TSA Molesting Civil Liberties
Op-Ed, January, 2012
Our founding fathers were a bunch of obnoxious jerks - and I mean that in the most reverent way. They were fiercely opposed to blind obedience to authority and risked their lives to flip it the bird. How disappointingly and dangerously far we've fallen. Our constitutional rights are increasingly being eroded, and so many Americans are just standing around blinking like livestock.
This past March, I took a more civilly disobedient approach - which sometimes comes at a price. In my case, $500,000. That's what a Transportation Security Administration agent's lawyer demanded from me in a letter for "defaming" her client by saying she had sexually violated me while searching me, and then for "libeling" her by blogging about it.
On March 31, 2011, at the TSA checkpoint in LAX's Terminal 6, I found that I had no choice but to get the pat-down. Tears welled in my eyes - for how we've allowed the Constitution to be torn up at the airport door and because I was powerless to stop a total stranger from groping my breasts and genitals as a condition of normal, ordinary business travel.
I can hold back the tears...hang tough...but as I was made to "assume the position" on a rubber mat like a criminal, I thought fast. I decided that these TSA "officers" violating our Fourth Amendment rights, searching us without reasonable suspicion we've committed a crime, do not deserve our quiet compliance. I let the tears come. In fact, I sobbed my guts out as the agent groped me. And then it happened: She jammed the side of her latex-gloved hand up into my genitals. Four times, with only the fabric of my pants as a barrier. I was shocked - utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there.
Powerless to stop her, but not to vigorously protest what she had done to me, I yelled afterward, "YOU RAPED ME." I later blogged about it, naming her and urging others to name the agents who grope them (a constitutional violation even when done according to TSA procedure, which the search of me was not). We need to make it as uncomfortable as possible to earn a living violating our rights.
Some believe I'm wrong to suggest this - particularly those who believe that the TSA is keeping us safer. Unfortunately, it is not. Security expert Bruce Schneier notes that during the agency's multibillion-dollar history, it has yet to thwart a single attempted terrorist attack. He calls the TSA's efforts "security theater," observing all the dangerous items it misses. For example, in Dallas last year, a TSA tester sneaked a gun through the body scanner. Not once. Five times! That happened just months after a TSA supervisor said I was "lucky" that he wasn't confiscating my dull little drugstore tweezers. Confiscating my tweezers? Why? Because I might use them to break in to the cockpit and over-pluck the pilot's eyebrows?
If the TSA's actual mission were its stated one - "protect(ing) the Nation's transportation systems" - checkpoints wouldn't be staffed by low-wage, unskilled workers, and they wouldn't be searching everyone. They certainly wouldn't be waiting until terrorists get to the airport to root them out. Meaningful measures to thwart terrorist acts require highly trained law enforcement officers using targeted intelligence to identify suspects long before they launch their plots.
The TSA's main accomplishment seems to be obedience training for the American public - priming us to be docile (and even polite) about giving up our civil liberties. The TSA not only violates our Fourth Amendment rights but also has posted signs effectively eradicating our First Amendment right to speak out about it. One such sign, in Denver International Airport, offers the vague warning that "verbal abuse" of agents will "not be tolerated." Travelers are left to wonder whether it's "verbal abuse" to inform the TSA agent probing their testicles that this isn't making us safer, or are they only in trouble if they throw in an obscenity? Not surprisingly, few seem willing to speak out and risk arrest.
I believe I've found a less risky, more impactful way to protest, and it's through sobbing. I'm calling on American women to follow my lead at TSA checkpoints: Opt for the pat-down, and sob your guts out.
Think about the power of it - in airports across America every day, mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters sobbing throughout their government-administered sexual molestation. As the 18th-century economist Adam Smith noted, sympathy for others is a potent human motivator. Because a bureaucracy's first duty is protecting itself, I believe our best chance of abolishing the TSA's pointless daily rights grab is evoking wide-scale sympathy through women's tears. Helpfully, there's plausible deniability for a sobbing woman. TSA supervisors can suspect she's manufacturing her tears, but they can't prove it.
