Government
TSA's Diaper Grope Sparks More Criticism of Feds
Citizens, state legislators challenging agency's airport security procedures
Around the State
Jean Weber of Destin and her 95-year-old mother | Credit: CNNAndrew Nappi, head of the Florida 10th Amendment Center, is urging Reps. John Wood, R-Haines City, and Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, to sponsor the legislation.
"During the last campaign season, you both signed the 10th Amendment Center’s state pledge. Among those things you pledged 'I do, and will continue to, oppose any and all efforts by the federal government to act beyond its constitutional authority,'” Nappi related.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was the subject of a complaint last week over TSA's handling of a dying cancer patient.
Jean Weber, of Destin, said her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched while trying to board a plane to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.
Weber's wheelchair-bound mother was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.
“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber told the Panama City News Herald Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”
Neither Wood nor Workman returned messages from Sunshine State News seeking comment, but Nappi said abuses by TSA workers have prompted legislative reaction in other states.
The Texas House of Representatives passed a bill authorizing the arrest of anyone who touches another person at airports. But the measure stalled when the U.S. Department of Justice warned that such a law could trigger a shutdown of all federally controlled air travel in the state.
Utah is considering similar legislation, Nappi said.
Meantime, legislators from several states have banded together to form a coalition caucus called the “United States for Travel Freedom" to contest intrusive actions by the TSA.
One of the caucus leaders, Alaska Rep. Sharon Cissna, got energized when she refused a TSA patdown at the Seattle airport. A cancer survivor whose mastectomy can show up as an anomaly on scanning devices, Cissna said that, alternatively, inappropriate touching by strangers can trigger memories of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
Cissna ended up taking a ferry home to Alaska.
TSA actions have spawned a website that lists 14 TSA-related bills pending in 10 states, as well as several citizens' groups, including Freedom to Travel USA.
Wendy Thomson, leader of the Michigan-based group, decried the Florida incident, saying the TSA "routinely abuses the rights of the disabled and the elderly. This includes servicemen with artificial limbs who face being subjected to additional searches for no other reason than for serving their country."
Saying "no one should be strip-searched without probable cause," Thomson called the Florida case "egregious." "Police aren't allowed to do that. The TSA shouldn't either."
Protesting what they deem a government-sanctioned invasion of privacy, other activists staged a "Ban the Scan" rally earlier this month in New York City. At the event, one protester advised air travelers to stand up for their rights:
"If 10 percent of those flying opted out then they couldn't use the scanners, since the TSA couldn't pat that many people down. Probably only 5 percent would be enough."
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
Comments (8)
We represent United States citizens who want to regain freedoms taken away by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
This is (ostensibly still) the land of the free, not the land of the safe. Freedom means risk and 235 years ago, some people decided that given the choice between living safe lives of submission to authority, or taking their lives in their hands and being free, they would rather have liberty at the expense of personal risk.
Yes, if TSA stops doing what it is doing, planes may be blown up. Maybe we'll have another 9/11. Maybe we'll have 911 more 9/11s. It will be sad, people will be hurting and mourning. But that is the price we pay for liberty. When people say "freedom isn't free," that's where that slogan comes from. When Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," it was not intended as some sort of anarchist screed. He was saying that sometimes, in order for there to be freedom for all, good people must stand against oppressors and, sometimes, sacrifice themselves in order to do so.
And for godsakes, nobody is even asking any American patriot to fall on their sword. What we're talking about is the people standing up and saying "Enough is enough" to the TSA. Saying "If we have to choose between being less safe in the air and enduring the wholesale sexual assault that you neander-thugs perpetrate against us every day at terminals across the nation, then we'll keep our 4th-Amendment rights and take our chances. Now get the hell out of our airports."
Anyone who values safety over liberty is not espousing American principles and, in point of fact, this can be confirmed via the words of Benjamin Franklin himself. It's been quoted a thousand times before but it rings absolutely true each and every last time. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
America. Land of the free. Not "Land of the free, except in airports or when we're really really scared, void where prohibited, some restrictions may apply.
Old women, young children, young women with nice bodies are all targets of the TSA. While those who could do us harm are ignored because they refuse to profile.
This is (ostensibly still) the land of the free, not the land of the safe. Freedom means risk and 235 years ago, some people decided that given the choice between living safe lives of submission to authority, or taking their lives in their hands and being free, they would rather have liberty at the expense of personal risk.
Yes, if TSA stops doing what it is doing, planes may be blown up. Maybe we'll have another 9/11. Maybe we'll have 911 more 9/11s. It will be sad, people will be hurting and mourning. But that is the price we pay for liberty. When people say "freedom isn't free," that's where that slogan comes from. When Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," it was not intended as some sort of anarchist screed. He was saying that sometimes, in order for there to be freedom for all, good people must stand against oppressors and, sometimes, sacrifice themselves in order to do so.
And for godsakes, nobody is even asking any American patriot to fall on their sword. What we're talking about is the people standing up and saying "Enough is enough" to the TSA. Saying "If we have to choose between being less safe in the air and enduring the wholesale sexual assault that you neander-thugs perpetrate against us every day at terminals across the nation, then we'll keep our 4th-Amendment rights and take our chances. Now get the hell out of our airports."
Anyone who values safety over liberty is not espousing American principles and, in point of fact, this can be confirmed via the words of Benjamin Franklin himself. It's been quoted a thousand times before but it rings absolutely true each and every last time. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."