The Freedom Bulletin

Craig Wilson of USA Today recently wrote a column about full-body scanners, or as I like to call them, strip search machines. Not only do I disagree with his opinion, but I find his tone offensive and disrespectful to people who believe in liberty.

Wilson writes…

“Personally, I don’t care who looks at what just as long as we’re all safe and we get to our destination without any more drama than a frazzled flight attendant telling us to sit down for takeoff.

I’m not quite sure what all the fuss is about. A momentary loss of modesty is a small price to pay to gain safety.”

First of all, being seen naked by TSA agents is arguably more than a momentary loss of modesty. To people who believe it is immoral for others to see one’s naked body, undergoing a virtual strip search may only last a few moments, but it permanently deprives you of some amount of modesty. Arguably, having your naked body exposed, even if the image is not stored or saved, is something that can never be reversed.

For me, such a permanent loss of modesty is a very high price to pay for safety. More importantly, by forcing their preferences on everyone else, people like Wilson deprive us all of our freedom – an unacceptable price to pay for anything. Wilson might not care who sees what, but I do, and as long as there is one person who does not believe in sacrificing modesty for safety, it violates that person’s rights to force them to do so.

Mr. Wilson, the fuss is about our government’s steady erosion of our liberties and our dignity. The fuss is about the fact that full-body scanners violate everyone’s rights and are blatantly contrary to the Fourth Amendment.

Then he goes on to make jokes about the saying (that I never quite understood) that you should always wear clean underwear in case you get in a car accident.

“I think the new full-body scanners work better since it looks at our underwear before something bad happens.”

I have an idea: How about people never look at our underwear? How about actually having some respect for privacy and liberty? How about making America the land of the free once more?

It seems like people in South Korea might have a little more sense left than people in the US when it comes to forcing people to be strip searched in order to fly. That country’s transportation ministry wants to install full-body scanners, which create images of people’s naked bodies under their clothes, in airports, but the National Human Rights Commission is opposed to this:

“The machines may violate privacy as they can generate images of the entire body including any prosthetic devices, the commission said. It also challenged the ministry’s contention that the body scanners would be a reliable and effective way of detecting bombs and preventing terrorism. ‘It is hard to understand the necessity of the device that definitely violates the privacy of passengers,’ the watchdog said in a statement.”

In other strip search machine news, it appears that in addition to taking away everyone’s freedom, privacy, and dignity and blatantly violating the Fourth Amendment, full-body scanners might also give you cancer:

“Experts say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children. They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.”

Can’t the whole world just abolish these things? Please?

Last June, the TSA wrote a letter (PDF) in response to the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s concerns about the lack of privacy of whole body imaging (virtual strip searches) in airport security screening. The TSA made some beyond preposterous claims in attempting to rebut EPIC’s (very reasonable) accusations. In light of the despicable new security procedures in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, I thought this would be a good time to go over and refute the TSA’s arguments.

At the time the letter was written, whole-body imaging machines, which see through people’s clothes to create images of their naked bodies, were used in 19 airports in the US, including as primary screening in 6 airports, which means that ALL air passengers are forced to go through the machines. Now they are going to become even more prevalent.

First, the letter reads, “TSA is committed to preserving privacy in its security programs and believes strongly that the WBI program accomplishes that through a screening protocol that ensures complete anonymity for the individual undergoing the WBI scan.”

The TSA says that the following things are true:

• The officer who views the naked image is located in a windowless room, away from the individual being scanned, so they don’t see the individual in person, but only their naked body
• Cameras and cell phones are not allowed in the viewing room
• The naked pictures cannot be stored
• The person’s face is blurred, so that only their naked body, not their face, is visible in the image
• The TSA has been educating the public about virtual strip searches through signage, its blog, its website, and demonstrations

Their main argument seems to go like this: Because the above things are true, forcing people to have their nude bodies examined in order to board an airplane does not violate anyone’s privacy rights. The TSA even writes that “these privacy protections are robust.”

This argument is ridiculous. The objection that liberty-respecting people have to virtual strip searches is that the TSA looks at people’s nude bodies. None of the above facts make this not true.

I have no problem interacting with people face to face. I have no problem with people seeing my face. I have no problem with people photographing me or storing pictures of me. What I have a problem with is being required to expose my nude body in order to board an airplane.

