FWIW, as a EU citizen the things I've heard about traveling to/from/in US have mostly made me go wtf. Perhaps it's just because I spend too much time reading about TSA etc. on reddit, but maybe not.
On one hand, what your read online is greatly exaggerated. Most of the time, you show up at the airport, stand in line for 5 minutes, go through a metal detector, and that's it. Just like it's always been.
On the other hand, recently (should I say this anonymously), annoyed by the extra security and machines, when a TSA agent asked me to take off my shoes and my sweater, I said fine. I went topless. After all, that's what the new machines see anyway.
As an EU citizen you get interrogated why you're visiting the U.S. When I was in SF for WWDC, it was easy, "I'm here for Apple's WWDC". Any other time it's been a 15 minute ordeal of explaining what computer software is exactly and how my international contractor relationship works and why I'm not going to escape into the forests and become a day laborer. Once they even asked for a bank statement. In no other countries I've traveled to (20+) have I had to explain why I'm there aside from checking a box on a paper form.
As a US citizen I've been hassled in much the same way by the UK (the Schengen zone is generally much easier). I've had to produce both bank statements and proof of onward tickets. I've been to a ton of other countries (30+) and your method of entry (train, car, boat, motorcycle, or air) in general effects how difficult the entry is more than anything else.
Everyone has to take off sweater, sweatshirt, coat, shoes, and sometimes belt and watch.
I have flown in JFK, LAX, LAS, and MKE since the body scanners started. There's usually at least one line that uses a metal detector still. So I always pick that line.
It is a joke, though, to see middle-class, middle-aged women in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans getting a body scan and then a subsequent pat-down. What a waste of my tax dollars.
This would be my biggest problem, I think it's just nuts: "all travellers transiting in the USA using either a transit visa or the Visa Waiver Program will be photographed and fingerprinted."
