I think you misplace your legal wisdom, friend. Your unconstitutional acts are not a matter of Federal Tort Claims Act remedies. Your unconstitutional acts are a specific matter of 42 U.S.C. 1983. Let me help you with your understanding of how serious a liability you potentially have:

If your employer, the TSA/DHS tells you to violate the constitutional rights of a citizen of the United States, and you do it, you, personally can be sued in a United States District Court. Unless you are a judge acting in your official capacity as a judge, which you are not when you are fondling travelers. You might want to keep in mind the serious liability you create for yourself when you go to work each day, and if I were you, I'd check with my liability insurance carrier to make sure I was covered for these acts.

It seems that logic and TSA don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.

Wait, the employee that has access to the sterile area shouldn't have to be screened each time they enter & leave the sterile area because it would be inefficient? But screening thousands of passengers a day is the epitome of efficiency, and 10 or 20 more would just be too much?

Intrude on the employee? Uh, no. We are entrusting our safety to these folks, there's NO measure too intrusive as to not be allowed, and *surely* the TSOs would be lining UP to be screened each and every time, in the name of safety. If these measures are good enough for the flying public, certainly no TSO would object to submitting to them. Again, it's for OUR safety, and that's what they're all about!

Waste too much time? We're told the NoS takes 30 seconds, and the full enhanced pat down just a few minutes - add in the physical search of their bags and it shouldn't take more than say 7-10 minutes per person. Certainly not an unweildy amount of time, for the sake of /safety/.

Blasphemy. I'm certain if it's in the regulations, the TSOs carry it out, each and every time. For safety.

Civics 101? I suggest that most 5th graders who are paying attention know that SCOTUS does not make laws.

If it's not practical and is too time-consuming, then the search is not warranted.

Can you please point me to statute on this? You keep saying it, but I haven't seen anything to back it up. Probable cause is applicable in ANY government search, the 4th Amendment says nothing about 'criminal' vs. 'administrative'.

You clearly have no clue how our judicial process works, and listen to too many reactionary talking heads.

Where is THAT written? The government has zero duty to "protect" me in the context you're using it. Remember, the Constitution exists to limit the actions of the government, and the 4th is very clear on search & seizure. I can't find anything in my Cosntitition that says I have a right to government protection.

Again - you brought it up and implied that current TSA standards would have prevented 911 in the first place, when that is the height of speculation, because no one knows for sure how 911 was carried out. Has nothing to do with conspiracy theories.

And we KNOW the TSA regulations as carried out have way too many avenues for failure - because we hear stories all the time about how they have failed.

How. Seriously. Every TSO manning a checkpoint on first shift has to be in and in place before the checkpoints open, correct? So change the shift to have them start 30 minutes before checkpoints open, and scan everyone entering. Not onerous. As they are replaced by workers coming in later, those workers start their shifts a little earlier so they can go through the full NoS, pat down & personal item search - in full view of the public - so that, for safety, we can see that we are being protected by the TSA. Why would screening agents take up SO MUCH TIME as to cause significant delay for other passengers, that screening *passengers* doesn't?

It's for safety, after all. You agents should be DEMANDING to be screened, and demanding your fellow employees be screened, each and every time you enter the sterile area.

For safety.

Thank you for posting this.

Eyecue - understand that your union may be assuring you that the DOJ will provide you defense - but they will ONLY provide you defense up to and until your actions cease to be part of your job functions. They also won't provide indemnity for actions that are determined, found, or admitted to be outside said scope. You can be personally sued for violations of civil rights. The DOJ will /not/ automatically protect you if you are found to have done so. (And if you don't understand the difference between defense and indemnity, please look it up. It's a HUGE gap in that protection you're counting on.)

So when does the 'but it's for our own SAFETY!' crowd butt heads with the 'we have to protect the CHILDREN!!!' crowd when it comes to virtual strip-searches and physical molestation?

I mean, I can face charges for putting a picture of my grandchild taking their first bath up on my facebook page (distribution of child porn), while some unknown officer is allowed to view naked children all day long? What guarantees does the flying public have that the officer viewing the NoS images is not into kiddie porn? Same for those officers molesting & feeling up the children in places where they've been told to scream if someone other than mom & dad or the doctor touches them?

I mean, it's bad enough to be molesting adults with minimal consent - a child or infant is *incapable* of giving informed legal consent to such an action.

Respectfully, DevilDog, you intended to cite (b), the first-level paragraph marking. It immediately follows (a)(3), the number being a second-level paragraph marking.

You are absolutely dead-on that SSI is a category of Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), and therefore SSI material is not classified material.

The sooner the better, in my opinion.

Awww... it's inconvenient, so we cah just ignore that part of the Constitution.
News flash: SCOTUS doesn't make law. Ever.

Please point to the sections of the Constitution that indicate that the basic function of government is to protect citizens.

Unbelievable.

Like TSA doesn't delay things now? How about being like every other worker where there's an expectation that you will be on your job, on time, and it's your problem to deal with any delays. Like pilots, flight attendants, travelers flying for work, concessionaires, airline employees, government contractors, factory workers. Or do you think you're special and are "more equal" than the rest of us? How does the TSA put it to passengers: "well, you just need to arrive at the airport earlier next time".

I would just like to expand on this a little since it one of my big problems. Even adults cannot give consent to what is happening in a checkpoint since we are not told the specifics of what is going to happen.

A doctor could not defend himself with informed consent if all he said was that he was going to do some 'stuff'.

Sorry, no.

The myth that this forum is the only place where people complain about DHS/TSA



A Supervisory screener, possibly a Lead screener.

Has anyone kept a detailed list of gropes that have been reported in the media?

Any trained TSO can perform the "Enhanced Pat Down".

The "Resolution Pat Down" is done by LTSO and STSO's.

Some TSA employees don't think the last two are TSO's even though they are identified as such by their employer. That is where the confusion is coming from.

Just word games.

I refuse to classify it as "word games". I prefer to call it blatant, intentional obfuscation.

I can go with your definition, no problem.

Twisting the truth until it is mangled until it is unrecognizable seems to be a core training point for TSA employees.

That guidance says the following:
"Obviously, you would have immunity for any pat-down conducted along lines dictated by TSA."

This is not, in fact, obvious. For example, I am familiar with at least one case where a law enforcement agent performed a search *only after* being told by the prosecutor that the search was legal under the circumstances. The agent argued he should get qualified immunity from the civil suit based on the information the prosecutor had given him. He didn't get it because the court concluded that the officer should have realized that the prosecutor was wrong. Similarly, it is possible a TSO could be denied qualified immunity even if his/her actions followed TSA dictates if a reasonable person would know that that SOP violated constitutional rights or was otherwise illegal.

Many Senators feel that SCOTUS is doing just that. They often use the term "activist judges" to describe justices who they claim are doing it.

We do that many times. If a policeman sees somebody murder somebody and the murderer runs into a building, do you think the officer should wait for a warrant before entering the building? How about if he hears a woman screaming "he's trying to kill me!"?

I understand that these are very different from administrative searches, but it shows that we do have a principle that there are situations where we understand that warrants are not required. Clearly, administrative searches need to be very far from a blank check, but I think that it is indeed unworkable that every search should require a warrant.

Is not that part of the definition of "probable cause?"

At the risk of sending this to OMNI land, I heard a commentator on the radio today opine that half of the newly elected congresspeople can't read. Sad but probably more than just a touch of truth in his statement.