TSA Experiences

Andrea · 08-30-2018, 07:40 AM

ACLU Seeks More Information About Los Angeles Subway Body Scanners

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/aclu-seeks-more-information-about-los-angeles

The ACLU of Southern California filed a public records request today demanding more information about the body scanners that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority is deploying in subway stations purportedly to detect terrorists. There are a lot of unanswered questions about these body scanners, which see through clothing to detect objects on people’s bodies. That raises numerous privacy and racial equity issues — and ultimately, the question of whether we want remote body scanning to become pervasive in our public spaces.

We wrote about this technology and the questions it raises in March when TSA tested it in New York’s Pennsylvania station. The privacy questions include whether the scanner searches are permissible under the Constitution under California’s very privacy-protective state constitution without a warrant and whether an alarm by one of these scanners is sufficient to justify a demand by a security officer to see underneath a person’s clothes. People carry all kinds of personal effects on and about their bodies, especially in a busy place like a transit hub, and many of those things are very personal: valuables; back braces; medical devices, such as colostomy bags and prosthetics, etc. We should also bear in mind that this technology will likely improve over time in its resolution, clarity, and effective operating distance — and will, therefore, become more intrusive.

There are also serious questions about its effectiveness and whether it survives a cost-benefit analysis. We don’t know what the system’s false positive and false negative rates are, but with all of the things that people carry, it’s likely to be generating constant false alarms. For instance, a German study reported on in 2011 found a strikingly high false positive rate of 54 percent in the use of these scanners. In other words, more than one out of every two items tagged as suspicious turned out to be innocuous. And that was the version used in airports on subjects who are standing still with their arms raised and their pockets empty rather than the free-standing version used here on moving crowds in a chaotic environment. Similarly, the risks of the false negatives — the rate at which these devices fail to detect actual threats — are potentially astronomical as well. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog reported that its undercover agents were able to slip contraband through TSA’s suite of security screening protocols in over 70 percent of attempts.

We don’t have anything like sufficient information to suggest that these devices will be effective in preventing mass casualty attacks. The government hasn’t made the results of its tests in Penn Station or elsewhere public. And even if we did have cause to believe they’d be effective, remember that, as security experts have long pointed out, when you harden one target, attackers will simply shift to a softer target. That is especially true of terrorists, who generally don’t care about disabling or degrading a specific facility but are simply interested in creating publicity and terror.

More broadly, this development is the latest to threaten the “airportization of American life.” Under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, police officers and other government agents ordinarily can’t search you without a warrant supported by probable cause. The courts have accepted an “administrative exception” to that requirement for the narrow purpose of detecting weapons and explosives that might be brought aboard aircraft. One of the questions raised by the Los Angeles body-scanner deployment is whether we’re going to allow that narrow exception to our privacy rights to be wedged wide open into a world where we are constantly searched as we circulate throughout our public places, effectively rendering the Constitution’s protections meaningless.

Los Angeles’ Union Station, for example, contains numerous restaurants, houses art exhibits, hosts weddings, and attracts tourists to view its renowned architectural elegance. New York’s Pennsylvania Station, where this technology was also tested, is similarly a contiguous part of New York City’s public spaces, with plentiful entrances and exits and numerous stores and restaurants. Neither are anything like the secured area of an airport. It’s hard to imagine that even with hundreds of body scanners installed throughout these stations, such scanning would be at all effective in detecting a sole bomber from among the 700,000 people who flow in and out of the two sprawling complexes each day.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske told reporters of the deployment, “We will not have a repeat of 9/11 or any terrorist incident inside our transportation systems in the United States.” As far as the Los Angeles subway goes that’s fairly certain because you can’t drive a subway train into a building. Mass transit facilities are far more like regular public spaces than they are like aircraft. Aircraft are uniquely structurally vulnerable to attack, uniquely terrifying to passengers contemplating such attacks, and uniquely able to be weaponized against ground targets.

Our domestic security bureaucracies will, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, mindlessly press forward with their task beyond any point of reasonableness. That is the nature of bureaucracies, which, as we have argued elsewhere, are best thought of as mindless organisms with certain common characteristics. They will carry out their task of stamping out any risk of attack, no matter how small, without regards to cost, proportion, or damage to other values.

