This actually happened 2 years ago, but I surprisingly hadn’t heard it.
This is useful for a number of reasons. The most obvious of course is TSA getting restrained, even if only slightly. The second is that it was the director of development for the Campaign for Liberty that got detained and ended up having the ACLU involved.
The other two are highlighted below…
Airport rules changed after Ron Paul aide detained
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
[…]
“We had been hearing of so many reports of TSA screeners engaging in wide-ranging fishing expeditions for illegal activities,” said Ben Wizner, a staff lawyer for the ACLU, pointing to reports of officers scanning pill-bottle labels to see whether the passenger was the person who obtained the prescription as one example.
He said screeners get a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, strictly to keep weapons and explosives off planes, not to help police enforce other laws.
TSA was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to boost screening at airports, but the young agency has repeatedly bumped heads against civil libertarians, who argue officers overstep their authority. […]
The ACLU sued in June on behalf of Mr. Bierfeldt, who was detained after he sent a metal box with $4,700 in cash and checks through an X-ray machine at the airport.
He had the cash as part of his duties as director of development for the Campaign for Liberty, the offshoot group that Mr. Paul, Texas Republican, created from his failed presidential bid.
Mr. Bierfeldt recorded audio of the confrontation on his iPhone, including threats, insults and repeated questions about where he obtained the money.
“Are you from this planet?” one officer told him, while another accused him of acting like a child for asking what part of the law forced him to answer their questions about the money. […]
Some civil liberties activists speculate that TSA wants passengers to be uncertain about its procedures because it gives more power to the authorities in an encounter.
So some asshole TSA morons give a perfect example of the people-are-subservient-peons-for-the-state mentality…of course to be expected, but I think it’s a useful anecdote. But much more shocking and disturbing, the fricking ACLU attorney said screeners get an exception to the Constitution. Now, we don’t have the quote, so we have no way of knowing if he was saying that that’s just how it is (i.e. the Constitution is violated) or if he actually agrees with that stance and was only taking the case because he thinks the it should be violated only in the capacity he agrees with.
I hope to god it’s the former. The ACLU.