead, to Ireland, are taken off a bus and videotaped with their luggage. A couple of them are briefly taken aside and questioned. No passport check is carried out (not necessary in my opinion).

As they reenter their coach a person accompanying HM Customs and Excise and dressed like an officer of HM Customs and Excise hands each of them a sim card. All cards are for the same UK mobile phone company and are unlocked sims with 5 Euro credit. The packaging (hypothetically) contains information in about 20 languages.

Obviously no one complained until they were back on the bus. However there were remarks such as 'they brung us off this f0cking bus to give us them f0cking sim cards' and so on.

What is going on surely a government agency cannot give out sim cards for a single service provider under the auspices of its hypothetically official duties?


MM

Our man in Havana

Perhaps they wish to gather intelligence on these people thru who they ring on those simcards? Maybe even track them?

seamus

Perhaps they believed these hypothetical people to be asylum seekers, or otherwise people who could benefit from having a free SIM with £5 on it.

Bond, you can't track a SIM card unless it's inserted into a phone

In any case, this falls into UK law and UK jurisdiction, so I'm not sure if you'd get any answers here.

Our man in Havana

If they were asylum seekers they would not be allowed to proceed any further and would be detained and taken to a immigration detention center for processing.

Of course they can't be tracked unless they were inserted into a phone. It would be reasonable to assume they would be at some stage.

This all sounds like that spooks tv show. Anyways since when do MI6 care about the UK law.

johnnyskeleton

What sounds strange to me is that the hypothetical bus would be stopped by the government at all. My understanding of not just the EU right to travel but also the Anglo Irish agreements is that provided you have some basic level of id on you (student card, name written on underpants, ginger hair etc) they don't care, and I dont think I've ever been stopped going to england or back to ireland (in fact, I got off a plane in heathrow and jumped straight onto the tube without an ID check). As I recall from the last time I crossed the Irish sea with a bus company, they asked for my ID before I got on the bus in London. I think that if you are in the UK legally (which you should be to get the bus), it is assumed you are allowed into Ireland.

I also wonder where the sim card would be for? If it is an Irish sim card I would expect them to give them out in Dublin. If it is a UK sim card, why give it out as people are leaving the UK?

Is it possible that a phone company made a deal with the bus company, and that the uniforms were a sneaky trick?

As for the general point, I suppose there is nothing wrong in principle with a goverment agent giving out what is essentially a promotional freebie. I think Hospitals can do this with branded drugs, schools can give out free textbooks or other branded educational materials, so while I can't really see the sense in the above situation, I wouldn't say there is anything untoward about it.

mountainyman

There was no ID check. My concern was really the semi official distribution of sim cards.

MM

Deliverance

Witness protection program?