None of the TSA’s supposed privacy safeguards address the way in which whole body imaging takes people’s privacy away. Requiring people to be virtually strip searched in order to board an airplane completely and utterly takes away every iota of privacy and freedom that people have. Whether people are seen naked by someone physically near them or far away is irrelevant. How many people see them naked is irrelevant; one is equally bad as a million. Whether people’s faces are visible is irrelevant. So is whether the images are stored.

As an analogy, suppose that someone got raped, and they happened to be wearing a mask, so the rapist did not see their face. Also suppose that no pictures were taken of the rape. Does this mean the person wasn’t raped?

Didn’t think so.

But according to the TSA’s argument, the person wasn’t raped, or at least they have no reason to complain about what happened to them, just as people apparently have no right to complain about being strip searched, as long as their faces aren’t visible and the images aren’t stored.

This argument is terrible. Any agency that forces even one innocent person to undergo whole body imaging has no respect for privacy whatsoever. The TSA has no right to use whole body imaging as a primary method of screening at any airport, and they have no business claiming to be “committed to preserving privacy.” Anyone who says that forced strip searches could ever have “robust” privacy protections is either dishonest or delusional.

The Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that it was unconstitutional for a school to strip search a 13-year-old girl out of suspicion that she had aspirin. This is a happy day for the privacy rights of all Americans, and I applaud this decision.

Unfortunately, the court found 7 to 2 that school officials did not have to pay damages to Savana Redding, now 19. I would have had them pay as much money as possible, and maybe even go to jail.

I agree with the majority’s decision that the search violates the 4th Amendment. For reference, the amendment goes as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by an Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If this search wasn’t unreasonable, I don’t know what is. The contraband in question was equivalent to two Advil, hardly dangerous. The search was extremely invasive, and there was no warrant. School officials have taken their concern with students’ safety way too far, at the expense of students’ dignity, privacy, and freedom to make their own decisions. I don’t see anything wrong with a 13-year-old being allowed to carry aspirin and make her own decisions about whether she wants to take it. Even worse, though, is the fact that Savana did not even have aspirin on her! She was humiliated and violated for nothing.

This search was borderline sexual abuse. I understand that it was not done for sexual purposes but out of an obsession with safety at the expense of everything else, but being strip searched should be humiliating to people of any age and gender. I am glad the court (with the exception of Justice Clarence Thomas) decided this is not acceptable in America.

Update: Here’s a PDF of the decision.

The Supreme Court is going to hear the case of a 13-year-old girl who was strip searched by her school because of a false accusation that she had aspirin. Savana Redding and her parents sued the school and the assistant principal for ordering her to be strip searched after another student accused her of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen. She and her parents called the search humiliating and unconstitutional, and who can blame them?

The school’s actions are wrong on so many levels.

• First, it is wrong for a school to ban students from possessing or taking medication. People of all ages have a right to decide what medicines they want to take and to take those medicines whenever and wherever they want. A teenager is plenty old enough to make her own decisions about medicine.
• Second, the school had no warrant for the search. The Fourth Amendment forbids all searches for which there is no warrant. The Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that this protection applies to students, even though such a thing shouldn’t be necessary, since there is nothing in the Constitution that would suggest that students are exempt from the Bill of Rights.
• Third, I really don’t think strip searches should ever be legal, even if there is a warrant. Nothing can justify that kind of humiliation.
• Fourth, Savana didn’t even have the pills that the school had unjustly banned! I think that if you cause another person any kind of pain, inconvenience, or humiliation in order to search for something, and it turns out the person didn’t have the thing you were searching for, you should have to pay restitution to the victim. A strip search is humiliating; therefore it is punishment. Therefore, the school punished Savana even though she did nothing wrong. This is clearly unjust, and the school should have to undo the punishment by paying her a large sum of money.

All in all, the assistant principal and school committed a grievous wrong and flouted the Constitution. They should be punished severely.

Last year the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Savana’s favor, but the school appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that the ruling “would create enormous confusion for school officials in trying to determine when and how searches may now properly be conducted.” Um, how about no warrant, no search? What’s confusing about that?

The Supreme Court will hear the case in April.