TSA

‘Don’t Privatize Airport Security’ Say Screeners And Flight Attendants

September 12, 2026 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. Resist! Airports, Privatization, TSA, Worker Rights

Union flight attendants are mourning lost co-workers on the 25-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In Chicago today, they’re joining with Transportation Security Officers to defend airport security gains made in the last quarter-century. “I was there. I lost my friends,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “Our union made a sacred promise to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated.” She described the Trump administration’s attempts to privatize airport security as a danger to the public as well as the 55,000 members of her union.

TSA Is On A Brown-Bag Strike And Is Crippling Airports

March 26, 2026 Chris Brooks, Jacobin Magazine. Resist! Airports, Federal Employees, Strikes, TSA, Worker Rights

Federal laws prohibit strikes by federal workers and can be extremely punitive. Federal workers who strike can face a felony prosecution, time in prison, and fines of thousands of dollars. In fact, if you are a federal worker, you can be officially blacklisted from working for the federal government just for claiming you have the right to strike or even for being a member of a union that makes that claim. To win real collective bargaining rights, federal workers had to directly face off against these constraints. It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a massive wave of public sector strikes in the 1960s and 1970s.

DHS Moves To End Collective Bargaining For TSA Officers

March 11, 2025 Justin Doubleday, Federal News Network. Educate! AFGE, Federal Workers, TSA, union busting, Unions, Worker's Rights

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is moving to end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of Transportation Security Administration airport screeners, less than a year after TSA’s workforce inked a landmark labor agreement. The Department of Homeland Security announced plans “ending collective bargaining” for TSA’s transportation screening officers in a press release today. The DHS public affairs office cast the move as increasing efficiency, safety and “organizational agility.” It charged that a “select few poor performers” are taking advantage of the agreement’s family and sick leave policy.

Cellphone Seizures And The Courts

December 24, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Electronics, Privacy, Surveillance, TSA

After years of conflicting decisions by federal district courts across the country on whether Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents can search your cell phone and laptop at ports of entry, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that, “the routine inspection and search of a traveler’s electronics, or for that matter, any other type of property, at the border may be conducted without a warrant, probable cause, or even individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.” In reaching the decision, the court agreed with several other circuit courts, but put itself at odds with others and many (lower) federal district courts around the country.

The TSA Has Assaulted Us For 20 Years With Nothing To Show For It

November 12, 2022 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Airports, FBI, Mass Surveillance, TSA

In the U.S. where we are fighting invasions of privacy and the destruction of our First Amendment rights in about 900 different ways every day, most of us have stopped talking about how insane and offensive airport security still is. To begin with, allow me to disabuse you of the notion that airport security stops terror attacks. As Darryl Campbell reports in The Verge, “the reality is that TSA has played next to no role in the biggest counterterrorism stories of the past two decades. According to the think tank RAND, intelligence and security services manage to foil nearly two-thirds of terrorist plots in the planning stages.” Of course, U.S. law enforcement also helps create almost all of the “terror attacks” they thwart.

Border Agents Can Search Phones Freely Under New Circuit Court Ruling

February 12, 2021 Adi Robertson, The Verge. Educate! Customs and Border Patrol, Privacy, Travel, TSA

A US appeals court has ruled that Customs and Border Protection agents can conduct in-depth searches of phones and laptops, overturning an earlier legal victory for civil liberties groups. First Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch declared that both basic and “advanced” searches, which include reviewing and copying data without a warrant, fall within “permissible constitutional grounds” at the American border. Lynch ruled against a group of US citizens and residents objecting to invasive searches of their electronic devices. The group includes Sidd Bikkannavar, a NASA scientist who was detained and pressured to unlock a secure government-issued phone.