Some find it an absurd contradiction that I write books on manners yet I'm encouraging people to sob at these checkpoints. The truth is, good manners don't always involve going quietly. Sometimes, like when our civil liberties are violated, the most civil thing a person can do is be as loud and uncivil as possible.
Still, I'm a realist. I know that most people will not follow my lead. But, maybe, every day, at every TSA checkpoint, a few will bust out in tears. And maybe, through the spectacle, we can claw back some of the rights we've so docilely handed over.
We cannot ensure our complete physical safety - not even by throwing away all of our civil liberties. Trading our rights for security (or, in this case, "security") is exceptionally dangerous. Every time we go all "We The Sheeple ...," every time we allow one more civil liberty to be yanked from us, it's that much easier to take the next and the next, until we wake up one day wondering how we ended up living in a police state. Better that we do our sobbing now than then.
NOTE: Top First Amendment lawyer Marc J. Randazza called the TSA agent's case "meritless" on First Amendment grounds (and SLAPP grounds, as well). Other lawyers and legal scholars have concurred.
Accordingly, there's been no court filing and no contact since the initial letter in late July from the TSA agent's lawyer, Vicki Roberts, a publicity seeker who hopes to have her own reality show. See Roberts' site, RestMyCase.com, and press releases like this one Roberts sent out about herself.
The initial letter from Roberts and Randazza's beautiful response detailing why the TSA agent has no case are at TechDirt.com.
I'm so glad that I'm not the only one that feels that the security checkpoints are molesting us. The first year after 911 I was selected EVERY time I flew for the pat down. It happened about 4 times out of Peoria IL airport. I finally broke the "curse" by flying out of Bloomington IL and luck would have it got a TSA agent that was also my patient. I haven't flown now for 2 years because of the ridiculous way I was treated by 2 airline attendants when my carry on bag that was small and normally fit even in the tiny prop planes for some reason didn't fit in this planes overhead bins despite the fact there were on 10 people on a flight that could hold 5-6 times that. I sobbed that time and they mellowed out. I will probably fly again in 2 months and believe you me, if I get selected for the pat down, I will sob.
Rebecca Knight at August 25, 2014 5:23 AM
I am an active-duty Navy nurse and was traveling to an assignment very early in my career in my totally awesome-top-gun-type white uniform, but was stopped in the TSA security line...I was frisked up and down, asked about my bra, belt, and ribbons in front on many curious onlookers and then sent on my way. I smoothed out my white skirt and tried to keep my head high while heading to my gate amid many turning heads. I was obviously supporting our country's efforts for freedom, but was treated as a possible terrorist suspect! I was completely appalled, but too young to make a fuss.
Liz Riffle at December 2, 2015 1:23 AM
test
gregg at March 18, 2016 2:29 PM
I am 74, Mother of 3, Grandmother of 6. A few years ago, flying back to NJ from Florida, I was tapped for a pat-down. I asked why, 5 foot, 113 lb., me was being singled out and was told "just random". After assuming the position I received the same type of humiliating pat down. I kept asking what they were looking for and was told to be quiet. I was a million mile flyer and appalled at this turn of events. I have some thoughts about this:
After reading the stories above, I believe that women are singled out because if they were to do this to a guy chances are (sooner or later) they might get flattened by an angry male flyer. I also believe that there is a quota for "pat downs" so the candidates are chosen as the least likely to make a fuss. In addition, more people agree to a pat down, believing it better than a dose of x-rays from the machine. I think I'll take the x-rays! It's a sad day when Americans have to submit to this. Furthermore, back of the hand, front of the hand..if this were done to us on the street, that perpetrator would be in jail! How dare they!
Barbara Martin at April 5, 2017 3:26 PM
Hey Amy,
Fuck you, you fat fucking cunt!
Mark Harris at December 3, 2018 4:38 AM
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