The County, who initially denied the existance of checkpoint security tapes from the day I was ejected from a TSA security checkpoint at FLL, and I have been going back and forth about the releasability of the security cameras. Despite the fact that the TSA regularly releases security cameras footage as a result of formal or informal requests:
Woman brought to tears by TSA (At same airport! Uploaded by the TSA’s official account!)
TSA illegaly detains US Sen. Rand Paul at checkpoint
Andrea Abbott arrested for being upset about the TSA molesting her daughter
TSA separates family from little boy (Uploaded by the TSA’s official account)
Protester walks through TSA checkpoint in his underwear
…the video of me going through the checkpoint is “Sensitive Security Information” (SSI) and unreleasable, the TSA has told the County.
Well, guess what? Broward County has earned a spot as a co-defendant in the lawsuit that will be filed on February 29th, 2012. All levels of government need to understand that if they help the TSA do illegal things, it is conspiracy and they will be charged as such.
–Jon
Professional Troublemaker ® 
TSA thinks they can hide behind Broward County? This is starting to get interesting. Maybe the word R.I.C.O. will get their attention. 🙂
Thank Goodness for people like you. I have done what I can with bombarding every elected official I could contact via email or snail mail as well as boycott flying completely. You have taken it to a whole other level and I applaud you for it. Please keep up the fight. Every American who wants to maintain their freedom should be behind you 100%, I know I am.
Oh, the idiots at FLL are the worst! Probably because the State and Federal authorities there let so many of the hijackers slip under the radar and right into flight school at Ft. Lauderdale’s executive airport.
I’ve given EARFULS of shit to the TSA-holes at FLL while waiting for them to hand-search grannies in wheelchairs going to New York and Boston to visit their grandchildren and escape the oppressive Florida summer.
Is the TSA not aware that people with names like Sarah Goldberg and Rachel Cohen and Leah Finkelstein and such don’t generally fit the profile of your typical airplane hijacker, let alone a f**king suicide bomber? Nor do 80- and 90-year-old Holocaust survivors. But they’re subject to invasive hand-search too. I guess that’s what the government calls “fair and equal treatment?”
What about checking the hard drives of Chinese businesspeople? They regularly steal proprietary business information while on their visits, and then pirate all kinds of American products, but we let that go five-hole on us? Just look at the damage they do to this economy every year with their illegal and unethical business practices!
We certainly have the prerogative to seize and inspect them; Customs and the Bureau of Export Control would be COMPLETELY within their rights and their jurisdiction with NO warrant required. And chances are, over 80 percent of those computers contain PIRATED American-owned trademarked and copyrighted software, audio, video, and G-D knows what else.
The aforementioned government authorities; TSA, DHS, ICE, and BEC, just have neither the brains nor the balls to enforce THESE laws and protect Americans. They’d rather continue to terrorize you and me; we’re easier targets. That’s the price we pay for having been attacked on September 11th.
End of today’s rant. =)
While I won’t support racial profiling or random hard drive checks (the people that are stealing American intellectual property are doing so over the Internet, not by flying between the US and China), I appreciate your sentiment that the TSA is not using any common sense in its approach.
Thank you for your reply to my comments.
I concur with you that a lot of data is being stolen via the Internet. But for some, that’s the hard way. The smaller manufacturers (pirates) don’t often have the resources so they’ve got to take the low-tech route and do it the old-fashioned way.
I wouldn’t say random HDD checks; I would target specific industries and companies that indicate joint ventures between state and private entities. I’d say computers hand-carried in by people whose entry and activities are regulated by various forms of special-issue visas are fair game if the government cared about enforcing these particular laws.
Title 19 CFR gives U.S. Customs the ability to seize just about anything in the Customs territory of the United States (and its insular territories and protectorates) without a warrant. In addition, you literally forfeit all Constitutional rights within the space of the frontier, so any kind of profiling is reasonable on that basis, unlike being within TSA’s jurisdiction, where the Constitution should still apply.
