In the video, the former beauty queen who held the Miss America title in 2003, Susie Castillo, says a TSA “screener” fondled her vagina during an intrusive pat-down.
Ms. Castillo was subjected to the groping after she refused to enter a naked body scanner at the airport in Dallas, Texas.
In late 2010, the TSA put in place new procedure guidelines instructing agents to use their “palms and fingers” to “probe” airline customer bodies for hidden weapons, including breasts and other private parts.
On April 15, CNN reported that people who complain about naked body scanners and intrusive airport pat-downs will be investigated as terrorists and criminals.
Lawmakers around the country have introduced legislation designed to rollback the pat-downs after the public and airline employees voiced complaints. In March, legislation was introduced into the Texas House of Representatives directly challenging the authority of the TSA in airports within the state and specifically aimed at criminalizing the use of naked body scanners and enhanced pat-downs.
In November of 2010, chief deputy DA and incoming DA of San Mateo County Steve Wagstaffe told the Alex Jones Show his office will prosecute TSA employees who engage in lewd and lascivious behavior while conducting pat-downs at the San Francisco International Airport. Wagstaffe told Alex Jones that county police will be sent into the San Francisco International Airport. If they witness TSA employees engaged in criminal conduct, they will make arrests and the DA’s office will prosecute.
In January, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura launched a lawsuit against the TSA for subjecting him to humiliating pat-downs as he traveled for his work as the host of the popular TruTV show Conspiracy Theory. Ventura said that he would “no longer be forced by the TSA to prove he is not a criminal or terrorist.”
Earlier this week, Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, said the TSA had the authority to conduct an intrusive pat-down on a six year old girl. “Parts of the pat down, in another setting, clearly constituted the kind of inappropriate touching that, if done by anyone else, would have resulted in charges of child abuse and sexual assault. The pat down even caused the little girl to cry, her parents later said in televised interviews,” writes J. D. Heyes.
In November, an Alex Jones employee related her experience with the TSA in Denver. Her children were subjected to the intrusive pat-down procedure.
Castillo is currently a spokeswoman for Neutrogena and has appeared on a number of television shows, including the ABC Family reality television series, America’s Prom Queen.
She also held the title of Miss Massachusetts Teen USA in 1998.
Female Blogger Threatened With $500,000 Defamation Suit For Writing About TSA Rape
TSA LETTER FOR LAWSUIT
I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. I've hung out in quite a few newsrooms over the last few years. Most recently, I was an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school. In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation. I have few illusions about privacy -- feel free to follow me on Twitter: kashhill, Circle me, or friend me on Facebook... though I might put you on limited profile.
Attacking the TSA for its privacy-invasive screening procedures has become a favorite activity for many journalists, especially Matt Drudge. TSA horror stories are often featured prominently on The Drudge Report and he has taken to calling Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (of which the TSA is a part) “Big Sis.”
Napolitano, who doesn’t think Drudge “means [the nickname] kindly” said at a recent Politico event that Drudge is wrong in describing DHS programs as Orwellian and that “the privacy impact of new airport screening technology and similar programs are thoroughly vetted before they are implemented,” in Josh Gerstein’s words.
“We want to be conscious of civil liberties and civil rights protections—and we are,” Napolitano said, as reported by Politico.
On the same day as this piece came out, TechDirt reports on a passenger who would likely disagree with the Secretary. After a particularly aggressive patdown in March that might be better termed a feel-up, advice blogger Amy Alkon graphically described how she sobbed loudly while a TSA agent put her hands “into” her VAGINA four times. She screamed “You raped me” after the LAX patdown and took the agent’s name with plans to file charges of sexual assault. Those plans fell through after consulting an attorney, but she did blog about it and included the agent’s name, thereby inflicting her own assault — on the agent’s Google search results.
The TSA agent then hired a lawyer who contacted Alkon asking her to remove the post, threatening her with a defamation lawsuit, and asking for a settlement of $500,000. “Rape is a very serious charge,” writes lawyer Vicki Roberts on Thedala Magee’s behalf. She also says that Alkon, on a return trip to the airport in May called her client “a bad person” who had “sexually molested” her.
Free speech lawyer Marc Randazza has stepped in to assert Alkon’s right to post about her patdown experience, and to defend both her definition of the patdown as rape and, regardless of that, her right to rhetorical hyperbole. Techdirt has a copy of the letter Randazza drafted in response to the defamation threat.
“After [the agent Thedala] Magee’s assault on Ms. Alkon’s vagina and dignity, Ms. Alkon exercised her First Amendment right to recount this incident to others in person and through her blog,” writes Randazza. “This was not only her right — it was her responsibility.”
Forced to perform patdowns now required by law, TSA agents are the ones who have to face the public’s anger. Texas abandoned its effort this year to pass a law making overly aggressive patdowns a misdemeanor subjecting agents to arrest and a fine, but bloggers can certainly keep on trying the agents in the court of public opinion. I have some sympathy for the agent whose name will now be linked with rape in Google results for eternity — though it should surely serve the purpose of making her a bit less touchy-feely during patdowns — but I hope Randazza and Alkon persevere. TSA screening procedures have already taken a toll on the Fourth Amendment; let’s not add the First Amendment to the list of victims.
TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search 'Rape'
from the don't-be-a-victim dept
DOWNLOAD LETTER FROM TSA
Amy Alkon is an advice columnist and blogger who is just one of many people who has had a horrifying and traumatizing experience going through airport security lately. After being pulled aside for an "enhanced" search, she found the process to be so invasive and so in violation of her own rights that she was left sobbing. She wrote about the experience on her blog, noting that she didn't think the search was just "invasive" in the emotional sense, but flat out physically invasive:
Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked -- utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.
Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, "YOU RAPED ME." And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.
