In general, some Britons argue that, even as the United States presses demands for new passports with digital identity information, security at American airports has become a recurrent nightmare. Not only are the rules tighter, the argument goes, but those who enforce them are badly prepared.
"It's a sort of general level of arrogant incompetence," said Gwyneth Dunwoody, a British legislator from the governing Labour Party, who complained of being harassed by airport security officials in several cities, including New York, during an official visit to the United States last January.
Dunwoody's remarks prompted a torrent of letters to The Daily Telegraph from readers who told of experiences that included being held and handcuffed before deportation from Kennedy International Airport and other American airports. In an interview in June, Dunwoody also criticized what she depicted as increasingly intrusive American demands for personal information about passengers on flight lists.