The continued occurrence of mass shootings may also be taken up by our security bureaucracies as additional fuel for the construction of a “checkpoint and search” society. Officials at the launch of the Los Angeles scanners cited guns as another justification for these searches. But consider the ever-increasing calls for security checkpoints, metal detectors, randomized searches, and onerous backpack policies at schools in the wake of any school shooting. The security apparatus’ response to the epidemic of school shootings is to turn schools into fortified bunkers rather than to invest time and resources into student programming, school supplies, teachers, restorative justice, student support, and mental health care — all of which actually may stand a chance of preventing an attack.

Los Angeles Metro’s acquisition of scanners raises another troubling reality: racially biased policing. These devices only identify potential risks. The officers tasked with operating them follow up on alarms by determining whether an individual deserves additional scrutiny, questioning, or detention. As research has proven, the insertion of line-level discretion in policing introduces racial bias in enforcement decisions. The use of body scanners threatens to exacerbate these disparities. If an officer is unsure about whether to question an individual who may have a suspicious device, they will inevitably be more likely to do so if the person is a Black man than a white woman. Worse still, these scanners may provide officers with an “objective” basis to carry out a racially pretextual stop that they might not otherwise feel legally entitled to do.

In short, for all the specific unanswered questions raised by the Los Angeles subway deployment, which we are trying to get answers to today, the big question is whether we are going to go down the road of subjecting Americans to remote automated searches at every turn. The security bureaucracies and device manufacturers will be pushing for it, but that’s not how Americans should have to live.

Andrea · 11-21-2018, 12:37 PM

I May Have to Quit Harvard Because the TSA Won’t Stop Searching Me

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/i-may-have-quit-harvard-because-tsa-wont-stop#comment-239509

I realized my life had entered a new phase while crossing into the United States from Canada in September 2016.

“You both have to come inside,” the border officer said to my husband and me. “Inside” was an empty and cold warehouse with rows of wooden benches. They confiscated our keys and phones, and when I asked for my baby’s diaper bag from our rental car, they escorted my husband as they spoke into their radios: “Suspect is approaching car.”

I had already been detained on the same trip from my home in Orlando, including during a layover in Los Angeles that caused us to miss our flight to Portland, Ore. I had rationalized those stops: They’re just doing their job; maybe it’s a random search like they said.

But this time, they kept us overnight. As the hours passed in that warehouse, my 6-month-old baby howled and shivered. After we left, we went straight to the airport, only to endure extra screenings again on the return trip.

I started researching the Transportation Security Administration’s “secondary security screening selection” process to understand why I was being stopped every time I got on a plane or came back home to the United States after a foreign trip. Nearly two years later, I am still being stopped and searched, and I still don’t know why.

I’m a graduate student at Harvard University, and missed flights and travel anxiety were beginning to affect my schoolwork. So with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, I have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security asking that I be allowed to travel freely, which is my constitutional right.

Am I being stopped because I am Muslim, or because my family once traveled to Iran to visit a holy shrine? Is it because of my criticism of U.S. policies on the multimedia website I run to raise awareness about injustices around the world? Maybe it’s all three. Federal officers have asked me about my writing and religion, both of which are protected by the First Amendment.

I’ve tried using DHS’s “redress” process. I’ve applied to TSA’s PreCheck program and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry program. And I’ve written to members of Congress. All my efforts have failed.

In response to my redress inquiry, DHS sent me a frustratingly unhelpful letter: “[We] can neither confirm nor deny any information about you which may be within federal watchlists or reveal any law enforcement sensitive information. However, we have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary.”

It added: “We cannot ensure your travel will be delay-free.”

Now I have a routine every time I travel: Arrive at the airport more than three hours early. Explain to the airline agents at the help desk that they must call Washington to clear me for travel — a process that can take an hour. Try to be patient when TSA officers escort me from the boarding area to the gate for a private security check. Allow them to rummage through my things and grit my teeth as they pat me down multiple times. Don’t bother telling them about parts of my body that are sensitive from surgery, since they’ll be rough regardless. Run to the boarding area and don’t make a scene as they pat me down again, trying not to feel embarrassed as other passengers watch. Stay as brave as possible.

