polonius

I've made more or less one visit/year to the USA over the past few years, and every one of these visits have results in my being threatened with arrest by the TSA. My response has consistently been to tell them to go ahead and do so if they think they have grounds to, and then ask exactly what they propose to be arresting me for.

As in the past, my most recent experience was similar, although the circumstances in this particular incident were unique.

I arrived into IAD late last thursday, disembarked and headed towards customs inspection. In part because the customs employee barking at arriving passengers distracted me, I mistakenly took the route for passengers transferring to another flight rather than for those arriving at their final destination.

CBP decided to give me a "random" secondary, so I was directed to the inspection area where they pawed through my stuff for a few minutes before sending me on my way. Because of this delay, I was basically the last person through customs before they closed up for the night (it was by that time past 23:00). I wandered out of the customs hall down a corridor and through a labyrinth of queue control barriers, all empty at this hour, until I turned a corner and was confronted with a bank of 6 - 8 TSA checkpoints, all closed save one. I paused as I approached the single open security lane and one of the six or so agents barked at me to take my laptop out of my bag, take my shoes off, etc. I stood there for a long second and then said, "no, thanks, I decline to undergo inspection." One of the agents then said, "you have to." I said, "no, I don't" and he responded by saying the only exit was through the secure area, so I had to undergo inspection. I said, "looks like I'm stuck here then," and I turned around, walked over to a nearby bench, sat down, and took out my book and started reading.

At this the TSO asked if I wanted him to summon the police. I said, "summon them for what?"; he replied, "to have you arrested." I asked, "arrested for what?" His response: "it doesn't matter", so I told him he'd better get the cops there soon so that I could complain about his illegal threat. The whole time six TSOs were just standing around, all waiting to clear me so they could end their shift and go home.

They summoned the cops, various officials and supervisors, all of whom tried to persuade me to agree to inspection. They contacted customs, who controlled the area I had just left and tried to send me back there. Customs refused. Unbelievably, the TSO who radioed the cops was asked "is he interfering with the inspection process in any way," the TSO said, "yes, he is." As I was the only passenger in the terminal at that point, with six TSOs standing around, there wasn't any inspection process going on that I could have interferred with if I wanted to.

Finally they hauled some senior TSA guy out of bed who arrived to speak with me, and he also tried the "reasonable" approach, asking that I please just consent to the search. They insisted they had to do this because there was no other way out of the airport, yet all these officials kept appearing out of some door behind me that obviously led outside. I told him I would agree to the inspection under the condition that he put his request in writing. He refused. I sat down and started reading my book again.

Finally, one of the cops volunteered that he could drive me around the front, which he did.

Once again, I'll be filing a complaint, but as previously, it won't go anywhere -- still waiting on responses to my complaints about my 2004 and 2007 threats of arrest.

AC110

You've been threatened with arrest every time you've been there, while I go several times a year and have never once been threatened with arrest, or even gotten into a dispute with them.

So is it the TSA or is it the traveller?

triehle

Correct answer is probably "both."

It's very easy, amid the lame signage of the poorly designed IAD, to wind up in the "wrong" place.

Seems like in this tale of woe, it took Polonius a long time to fight through a lot of unreasonable government officials before he found one who did the reasonable thing.

You seem like a reasonable fellow, AC110, and you'd probably go along with the request that you rescreen, then walk out through the terminal.

My friend Polonius here is not so reasonable a fellow that he will not insist on his rights and demand that the Federal officials at TSA and Customs take the reasonable approach and allow him back to the "right" place, or (as the one reasonable fellow, an IAD cop, finally did) take personal responsibility for transporting him back around front and tell him he is "free to go."

You make life easier for TSOs. Polonius, eventually, if there are enough like him, make life better for me.

AC110

I've had my share of problems with heavy handed TSA and other airport security types, and am no fan of the TSA and it's ludicrous policies.

What got my attention was that Polonius has been threatened with arrest every time.

triehle

Polonius is being artfully deceptive about how many arrest threats we are talking about. There's this one in 2009, and he says he is

So, three confrontations in about 5 years.

Spiff

polonius, you rock! ^

polonius

No artful deception (or artful concealment) intended. I should have been more precise. I have been threatened with arrest 5 times in 6 trips to the USA over the past six years:

2003: KOA
2004: SJU
2006: DCA
2007: BOS
2008: none
2009: IAD

Every time, I tell them to go ahead and arrest me. If they ask "DY...T?", I tell them yes, but not as much as I want to protect my rights.

triehle

You sound like someone who is looking for an opportunity to fight for his rights, and America's airports, staffed by TSA, are the Land of Opportunity for a man like you.

