Why the TSA protest worked

From Congress.org:

Was the National Opt-Out Day really a bust?

The Transportation Security Administration says so, but the mere fact that the government agency reported extensively on the protest indicates its success.

Sure, airports weren't clogged with travelers protesting the body scanners activists called invasive.

But the media's round-the-clock coverage of the issue put TSA on the defense, and the agency has indicated that a policy change may be on the way. The protest also created a conversation about airport security that no doubt made its way to many Thanksgiving dinner tables.

Drudge Fought The TSA….And Drudge Won

From PrisonPlanet:

Despite the establishment media presiding over another mass hoax in claiming that Americans were completely happy with invasive airport security measures, contrary to polls showing a majority in opposition, and that the national opt out day was a failure, the fact that the TSA was forced to change its policy by mothballing naked body scanners and curtailing aggressive pat downs clearly goes to show that the man who almost single-handedly drove the issue, Matt Drudge, fought the TSA and he won.

The big networks and the so-called progressive borg hive, who instantly tried to spin the lack of delays at airports over Thanksgiving as proof that the opt-out protest had failed, conveniently failed to mention the fact that major airports across the country had deliberately mothballed their naked body scanners in a crass PR ploy aimed at deflating the momentum behind the demonstration.

Early reports began to pour in from Twitter users who said that body scanner machines were roped off and out of use in airports such as LAX, Seattle, San Jose and Columbus, Ohio. They also said that pat downs had reverted back to the standard procedure and were not the new grope downs that the TSA had announced a couple of weeks before.

T.S.A. Furor Gives Media a False Positive

The New York Times claims that the media coverage of the TSA has been overblown:

If a squadron of mad scientists surrounded by supercomputers gathered in a laboratory to try to conjure a single news topic that would blow up large, they could not touch the T.S.A. pat-down story.

It began with a Drudge Report link to a video on Nov. 13 of an intrusive pat-down, and then leapt to social media and the rest of the Web. Twitter lighted up, flashing 4,000 posts an hour with cheeky hash tags, and in just the first two days of last week, there were 60 million Google queries for information on the change in the Transportation Security Administration protocol, according to Trendrr, a social media measurement company.

Soon enough, an online protest calling for a National Opt-Out Day popped up, with a call to refuse to submit to scans and to clog airports on Wednesday, one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Cue the media mushroom cloud: by Tuesday, there were print reports about the new scanning technology, heavy-breathing blog posts about the government using the technology to alter or gather DNA (yow), and every cable channel featured wall-to-wall speculation about what would happen when people got to the airport on Wednesday and how many would be carrying lanterns and pitchforks.

“This story tapped right into the central nervous system of the collective consciousness,” said Mark Ghuneim, chief executive of Trendrr. “It was huge.”

But then, in the real world, nothing happened.

The Partisan Mind

In the New York Times, Ross Douhat speculates how this past month's TSA furor would have played out under a President Bush.

TSA Terrorizes A Disabled 4 Year Old Boy By Removing His Leg Braces, Then Forcing Him To Walk

via Revolutionary Politics:

Doctors sound TSA germ alert

From WorldNetDaily:

Syphilis, lice, gonorrhea, ringworm, chlamydia, staph, strep, noro and papilloma viruses all are part of the possible fringe benefits when airline passengers next go through a full hands-on pat-down by agents of the federal government's Transportation Security Administration, according to doctors.

WND reported two days ago on alarmed passengers who noted that TSA agents doing the pat-downs that have been described by critics as molestation since they include touching private body parts were not changing gloves between passengers. In fact, some apparently were patting down dozens of passengers or more wearing the same gloves.

But neither the TSA nor federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control was willing to comment on the possibilities that infections and other loathsome afflictions could be passed from passenger to passenger.

TSA Worker Accused Of Assault Had Prior Record

From WSB Atlanta:

Channel 2 Action News has learned a TSA security worker accused of abducting and sexually assaulting a woman had previously been convicted of misdemeanor harassment and stalking.

Randall King remains hospitalized following a suicide attempt. Police said last Wednesday, King agreed to drive a woman home from the airport. Instead, investigators said King took her to a MARTA station parking lot and placed novelty handcuffs on her.

Investigators said he drove her 50 miles away to his home in Troup County and sexually assaulted her. The woman told police that King gave her a suicide note, his car and let her go, investigators said.

A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration said privacy laws precluded him from releasing any background information on King.

Sanitary Towel Prompts TSA To Grope Sexual Assault Victim

From PrisonPlanet:

Menstruating women beware. If you intend to travel, your panty-liners are now considered suspicious objects, after all you could be concealing a bomb in there.

The latest insane TSA transgression answers questions that were raised last week when it was revealed naked body scanners can also detect sanitary napkins.

New York Times reporter Joe Sharkey wrote Monday that he was getting a lot of requests for information from female frequent fliers.

4th Amendment Wear

Metallic ink-printed t-shirts and underwear.

On the constitutionality of airport searches

If you're wondering what the courts have said about the constitutionality of airport searches, you'd probably end up where I did; still looking.  It turns out the the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of such searches, although there have been some related rulings.

It turns out that the most relevant case is one from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (United States of America v. Daniel Kuualoha Aukai) which ruled that:

We have held that airport screening searches, like the one at issue here, are constitutionally reasonable administrative searches because they are “conducted as part of a general regulatory scheme in furtherance of an administrative purpose, namely, to prevent the carrying of weapons or explosives aboard aircraft, and thereby to prevent hijackings.”

And because "the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of so-called “administrative searches,.” it is reasonable to assume that the Supreme Court would find these searches constitutional, generally.

The caveat to this decision:

Although the constitutionality of airport screening searches is not dependent on consent, the scope of such searches is not limitless.  A particular airport security screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it “is no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives [][and] that it is confined in good faith to that purpose.”

So the key to the current set of procedures, in regards to the full-body scanners and enhanced pat-downs, is whether or not these tools are "more extensive" or "more intensive than necessary under the circumstances."

It seems to me that you could argue that in some specific cases, the procedures used by the TSA may have crossed this line (and in fact, they've more-or-less admitted this is the case in some cases); but there might be some difficulty arguing that these procedures in general cross the line (especially with the current Court).

Here is the text of the decision in its entirety:

United States of America v. Daniel Kuualoha Aukai

TSA Airport Security Medical Humiliations For Travelers with Prosthetic Devices During Pat-Downs and Body Scans

From ABC News:

Prosthetic devices were designed to help men and women move on with their lives despite potentially stigmatizing medical conditions, yet they've become a source of distress and humiliation during the new pat-downs by airport security agents.

There's already been outrage over the TSA agent who asked a Charlotte, N.C., woman who survived breast cancer to remove a prosthetic from inside her bra. There was also a bladder cancer survivor from Lansing, Mich., who said he was soaked in his own urine when a TSA agent's pat-down ruptured the seal on his urostomy bag.

Have Bikini, Will Travel

From NBC Los Angeles:

Thousands of passengers were expected Wednesday at LAX, but only one left little to the imagination.

'I'm wearing my bikini,' Corinne Theile said as she unbuttoned her overcoat outside the terminal to reveal a black two-piece. 'It's not that I'm concerned, it's that I feel like the TSA is making travelers feel uncomfortable, and I feel like we can have security measures that don't make people feel uncomfortable.

'Every time I go through security I always say, 'I don't even know why I got dressed this morning.' I end up taking off belts, jewelry and everything else off anyway,' Theile said.