And above all, be prepared for something new. Once, they brought the explosives unit — several armed men — because of sticker residue on the back of my computer. Another time, they brought a team of dogs to search me. Once, they took my crying 2-year-old through the screening process by himself because he clung to my husband during a pat-down search. Recently, they took me to a private room and forced me to open my pants and show them my underwear. They hid their badges when I asked for their names.

My husband and I bonded over our love for travel when we got married, but now our adventures have been greatly diminished. What once was a dream to take our children around the United States and abroad has been reduced to short car trips. I’ve contemplated many times giving up my studies at Harvard because of the anxiety and humiliation that come with the inevitable harassment on my flights to and from Boston.

America is my home. It’s where I was raised, got married, had my children and built a life. Its greatest qualities of freedom, liberty and opportunity have undoubtedly shaped the person I am today. But these values are slowly diminishing, and those liberties are being taken away from us little by little. I fear one day we will be unable to recognize it as the place we called home.

Kätzchen · 07-10-2025, 07:18 AM

I never fly or use airports but I went searching for a news report speaking to bad service at airports and other types of complaints. Not long ago, a jet plane flying over the PDX metro area lost its door over the west side of our metro area, and with summer only half way through the calendar and fall holidays coming up, I just wanted to see what has been recorded about airports, especially agencies like TSA who can cause you to miss a flight or other troubling things that can happen at airports. Here’s an article about airports with the worst TSA experiences…

Link: https://www.islands.com/1828244/airp...es-complaints/

GeorgiaMa'am · 07-11-2025, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

. . . Here’s an article about airports with the worst TSA experiences…

Link: https://www.islands.com/1828244/airp...es-complaints/

In Good News

TSA is no longer requiring passengers to remove their shoes at check points, effective immediately.