After investigating whether or not she could file sexual assault charges, and being told that this was probably a non-starter, she instead wrote about the experience, and named the TSA agent who she dealt with: Thedala Magee. Alkon felt that if people can't stop these kinds of searches, they should at least be able to name the TSA agents who are doing them.
Magee responded by lawyering up and threatening Alkon with defamation and asking for $500,000 and the removal of the blog post.
Alkon, with the help of lawyer Marc Randazza, has now responded, refusing to back down. Both letters are embedded below, but here are a few key quotes:
Your client aggressively pushed her fingers into my client’s vulva. I am certain that she did not expect to find a bomb there. She did this to humiliate my client, to punish her for exercising her rights, and to send a message to others who might do the same. It was absolutely a sexual assault, perpetrated in order to exercise power over the victim. We agree with Ms. Alkon’s characterization of this crime as “rape,” and so would any reasonable juror.
Furthermore, even if your client did not actually sexually assault my client, Ms. Alkon’s statements to and about Ms. Magee would still be protected by the First Amendment. The word “rape” itself has been the subject of defamation cases by far more sympathetic Plaintiffs than your client. In Gold v. Harrison, 962 P.2d 353 (Haw. 1998), cert denied, 526 U.S. 1018 (1999), the Hawai’i Supreme Court held that a defendant’s characterization of his neighbors’ seeking an easement in his backyard as “raping [the defendant]” was not defamatory. This speech was protected as rhetorical hyperbole. Of course, we need not seek out Hawai’i case law in order to debunk your unsupportable claims. Rhetorical hyperbole has a strong history of favorable treatment in defamation actions. See Greenbelt Cooperative Pub. Ass'n v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6, 14 (1970). This doctrine acknowledges our First Amendment right to express ourselves, even when employing literary license. Accordingly, even if your client’s actions were not “rape,” Ms. Alkon had every right to characterize them as such.
No free woman should endure what your client did to Ms. Alkon. Fortunately, Ms. Alkon is capable of recognizing injustice, and for the good of us all, she had the courage to speak out on this matter of public concern of the highest order. After Magee’s assault on Ms. Alkon’s vagina and dignity, Ms. Alkon exercised her First Amendment right to recount this incident to others in person and through her blog. This was not only her right -- it was her responsibility.
I honestly don't know if this reaches the "technical" definition of rape, but I am massively troubled, if not horrified, by the idea that a woman who feels sexually assaulted based on what happened above ends up being threatened for saying she felt violated. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Don't Give The TSA An Easy Time Of Violating Your Rights
It shouldn't be emotionally easy, earning a living by violating people's rights.
On March 31st, when I came through the metal detector and realized that everyone in the TSA line to my United flight was getting searched, I got teary. I was teary at the prospect of being touched by a government worker -- entirely without probable cause. I was very upset, both because of the physical violation and because I love our now too-often-crumpled-up Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I can hold back the tears...hang tough...but as I was made to "assume the position" on a rubber mat like a common criminal, I thought fast. I decided that these TSA lackeys who serve the government in violating our rights just don't deserve my quiet compliance. And no, I won't go through the scanner (do you trust the government that they're safe?) and allow a government employee to see me naked in the course of normal and totally ordinary business travel: flying from Los Angeles to Binghamton, New York, to attend an evolutionary psychology conference for my work.
Basically, I felt it important to make a spectacle of what they are doing to us, to make it uncomfortable for them to violate us and our rights, so I let the tears come. In fact, I sobbed my guts out. Loudly. Very loudly. The entire time the woman was searching me.
Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked -- utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.
Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, "YOU RAPED ME." And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.
...
I've been waiting on posting this, both because I've been utterly swamped with work, and because I was waiting for a reply from a lawyer about the possibility of filing sexual assault charges. It turns out that filing charges is probably a no-go. Harvey Silverglate, lawyer and co-founder of the wonderful campus free speech defenders, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), emailed me this:
I think it is extremely unlikely that these pat-downs would be deemed a sexual assault, or any assault for that matter. In the first place, the person doing the pat-down would be acting according to regulations and instructions, hence on good faith ... because of the purported justification ("National security", airline safety).
The only issue, it seems to me, is whether there is a decent security reason to justify such pat-downs, or whether it is an unconstitutional search and seizure, or invasion of privacy/intrusion, because not justified for safety reasons. As with most constitutional rights, including this Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure, or Fifth Amendment due process, a court would weigh the state's justification (i.e., security gains) versus the citizen's losses (privacy, dignity).
...To win a battle for liberty like this, people must not get accustomed to these indignities, but must complain about them every single time ... and in every forum possible.
I'll echo Harvey in asking that you all do as I did (and that you spread the word to do as I did): Don't make it easy for the government, through these TSA lackeys, to be violating us -- sexually, and in respect to our right to not be searched without probable cause.
And no -- the fact that some people are terrorists is NOT probable cause. The fact that you are wearing underwire is NOT probable cause. And no -- the fact that you, in 2011, are unwilling to hitchhike thousands of miles instead of taking a plane is NOT probable cause.
The rights of vast number of Americans are being violated daily and it is absolutely essential that we all stand up and defend our rights -- and as loudly and vociferously as possible.
Are you in? Spread the word.
UPDATE: I forgot to post the TSA woman's name when I wrote this last night. I think it might have been Thedala Magee. Or Magee Thedala. I was really upset, and neither name sounds like a typical American first name or last name, so I can't remember if I wrote it down in the right order.
Please, everybody, ask for the name of the person who violated you, and when you post about it, use their name. It's got to become very uncomfortable to be one of those who earns a living, as said at Nuremberg, by "just following orders."
Oh, and just in case you're one of those who has gotten used to giving up your rights with ease, ANY touching by a government official without probable cause counts as being violated.
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