Attacking the TSA for its privacy-invasive screening procedures has become a favorite activity for many journalists. 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 “Big Sis.”
Napolitano has publicly said people are wrong in describing DHS programs as Orwellian and says that the DHS "wants to be conscious of civil liberties and civil rights protections—and we are.”
Syndicated columnist Amy Alkon would likely disagree with the Secretary, however. After a particularly aggressive TSA patdown earlier this year, Alkon graphically described how she sobbed out loud a TSA agent inserted her hands into her vagina through her pants four times-- each time, moving her fingers back and forth between her labia. 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 Alkon did blog about it and included the agent’s name.
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. Free speech lawyer Marc Randazza 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. More details are here.
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