There's an entry on the TSA blog concerning, generally, an incident wherein a passenger was detained because he was carrying a large amount of money.
It's the apparent position of the TSA that simply having a large amount of money on you is a suspicion-inducing event, and they will ask you why you have it. If you're not willing to tell them, they'll call the cops. In the case of the person involved in that incident, he carefully asked the TSA people if he was required to answer their questions. He wasn't refusing, he was asking. They didn't take that too well - but what they didn't know was that he had an iPhone in his pocket with its voice recorder on. The entire episode, including the threats and profanity on the part of the TSA agents, was recorded, and later publicized.
That kind of behavior usually gets ignored, because it can't be proven (not that such helped Rodney King very much). I am delighted that it wasn't the case here.
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4 comments:
I've not seen much follow-up from that story. What the guy was asking was perfectly reasonable, and the TSA guy should have gone to get a cop. Almost immediately!
I think there will now be a new regulation imposed, er implemented: you must tell the TSA guy everything. This will get to the Supreme Court, who will promptly decide that the Founding Fathers were having a good laugh when they proposed the 4th and 5th Amendments...
I think there's an irony that the guy works for a far-right politician (Ron Paul), and the ACLU is representing him. Right wing/Ayn Rand-ian libertarian, meet left wing libertarians... The far right usually hates the ACLU (except when they need them, that is.)
Carolyn Ann
Well, to be honest, I usually have no use for the ACLU, mostly because they strike me as the (law)(constitution)(something legal) version of PETA.
But they have their uses.
I think that the TSA's position is 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'. I'm pretty sure I read that in 1984.
TSA got PUNKED!!!!
Thanks for an enjoyable half hour Bill. I believe that the guy should have simply stated WHY he wouldn't answer the questions instead of passive-aggressively tweaking their noses and attempting to stir up trouble, but on the other hand, he got what he wanted and that was a recording of a situation.
I wonder what the response to the questioning would have been if he had said "I have the right to remain silent. I have the right to an attourney." Everything would have blown over, but then, he would not have got that cool recording.
So, did they ever take Senator Kennedy off the "no fly" list?
Well, no one will even admit that he was on it... but my guess is, yes. As in, he's on the list, but it gets ignored.
I greatly enjoyed reading the comments on the TSA blog about this. It basically came down to the TSA strong arming this guy, and him getting away from them. It did NOTHING for their credibility. I do wonder what would have happened had he said that he was collecting and transporting money for the Terrorists Relief Fund. Still would have been legal, after all.
I don't doubt that the TSA is something that we need to have, so long as there are terrorists around. I doubt strongly that their tactics here are in any way helping that cause.
I would bet that, in the future, TSA people will demand that any recording devices be deactivated before they begin -- failure to do which will be construed as Willful Impairment of a Federal Investigation.
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