NC family sues TSA over airport screenings (It was only a matter of time!)

RALEIGH, N.C. -- New airport security procedures that have prompted complaints around the country amount to a violation of constitutional rights, according to a lawsuit filed Friday by a Durham lawyer.

Jonathan Blitz filed a complaint in Raleigh federal court against the Transportation Security Administration on behalf of himself and his family. The lawsuit said the new full-body scanners at airports violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and that the pat-downs offered in lieu of the machine are "grope searches" that inflict humiliation on travelers.

"Either TSA personnel have been instructed to intimidate passengers who opt out of the scanner and have been instructed to make the grope search unpleasant to deter passengers from refusing the scanner," the complaint reads, "or defendants' agents have not been properly trained and supervised in their activities related to scanners and passengers' rights."

Our society allows police to subject individuals to abusive intrusions when such actions are a reasonable response to acts. They stop a speeding car. They search with reasonable suspicion based on specific and demonstrable facts. They subdue and even kill a citizen in response to escalating levels of violence.

However, TSA bureaucrats are allowed intimate, primal domination of people when they have done nothing to elicit the behavior. The massive, random and warrantless program of body scanners and pat downs creates an environment allowing expression of the worst demons of the human condition. This country has before and should not again, suffer the consequences of allowing one group of people dominion over another, when submission was not required by the other party’s uncivil behavior. In The Life and Times of Fredrick Douglas, he believed that slavery perpetrated as much emotional and psychological damage to the owner as to the slave.

If there are any reasonable justices left in this country, they should have their head handed to them. There was a post on Terry v. Ohio, which was a Supreme Court decision saying this process is obviously illegal.

In light of the courts decission in Terry v. Ohio it should be quite clear to all that the process used by the TSA is unconstitutional.

Read this from Terry:

In order to assess the reasonableness of Officer McFadden's conduct as a general proposition, it is necessary “first to focus upon [392 U.S. 1, 21] the governmental interest which allegedly justifies official intrusion upon the constitutionally protected interests of the private citizen,” for there is “no ready test for determining reasonableness other than by balancing the need to search [or seize] against the invasion which the search [or seizure] entails.” Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 534 -535, 536-537 (1967). And in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. 18 The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances. 19 And in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts [392 U.S. 1, 22] available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief” that the action taken was appropriate? Cf. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96 -97 (1964). 20 Anything less would invite intrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches, a result this Court has consistently refused to sanction. See, e. g., Beck v. Ohio, supra; Rios v. United States, 364 U.S. 253 (1960); Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959). And simple “`good faith on the part of the arresting officer is not enough.’ . . . If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be `secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ only in the discretion of the police.” Beck v. Ohio, supra, at 97.

What they are doing is tantamount to declaring that everyone is guilty because they might be in possession of something that could cause the airplane they are about to travel on to fall from the sky.

What is needed is a process whereby only those suspected of carrying such materials is searched or seized. This is made quite apparent by the following quote from Terry: “in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.”

In the absence of some visible sign that a traveler is about to commit a crime there is no justification for the search.

The following sentence about acting in good faith seems to tie into a point I made in a different post.

“If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be `secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ only in the discretion of the police.”

The current TSA approach reminds me of the futile and tragic consequences of gun control legislation, which focuses on the instruments of violence, and ignores the person using the instruments. For just one example consider that in Fairfax County, Virginia guns appear to live passive lives, but as soon as they cross the Potomac River and enter the Anacostia area of Washington D.C. they become psychopaths when under the influence of rigid gun control legislation.

Such seems to be the befuddled focus of TSA procedures, which exclusively look for things. Do procedures ignoring people really make us any safer? Is the impact counterproductive like gun control? Maybe they are merely the only alternatives remaining after everything faces the politically correct gate keepers, who see themselves acting in our best interests, but judge everything according to their personal moral orthodoxy?

A powerful resting inertia must be overcome; such as already dominates the gun control debate. Here abiding faith and political power combine to leave people’s behavior and characteristics out of the equation.

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