08-30-2018, 07:40 AM	#1
Andrea Senior Member How Do You Identify?: Mature Femme Preferred Pronoun?: Her/She Relationship Status: I heart Rene Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: California Posts: 3,755 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 15,427 Thanked 14,931 Times in 3,022 Posts Rep Power: 21474850	TSA in the subways soon ACLU Seeks More Information About Los Angeles Subway Body Scanners https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/aclu-seeks-more-information-about-los-angeles The ACLU of Southern California filed a public records request today demanding more information about the body scanners that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority is deploying in subway stations purportedly to detect terrorists. There are a lot of unanswered questions about these body scanners, which see through clothing to detect objects on people’s bodies. That raises numerous privacy and racial equity issues — and ultimately, the question of whether we want remote body scanning to become pervasive in our public spaces. We wrote about this technology and the questions it raises in March when TSA tested it in New York’s Pennsylvania station. The privacy questions include whether the scanner searches are permissible under the Constitution under California’s very privacy-protective state constitution without a warrant and whether an alarm by one of these scanners is sufficient to justify a demand by a security officer to see underneath a person’s clothes. People carry all kinds of personal effects on and about their bodies, especially in a busy place like a transit hub, and many of those things are very personal: valuables; back braces; medical devices, such as colostomy bags and prosthetics, etc. We should also bear in mind that this technology will likely improve over time in its resolution, clarity, and effective operating distance — and will, therefore, become more intrusive. There are also serious questions about its effectiveness and whether it survives a cost-benefit analysis. We don’t know what the system’s false positive and false negative rates are, but with all of the things that people carry, it’s likely to be generating constant false alarms. For instance, a German study reported on in 2011 found a strikingly high false positive rate of 54 percent in the use of these scanners. In other words, more than one out of every two items tagged as suspicious turned out to be innocuous. And that was the version used in airports on subjects who are standing still with their arms raised and their pockets empty rather than the free-standing version used here on moving crowds in a chaotic environment. Similarly, the risks of the false negatives — the rate at which these devices fail to detect actual threats — are potentially astronomical as well. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog reported that its undercover agents were able to slip contraband through TSA’s suite of security screening protocols in over 70 percent of attempts. We don’t have anything like sufficient information to suggest that these devices will be effective in preventing mass casualty attacks. The government hasn’t made the results of its tests in Penn Station or elsewhere public. And even if we did have cause to believe they’d be effective, remember that, as security experts have long pointed out, when you harden one target, attackers will simply shift to a softer target. That is especially true of terrorists, who generally don’t care about disabling or degrading a specific facility but are simply interested in creating publicity and terror. More broadly, this development is the latest to threaten the “airportization of American life.” Under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, police officers and other government agents ordinarily can’t search you without a warrant supported by probable cause. The courts have accepted an “administrative exception” to that requirement for the narrow purpose of detecting weapons and explosives that might be brought aboard aircraft. One of the questions raised by the Los Angeles body-scanner deployment is whether we’re going to allow that narrow exception to our privacy rights to be wedged wide open into a world where we are constantly searched as we circulate throughout our public places, effectively rendering the Constitution’s protections meaningless. Los Angeles’ Union Station, for example, contains numerous restaurants, houses art exhibits, hosts weddings, and attracts tourists to view its renowned architectural elegance. New York’s Pennsylvania Station, where this technology was also tested, is similarly a contiguous part of New York City’s public spaces, with plentiful entrances and exits and numerous stores and restaurants. Neither are anything like the secured area of an airport. It’s hard to imagine that even with hundreds of body scanners installed throughout these stations, such scanning would be at all effective in detecting a sole bomber from among the 700,000 people who flow in and out of the two sprawling complexes each day. TSA Administrator David Pekoske told reporters of the deployment, “We will not have a repeat of 9/11 or any terrorist incident inside our transportation systems in the United States.” As far as the Los Angeles subway goes that’s fairly certain because you can’t drive a subway train into a building. Mass transit facilities are far more like regular public spaces than they are like aircraft. Aircraft are uniquely structurally vulnerable to attack, uniquely terrifying to passengers contemplating such attacks, and uniquely able to be weaponized against ground targets. Our domestic security bureaucracies will, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, mindlessly press forward with their task beyond any point of reasonableness. That is the nature of bureaucracies, which, as we have argued elsewhere, are best thought of as mindless organisms with certain common characteristics. They will carry out their task of stamping out any risk of attack, no matter how small, without regards to cost, proportion, or damage to other values. The continued occurrence of mass shootings may also be taken up by our security bureaucracies as additional fuel for the construction of a “checkpoint and search” society. Officials at the launch of the Los Angeles scanners cited guns as another justification for these searches. But consider the ever-increasing calls for security checkpoints, metal detectors, randomized searches, and onerous backpack policies at schools in the wake of any school shooting. The security apparatus’ response to the epidemic of school shootings is to turn schools into fortified bunkers rather than to invest time and resources into student programming, school supplies, teachers, restorative justice, student support, and mental health care — all of which actually may stand a chance of preventing an attack. Los Angeles Metro’s acquisition of scanners raises another troubling reality: racially biased policing. These devices only identify potential risks. The officers tasked with operating them follow up on alarms by determining whether an individual deserves additional scrutiny, questioning, or detention. As research has proven, the insertion of line-level discretion in policing introduces racial bias in enforcement decisions. The use of body scanners threatens to exacerbate these disparities. If an officer is unsure about whether to question an individual who may have a suspicious device, they will inevitably be more likely to do so if the person is a Black man than a white woman. Worse still, these scanners may provide officers with an “objective” basis to carry out a racially pretextual stop that they might not otherwise feel legally entitled to do. In short, for all the specific unanswered questions raised by the Los Angeles subway deployment, which we are trying to get answers to today, the big question is whether we are going to go down the road of subjecting Americans to remote automated searches at every turn. The security bureaucracies and device manufacturers will be pushing for it, but that’s not how Americans should have to live. __________________ I am very spoiled! What we think about and thank about, we bring about! Today I will treat my body with love and respect.

