Government Censors Send Me “Final Copy” Of My Own Brief

Continueth down the rabbit hole, it appears we must do. After the 11th Circuit clerk’s office accidentally published my brief containing embarrassing quotes from the TSA’s own administratively classified records — provided to me under seal and a court order of secrecy — the government went into full damage control mode. I soon received a call from the court and from the Department of Justice, threatening that even though these documents that they accidentally released were now published all over the Internet (Infowars, Boing Boing, Courthouse News, and even some MSM, such as Philly.com), I must refrain from any discussion of the topic since, in their view, these documents, which have literally reached the screens of millions of people at this point, are still sealed.

I filed a motion asking the court to clarify for the government that I can talk about information that is in the public domain. While I wait for that ruling, I received an e-mail from the DoJ today which purported to have a government-approved “final, redacted copy” of my own brief. Which is funny, because I produced and filed a “public” copy that redacted any discussion of the sealed documents entirely, and because the court in no way gave the government permission to redact my filings. I looked through their redacted version, and it appears the only sentence that they redacted that I did not is the following:

CENSORED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT [?]

The government’s claim that this is secret information is, frankly, bullshit. Anyone paying attention to the news knows that no terrorist has taken — or even attempted to take — explosives on an airplane through a domestic airport since before 9/11. How far before 9/11? Well, as I explained on March 6th, 2012 — more than a full year before the government provided me any sensitive documents — in my infamous video beating the TSA’s worthless nude body scanners, it’s been nearly 40 years:

When the machines came out, we were told that the invasion on our privacy, doses of radiation, and trashing of our Constitution were necessary because the old metal detectors weren’t good enough. That “non-metallic explosives” were a threat, even though no one has boarded a plane in the US with any type of explosive in nearly 40 years.

So no, DoJ, I won’t be censoring that line, and I won’t stop talking about the fact that, based on any rational review of public documents in my possession well before your sealed docs, you have zero basis for your continuing to scare the American people by telling them that airplanes will “go BOOM” if we don’t allow you to molest us at airports.

Freedom is not living under a government censor telling me that I can’t point out the elephant in the room.