Filing a 1st Amendment Complaint to DHS IG -- Blocking from Twitter
 

Folks,

I'm preparing to file an IG complaint against the TSA for blocking many of us from AskTSA, [MENTION=19915]TSA[/MENTION] and against TSA media talking heads for doing the same on their Twitter accounts. My justification will be the federal ruling in Davison v. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors et al . The federal judge ruled that the Chairman of the Board violated the plaintiff's 1st Amendment rights by blocking him from her official Facebook page.

I will hold off for a few days to give other folks the opportunity to PM me with their blocked email addresses or account names that I would be happy to add to the complaint. Also, if any FT legal types have a few minutes to skim through the linked document, I would appreciate any advice or opinions whether or not the TSA would be legally obligated to comply with this ruling.

I suspect they might push back by saying that Lisa Farbstein or the contractors running AskTSA aren't elected officials (thank God!). The counter argument would be that these people are official representatives of elected officials (or Senate-confirmed officials like Pesky) and that the ruling applies to them. We'll see....

Film at 11...

Put simply TSA, an agency of the Federal Government, cannot censor speech except in some limited situations. The courts ruling reaffirms that fact.

TSA does have one option that to my knowledge has not been used for TSA twitter feeds. There is an option to Mute a twitter user but TSA uses the block function.