TSA Sued Over Searches Of Digital Devices

March 16, 2018 Staff, Aclunc.org Resist! ACLU, FOIA, Lawsuit, Surveillance, TSA

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today demanding government documents about Transportation Security Administration (TSA) searches of electronic devices belonging to people traveling on domestic flights. “The federal government’s policies on searching the phones, laptops, and tablets of domestic air passengers remain shrouded in secrecy,” said Vasudha Talla, Staff Attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. The lawsuit seeks records from the TSA field office in San Francisco, California and the TSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. In particular, the lawsuit seeks records related to policies, procedures, or protocols regarding the search of passengers’ electronic devices; equipment used to search, examine, or extract data from passengers’ devices...

TSA Facial Recognition; Part Of Growing Biometric Surveillance System

December 8, 2017 Michael Maharrey, activistpost.com Educate! Facial Recognition, Surveillance, Technology, TSA

By Michael Maharrey for Activist Post - The federal government plans to use a TSA program advertised as a way to avoid lines at airport security checkpoints to harvest photos and other biometric information that will ultimately end up in multiple federal databases. The TSA touts its PreCheck program as a way to avoid the hassle of security screening. Members of the program do not have to remove shoes, laptops, liquids, belts and light jackets. But according to a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Department of Homeland Security has developed this program with a broader purpose in mind. PreCheck will facilitate the collection of face images and iris scans on a nationwide scale. Once that happens, this biometric data will almost certainly be widely shared with other federal agencies and even private corporations. DHS’s programs will become a massive violation of privacy that could serve as a gateway to the collection of biometric data to identify and track every traveler at every airport and border crossing in the country. The TSA currently collects fingerprints during the PreCheck application process. Over the summer, the agency ran a pilot program at the Atlanta Airport using fingerprints to verify passengers’ identities. According to the EFF, the TSA wants to roll out the program to airports across the country and expand it to include facial recognition, iris scans, and other biometric data. This TSA will almost certainly share this information with other federal agencies, including the FBI.

Millions Of Americans May Need Passport To Board Domestic Flights In 2018

October 21, 2017 Carey Wedler, www.theantimedia.org Educate! Right to Travel, TSA

By Carey Wedler for Anti-Media - Come January 22, all states are required to be in compliance with the Real ID Act unless they have received extensions. DHS is currently reviewing extension requests from states like California, New York, and New Jersey. So far, 25 states are compliant with the act. According to the TSA, states that are not yet compliant “will have a grace period until January 22, 2018, meaning that Federal agencies (including TSA) will continue to accept driver’s license and identification cards issued by these states in accordance with each agency’s policies.” After that, travelers in states that have not yet met the requirements may be required to show their passports for interstate travel. DHS says that “Starting January 22, 2018, travelers who do not have a license from a compliant state or a state that has been granted an extension (a complete list of non-compliant states/ territories can be found here) will be asked to provide alternate acceptable identification. If the traveler cannot provide an acceptable form of identification, they will not be permitted through the security checkpoint.” By October 1, 2020, “every traveler will need to present a REAL ID-compliant license or another acceptable form of identification for domestic air travel.”

New TSA Policy May Lead To Increased Scrutiny Of Reading Material

June 26, 2017 Jay Stanley, www.aclu.org Educate! Policy, Surveillance, TSA

By Jay Stanley for ACLU - The TSA is testing new requirements that passengers remove books and other paper goods from their carry-on baggage when going through airline security. Given the sensitivity of our reading choices, this raises privacy concerns. Tests of the policy are underway in some small airports around the country, and DHS Secretary John Kelly recently said that “we might, and likely will” apply the policy nationwide. “What we’re doing now is working out the tactics, techniques, and procedures, if you will, in a few airports, to find out exactly how to do that with the least amount of inconvenience to the traveler,” he told Fox News. The policy may also apply to food items. The rationale for the policy change given by Kelly and the TSA is that the imposition of growing fees for checked baggage by the airlines has prompted passengers to more densely pack their carry-ons, and that this has made it harder for screeners to identify particular items amid the jumble of images appearing on their screens. Laptops must already be pulled out separately because they are regarded as a heightened threat and can be better examined if they are not scanned in a bag with many other objects.