Carry on, and via con Dios

mkt

If you'd be willing to share this story, I'd be much obliged.

polonius

That was the first one I formally complained about. As usual, I got SSSS, and demanded to know why this was always happening to me. i also noted that as previously in Hawai'i, I had been permitted to fly to a US controlled island without SSSS, and their assertion that I had a "choice" of either submitting to the search or not flying was no choice at all, given that in either case it was difficult to get off the island any other way.

As usual, during the course of the entire extended search process, I expressed my disagreement with the whole process, and noted that were I not under the duress caused by their threat to keep me trapped on the island for the rest of my life, I never would have agreed. I asked to speak with the senior TSA officer on site to discuss the issue and was informed that she was "not available." I took down names and badge numbers and informed them that the whole process was ineffective in any event and that even a somewhat dim-witted terrorist would see the long queues caused by their process as a soft target, not a deterrent. The TSO then told me he was going to have me arrested for making a terror threat, and he called his supervisor, who arrived minutes later.

The first thing I asked her is what had she been doing the past few minutes. She indicated nothing important, so I informed her that her agent had just lied to me a few minutes previously by telling me that she was "unavailable," and that her status seemed to have magically changed as soon as he wanted her on the scene. I refused to back down from my negative assessments of their whole process. She told me I could be charged with "interfering with the screening process". I noted that while the law required me to undergo screening, it didn't require me to like it, and that if she wanted to have me arrested she'd better get on with it.

She indicated I could go, but I asked for a complaint form, which she gave me. I completed it and mailed it to the address printed on the form. It came back to me a few weeks later stamped by the post office as "no such address". I resubmitted by fax and have subsequently received no response, despite numerous attempts at follow up.

stupidhead

You rock! ^^^^^^^

Well we all know how I feel about the scum at DHS/TSA: fire all of TSA then disband DHS. If the various bureaucracies can't communicate with each other, then each of them are too big and each and every single bureaucracy will need to be downsized by 75% every month until they can.

ls17031

Yeah, he's a big man, but yet gets distracted by someone speaking loudly. Just goes to prove my hypothesis that a person's IQ drops about 40% on average when they enter an airport.

But that is, of course, a generalization, and not aimed at any one passenger in general, no matter how good his/her book may be...

Cheers

FliesWay2Much

Thank you, sir, for accomplishing what a lot of us had hoped would happen. Your confrontation was significant for several reasons:

1. Many of us had talked about doing exactly what you did -- clear customs at our final destination and decline to be screened before the process started. The TSA's own rules state that, if you decline to be screened, you must be escorted from the secure area.

2. They tried to pull a "St. Louis" on you, but you stuck to your principles -- and our Constitution -- and eventually won a victory for all of us.

3. You once again allowed the TSA to display its true colors -- power-tripping Barney Fifes who have no clue about the context in which they attempt to conduct screening.

The reality is that the TSA, even the on-duty supervisor, could have ended all this and probably would have ended their shift on time, if he understood the rules and had you escorted out of the secure area, which you really never entered.

I hope that more of us exercise this right at airports where you have to be rescreened simply to get home after an international arrival. If it inconveniences the TSA, tough.

doober

^^

Thank you for taking a stand against this sad, sad excuse for an organization.

pmocek

Nice work, Polonius.

I once had one of the private security contractors who are still in use at Kansas City International turn over his badge to prevent me from reading it after a frustrating encounter in which he proclaimed laws that didn't exist, I got confirmation of my understanding of things at the airline ticket counter, and he watched me walk through the checkpoint even though he thought I shouldn't be allowed.

A few months ago, a TSA ID-and-boarding-pass-checker at Sea-Tac become aggressive and threatened to send me to the back of the line after I politely asked why some people were allowed to cut to the front of the line that about 60 of us were waiting in, then politely responded to his suggestion that I take it up with the airlines by expressing my belief that when people pay more to airlines for their tickets, it's reasonable for the airline to provide them with a higher level of service, but it's not reasonable for our federal government -- who created and managed the line we were standing in and who created the checkpoint we were waiting to traverse -- to give special service like skipping the line to those people. He didn't have anything to say about whether people should be relegated to the slow line to take care of something their government requires them to do because they didn't pay extra. He did say that I was making him nervous (which I recognized as police lingo for "You're doing something I don't like. Stop or else I'll say that you were threatening me and stop you whether I have the authority to do you or not.") and that if I said anything else he would send me to the back of the line.

It seems that in my cases and in Polonius', it would have been good to have captured the incidents on video tape. Polonius, have you considered recording these encounters?