On The Front Lines
Insisting on Right to Privacy, TRI Defends Airline Passengers, Sues DHS & TSA over Scanners, Virtual Strip Searches & Full-Body 'Rub-Downs'
WASHINGTON, DC -- Insisting that Americans do not shed their privacy rights when entering an airport or boarding a plane, The Rutherford Institute has filed a Fourth Amendment lawsuit in federal court against Janet Napolitano, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and John Pistole, administrator of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), on behalf of three airline passengers who were subjected to invasive body searches by TSA agents under the agency's enhanced screening and pat-down procedures.
The lawsuit, Adrienne Durso, et al., v. Janet Napolitano, challenges the legality of TSA's policy of requiring air passengers to either submit to airport security screening that relies on advanced imaging technology (AIT), which exposes intimate details of a person's body to government agents and has been called a virtual strip search, or submit to highly invasive pat down searches during which TSA agents may go so far as to reach inside a traveler's pants. Institute attorneys allege that use of these procedures as a "first line" security screen for airline passengers violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The complaint asks that DHS and TSA be prohibited from using AIT technology and enhanced pat downs as the first line of airport security screening in the United States.
The complaint in Adrienne Durso, et al., v. Janet Napolitano, et al., is available here.
"No American should be forced to undergo a virtual strip search or subjected to such excessive groping of the body as a matter of course in reporting to work or boarding an airplane when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "To do so violates human dignity and the U.S. Constitution, and goes against every good and decent principle this country was founded upon."
As travelers find themselves increasingly subjected to whole-body imaging scanners and enhanced pat downs by airport personnel, a growing number, unsettled by their experiences at the hands of TSA agents, are fighting back. Three travelers in particular are named in The Rutherford Institute's new lawsuit against the TSA, which describes the procedures as "profane, degrading, intrusive, and indecent," besides being "patently unreasonable," and amounting to an unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Adrienne Durso, a recent breast cancer survivor, was repeatedly and aggressively groped by TSA agents in the area where she had undergone a mastectomy, even after informing agents of her condition. Durso's teenage son who accompanied her was allegedly informed by TSA agents that he was not being patted down because he "did not have boobs."
Chris Daniels, a frequent business traveler, was aggressively and repeatedly touched in his genital area after initial screening showed an abnormality in his genitals that was the result of a childhood injury. When Daniels asked to leave the security area and forego flying rather than submit to the intimate groping, he was told that he was not free to leave and would have to submit to the enhanced pat-down.
The third traveler, C.N., a 12-year-old girl traveling with family friends, was pulled out of line while passing through security and subjected to a WBI scan without the knowledge or consent of her adult guardians, leaving her frightened and traumatized. Her adult companions were screened solely with a traditional metal detector.
The Department of Homeland Security continues to rapidly deploy whole-body imaging scanners throughout U.S. airports, with 491 machines to be deployed by December 2010, and an additional 500 machines in 2011.