I’m actually in favor, not of racially profiling, but of the Israeli method. People just walk up to you in the airport and question you. If you look, sound, or smell suspicious, you get more intensively questioned. It ramps up from there. And it works! U.S. ICE now employs face recognition software that essentially reads the muscle movement in your face and runs that against various profiles. I understand they used it quite successfully while retooling for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Doesn’t matter to me if it’s man or machine; the female Customs Inspector who caught Ahmad Rassam in 1999 used the Israeli profiling method. She smelled the rat and busted his ass when he got off the ferry in Port Angeles, WA., almost in my backyard. And that was BEFORE 9/11 happened. So profiling works, and I completely endorse its use.
At some point, I’ll write about my experiences with Chinese Customs, both entering and leaving China, on my Really Chicken blog. You’d be surprised.
You truly don’t see the problem with what you just said? The argument that federal regulations allow restrictions on Constitutional rights is *exactly* what the TSA is trying to put forth. The Constitution doesn’t end ANYWHERE in the United States, and I fully demand all of my rights whether I am at a TSA checkpoint, a CBP inspection point, or a street corner. While I agree that CBP presently “has the authority” (if by that you mean that Congress and the courts have let them), but I respectfully disagree that it follows from a good-faith interpretation of the Constitution.
I never “forfeit my rights,” and I urge you not to be tricked into forfeiting them either. I also urge anyone going through Customs to use TrueCrypt — http://www.truecrypt.org — to secure the contents of their digital storage devices from prying eyes that feel they are above the Constitution.
With all due respect, no. I think they should use personality-profiling, not racial profiling. There’s a world of difference.
But I wasn’t talking about the TSA — I specifically said U.S. Customs. Compared to United States Customs Agents and Inspectors, TSA employees are like angry Walmart greeters with a shinier badge. Title 19 CFR 1581 (19 USC 1581) covers warrantless searches, and it applies to Customs, not TSA. I was talking about entering the United States with contraband, not the other way around.
A local attorney who practices Customs and Immigration law told me that “you forfeit your rights in the area between the Canadian Customs clearance point and the United States Customs clearance point” (which I suppose is referred to as the frontier). We live within easy walking distance of the border crossing with Vancouver, so I’m pretty sure this is accurate.
I would never endorse nor encourage the use of any encryption method when arriving in the United States. I know what U.S, Customs is looking for and I have absolutely nothing to hide. I gladly open up my computer to them.
They’re looking for child pornography, seditious literature, and instructions on how to perform abortions including, oddly enough, condoms, IF they’re labeled for “contraception” or “birth control.” BUT, if the same condoms are labeled for “prevention of sexually-transmitted disease,” they’re 100 percent legal. Trivia from a long career….
ON APRIL 20, 2012, I HAVE TRAVELED FROM FLL TO PVD. WITH SOUTHWEST, FLIGHT 2082 ….WHERE I HAVE HAD A VERY PLEASANT EXPERIENC BEING HELPED BY TSA OFFICER THERESA NASH. BESIDES BEING AND ACTING PROFESSIONAL, SHE HAS SHOWN COMPASSION, WENT THE EXTRA MILE TO HELP ME AND MY PET AND MADE SURE THAT EVERYTHING WAS IN ORDER BEFORE I WENT ON THE PLANE. I WISH TO EXPRESS ONE MORE TIME MY GRATITUDE TO THERESA NASH AND I AM ASKING THAT MY COMMENTS, BE RECORDED ON HER PERSONNEL FILE AND THAT HER SUPERVISORS BE MADE AWARE AS WELL.
HER PERFORMANCE, ENHANCED BY HER MANERISM, MODESTY AND COMPASSION, MAKE THERESA NASH A REAL ASSET FOR TSA. HER WORK, THE WAY SHE TREATED
ME AS A PASSANGER, SHOULD BE AN EXAMPLE TO BE FOLLOWED BY EVERYONE
THAT COMES IN CONTACT WITH THE PUBLIC THAT GO THRU SECURITY CHECKS.
SINCERELY,
RITA SINGER
PS: SUPERVISOR MORENO, OF FLL, CHECKPOINT BRAVO AM, HAS BEEN INFORMED ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE ON MY WAY OUT TO THE GATE.