Gate Rape – TSA Pat-Downs, Full-Body Scans and the Law
Posted on March 1st, 2011
Public outrage and media coverage of the latest security measures instituted by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is growing, and as peak holiday travel season is about to kick in, it’s bound to reach even higher levels of criticism. It’s been recently coined as “gate rape” and that meme is spreading quickly online through social media.To protest it National Opt-Out day has been organized for October 24th. The big question is is it legal, or even constitutional?
Recent Legal Actions
Congressman Ron Paul has just tabled legislation to “protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration employees conducting screenings at the nation’s airports.”
New York City council is introducing legislation to ban the use of full body scanners in NYC airports.
John Pistole, the head of the TSA, just got grilled by our nations top law makers. TSA officials have not subjected themselves to naked scans but Pistole claims he took a pat down.
The Rutherford’s Institute had filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA on behalf of two pilots that refused the pat-downs and body-scans and to that end the TSA just announced they would not require uniformed pilots to undergo the additional measures the flying public must endure.
The TSA threatened a civil suit and a $10,000 fine when John Tyner of California decided to cancel his flying plans instead of having a security officer “touch his junk”.
There will certainly be more cases that get media attention and more civil suits and perhaps class action lawsuits. It seems likely to get visited by the Supreme Court as well.
A Fourth Amendment Violation?
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifically says; “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The bolded highlights above point to where full body scans that render a naked or near naked image and full pat downs that include genital touching may indeed constitute an unreasonable search without probable cause.
John W. Nelson, a technology lawyer in Georgia, writes an excellent piece analyzing this issue in more detail and from a 4th Amendment perspective. He concludes with this, “The law of the land is that all citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The rule of the TSA is that all fliers are presumed guilty until proven innocent. This puts the Fourth Amendment on its head. A complete 180 in philosophy isn’t reasonable; it’s a violation of the original philosophy.”
Security is Not a State of Being, It is a Business – Big Business
It reads like a page out of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine : The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Invent an expensive security device (full body naked scanners costing $150,000 a piece), hire a team of experienced lobbyists to convince Homeland Security they need this (right after a failed attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas 2009), and reap the rewards of gazillion dollar contracts, not to mention the $2.4 billion in staffing costs, to be billed to taxpayers.
Are we that much more secure? Is that security, or the sense thereof, worth the costs? The costs are not just in dollars. They may also be in our rights and freedoms.