11-21-2018, 12:37 PM	#2
Andrea Senior Member How Do You Identify?: Mature Femme Preferred Pronoun?: Her/She Relationship Status: I heart Rene Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: California Posts: 3,755 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 15,427 Thanked 14,931 Times in 3,022 Posts Rep Power: 21474850	I May Have to Quit Harvard Because the TSA Won’t Stop Searching Me https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/i-may-have-quit-harvard-because-tsa-wont-stop#comment-239509 I realized my life had entered a new phase while crossing into the United States from Canada in September 2016. “You both have to come inside,” the border officer said to my husband and me. “Inside” was an empty and cold warehouse with rows of wooden benches. They confiscated our keys and phones, and when I asked for my baby’s diaper bag from our rental car, they escorted my husband as they spoke into their radios: “Suspect is approaching car.” I had already been detained on the same trip from my home in Orlando, including during a layover in Los Angeles that caused us to miss our flight to Portland, Ore. I had rationalized those stops: They’re just doing their job; maybe it’s a random search like they said. But this time, they kept us overnight. As the hours passed in that warehouse, my 6-month-old baby howled and shivered. After we left, we went straight to the airport, only to endure extra screenings again on the return trip. I started researching the Transportation Security Administration’s “secondary security screening selection” process to understand why I was being stopped every time I got on a plane or came back home to the United States after a foreign trip. Nearly two years later, I am still being stopped and searched, and I still don’t know why. I’m a graduate student at Harvard University, and missed flights and travel anxiety were beginning to affect my schoolwork. So with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, I have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security asking that I be allowed to travel freely, which is my constitutional right. Am I being stopped because I am Muslim, or because my family once traveled to Iran to visit a holy shrine? Is it because of my criticism of U.S. policies on the multimedia website I run to raise awareness about injustices around the world? Maybe it’s all three. Federal officers have asked me about my writing and religion, both of which are protected by the First Amendment. I’ve tried using DHS’s “redress” process. I’ve applied to TSA’s PreCheck program and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry program. And I’ve written to members of Congress. All my efforts have failed. In response to my redress inquiry, DHS sent me a frustratingly unhelpful letter: “[We] can neither confirm nor deny any information about you which may be within federal watchlists or reveal any law enforcement sensitive information. However, we have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary.” It added: “We cannot ensure your travel will be delay-free.” Now I have a routine every time I travel: Arrive at the airport more than three hours early. Explain to the airline agents at the help desk that they must call Washington to clear me for travel — a process that can take an hour. Try to be patient when TSA officers escort me from the boarding area to the gate for a private security check. Allow them to rummage through my things and grit my teeth as they pat me down multiple times. Don’t bother telling them about parts of my body that are sensitive from surgery, since they’ll be rough regardless. Run to the boarding area and don’t make a scene as they pat me down again, trying not to feel embarrassed as other passengers watch. Stay as brave as possible. And above all, be prepared for something new. Once, they brought the explosives unit — several armed men — because of sticker residue on the back of my computer. Another time, they brought a team of dogs to search me. Once, they took my crying 2-year-old through the screening process by himself because he clung to my husband during a pat-down search. Recently, they took me to a private room and forced me to open my pants and show them my underwear. They hid their badges when I asked for their names. My husband and I bonded over our love for travel when we got married, but now our adventures have been greatly diminished. What once was a dream to take our children around the United States and abroad has been reduced to short car trips. I’ve contemplated many times giving up my studies at Harvard because of the anxiety and humiliation that come with the inevitable harassment on my flights to and from Boston. America is my home. It’s where I was raised, got married, had my children and built a life. Its greatest qualities of freedom, liberty and opportunity have undoubtedly shaped the person I am today. But these values are slowly diminishing, and those liberties are being taken away from us little by little. I fear one day we will be unable to recognize it as the place we called home. __________________ I am very spoiled! What we think about and thank about, we bring about! Today I will treat my body with love and respect.

07-10-2025, 07:18 AM	#3
Kätzchen Member How Do You Identify?: Femme Preferred Pronoun?: She, please. Relationship Status: Attached to my granddaughter & chosen friends and family.. Join Date: May 2010 Location: Enjoying life @ home ツ Posts: 16,119 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 29,633 Thanked 33,546 Times in 10,664 Posts Rep Power: 21474868	Airports with terrible service (…) I never fly or use airports but I went searching for a news report speaking to bad service at airports and other types of complaints. Not long ago, a jet plane flying over the PDX metro area lost its door over the west side of our metro area, and with summer only half way through the calendar and fall holidays coming up, I just wanted to see what has been recorded about airports, especially agencies like TSA who can cause you to miss a flight or other troubling things that can happen at airports. Here’s an article about airports with the worst TSA experiences… Link: https://www.islands.com/1828244/airp...es-complaints/ __________________ “How we treat each other matters,” — US President Barack Obama, while delivering Senator John McCain’s eulogy.