Naked Protest Against TSA Not Protected By First Amendment

May 23, 2017 David Kravet, www.arstechnica.com Resist! First Amendment, Protests, TSA

By David Kravet for ARS Technica - An Oregon man who stripped naked at an airport security screening checkpoint must pay a $500 fine after a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect this method of protest. The nude protest at Portland International Airport (PDX) by a traveler named John Brennan prompted legal action by both the federal government and the state of Oregon. Portland prosecutors charged him with indecent exposure. A local judge acquitted him, saying that Oregon cannot "punish" him for his nudity, which amounted to protest speech protected by the First Amendment. Federal authorities also imposed a civil fine for violating a US law that prohibits "interference with screening personnel." The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, siding with the government, ruled last week that the First Amendment is no defense to getting naked in a TSA security line. As you might recall, Brennan made national headlines in 2012. A security screener's gloves used in his pat down tested positive for nitrates, a substance that can be used to build bombs.

TSA Warns Police To Expect Complaints From New Intrusive Searches

March 10, 2017 Justin Bachman, www.bloomberg.com Educate! Airport, Police, TSA

By Justin Bachman for Bloomberg - The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has declined to say exactly where—and how—employees will be touching air travelers as part of the more invasive physical pat-down procedure it recently ordered. But the agency does expect some passengers to consider the examination unusual. In fact, the TSA decided to inform local police in case anyone calls to report an “abnormal” federal frisking, according to a memo from an airport trade association obtained by Bloomberg News. The physical search, for those selected to have one, is what the agency described as a more “comprehensive” screening, replacing five separate kinds of pat-downs it previously used.

The TSA “Academy”

February 16, 2016 www.yesmagazine.org Educate! Airport, Security, TSA

By Chris Bray for TSA News - All analysis about the TSA eventually becomes the very same analysis, because the core of what the agency does never changes. Nor does the news media’s relentlessly credulous approach to covering the agency. After a while, you can just put new names into the template: 2016 is 2014 is 2012, and TSA Director Peter Neffenger is just the Dumb and Dumber sequel to Fifty Shades of John Pistole. The latest example comes from CBS News, which just offered a breathless report on the TSA’s new national training academy.

TSA Finds Money In Passenger’s Bag, DEA Takes It

July 14, 2015 Lisa Simeone, www.tsanewsblog.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Law, National Security, TSA

By Lisa Simeone in TSA News Blog - From the Washington Post comes this story of not only another instance of TSA abuse, but the TSA’s bragging about said abuse. The headline reads: “Why the TSA posted a photo of a passenger’s cash-filled luggage on Twitter.” And the TSA tweeter in question is none other than PR flack Lisa Farbstein, about whom we’ve written so many times before. From the Post: "The photo, from the Richmond airport, shows a passenger’s luggage containing $75,000 in cash. Farbstein asks, “Is this how you’d transport it?” Most people would not, but there is nothing illegal about simply checking a bag containing $75,000, or carrying it with you on the plane. Passengers aren’t under any obligation to report large sums of cash unless they’re traveling internationally, though the TSA recommends that passengers consider asking for a private screening."

TSA Has No Excuse To Continue Groping

June 7, 2015 James Bovard, www.usatoday.com Educate! Surveillance, TSA

By James Bovard in USAToday. Last August, Transportation Security Administrationchief John Pistole attacked an article I wrote, stating that it was "Misleading, inaccurate and unfairly disparages the dedicated (TSA) workforce. … We will not sit back and allow misinformation and conjecture to malign our employees." Pistole resigned last December — in time to miss the uproar this week about TSA agents failing to detect 95% of the weapons and bombs smuggled past them by Inspector General testers. While Pistole is leading the PR pushback to absolve his former agency, the I.G. report is the latest confirmation that TSA continues blindly blundering and pointlessly abusing Americans' rights and privacy.

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