Motion Filed In 1st Circuit To Enjoin TSA's New Mandatory "AIT" Screening (google.com)

New submitter saizai writes: TSA has made electronic strip search mandatory whenever they feel like it. "TSA is updating the AIT PIA to reflect a change to the operating protocol regarding the ability of individuals to opt out of AIT screening in favor of physical screening. While passengers may generally decline AIT screening in favor of physical screening, TSA may direct mandatory AIT screening for some passengers as warranted by security considerations in order to safeguard transportation security." I've filed for an injunction against new TSA policy on mandatory AIT, in my general lawsuit challenging TSA's "orders". The court says TSA will respond to my motion by Tuesday. I'll reply immediately. Hopefully will have it put on hold before January. (Note that "AIT" stands for "Advanced Imaging Technology," the term TSA applies to walk-through body scanners.)

Comments

Re:OP here

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, this is a good fight. It's a good thing you are doing, and I hope you succeed. A lot of us are disturbed by the direction of things over the last 14-odd years, and we're doing the best we can to halt the slide in our own ways.

My question would be: do you not worry that talking about it online is unwise given a pending lawsuit?

Policy Regulation

[sandbagger]

I have a policy that my customers pay me on time. Unfortunately I tend to get strung along for 90 days. Since my policy doesn't have the force of regulation I tend to have to suck it up.

I suspect that the nudie scanner that doesn't work is entering the polygraph zone. The people who buy them want everyone else to believe that these contraptions work. In the TSA's case millions have been spent on these things so I presume some congress critter has decided to make them mandatory to justify the expense.

Re:I also have a policy

[saizai]

FWIW, I actually very much don't want to have personal fame. I like having a semi-private personal life. I filed this because it's illegal and I actually believe in upholding civil rights. If you're too cynical to believe m on that, I doubt there's anything I can say that'd convince you.

Re:OP here

[saizai]

I think any machine capable of telling whether or not someone is circumcised is a strip search under the 4th Amendment, regardless of whether it shows the image to a human or not.

Medical Devices Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

My spouse's insulin pump (that she obviously can't just do without) cannot be passed through an x-ray machine. Nor can it go through a body scanner. This is all according to its manufacturer. Every time we fly through airports using body scanners she needs to opt and do the pat down. It's an invasive, slow, and frustrating experience, but at least it doesn't put her in medical jeopardy. Making her pass through the scanners potentially causing her pump to deliver too little or too much insulin while she's 10,000 ft in the air does.

Re:OP here

[saizai]

Re. Australia: do you have a pointer to the law or regulation that says so? (First I've heard of it.)

As far as I know, at least US, Canada, UK, & EU law all permit opt-out if you submit to "patdown". However, IANAL, especially for non-US law.

You might enjoy this video of a German guy demonstrating he could smuggle an entire bomb past the scanners (German w/ subtitles).

I hate this type of post

[Okian Warrior]

I have a policy that my customers pay me on time. Unfortunately I tend to get strung along for 90 days. Since my policy doesn't have the force of regulation I tend to have to suck it up.

I hate this type of post.

It's defeatist and dispiriting to the reader. By advocating no action ("suck it up"), it supports and encourages loss of freedom, authoritative control, and hopelessness.

It's also uncreative - there's *lots* of things we could do, both as a group and individually, to try to change the situation.

You don't have the will to fight, so go drown your despair in drink. Don't being down everyone else as well.

The OP took the trouble to file suit against the TSA. Looking at his website, he might be a rare case of a lawyer doing an open source 'kind of thing.

I haven't seen a lot of this type of "open source good for the community" from the legal profession. I'm not saying that there's *none*, but it's very rare compared to the number of lawyers around.

Engineers are pretty generous with their time. There's a ton of open source software and designs for hardware, people answering questions, things you can make and modify and use.

A lot of lawyers I talk to claim to be unemployed or under-employed. Looking through the myriad number of social abuses we come across at Slashdot, I've always wondered why some of them don't put their spare time into fixing some of our problems using the court system. If it's their own time and they are otherwise unemployed, it wouldn't be very expensive.

They'd also get a big boost of popularity (and business) from having defended a rights issue. When the police decided unilaterally that recording them was illegal, it took an incident to take it to court, and not a pair of lawyers who had set up a situation, with proper witnesses and affadavits.

Anyway, this guy appears to be doing some legal things in the manner of open source.

Cut him some slack, OK?

Re:OP here

[saizai]

Yeah. Popehat's collection of such stories is pretty disturbing.

And on this case, the APA & 49 USC 46110 don't allow me to recover damages (and Kay v Ehrler says I can't recover for my time spent on it), so I won't be getting a single cent from this litigation.

Possibly from suing them over what happened to me at BOS / SFO (see s.ai/tsa), but that's a whole different thing, and probably will take years.

Re:Slowly

[saizai]

It's pretty common for TSA grunts to violate their policies and try to intimidate people against doing what they're allowed to. And TSA claims that it can issue civil penalties (~$10k) if you exit screening once you've entered. The only case I know of where they actually pursued that was John Brennan, though.