TSA can't explain why "enhanced patdowns" are legal

BoardingArea's Steven Frischling has been hounding the TSA to explain why they think it's legal to conduct "enhanced patdowns" without particularlized suspicion. No one at the TSA has an answer: "The agency is also unable to provide significant documentation that enhanced pat downs, above and beyond less invasive pat downs." (Thanks, Marilyn!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: aviation • Civlib • law • tsa

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Andy Simmons

I had to read that last sentence three or four times, each time not able to make a bit of sense of it, before I gave up and found the actual quote from TFA:

The agency is also unable to provide significant documentation that
enhanced pat downs, above and beyond less invasive pat downs, serve “the essential administrative purpose.”
oldebloke

Personally, I think the TSA should be renamed TSSA because as transportation goes they are acting just like the NAZI SS in the WWII era. After all, the ‘good’ Aryan Germans were forced to get travel documents AND permission to move about the country. Toward the end of the war they were also prohibited from leaving Germany, period as that privilege was reserved for ‘special’ people….
- Cowicide
  
  TSSA
  http://www.tssa.org
  Responsible for the safety inspection of fuels, pressure vessels and boilers, upholstered and stuffed articles and elevating and amusement devices.
pox

I think you accidentally a word there.
http://forward.tumblr.com/ webdrifter

Frisking without probable cause is wrong in many ways. The only means of having the commercial industry of flight to change this personal invasion by a Government, which by the way is to serve its citizens rights first, is to stop flying whenever possible.
http://DontScan.us Wimpie

But don’t worry – they are still more than happy to grope you and your children. After all, elderly white women and schoolkids are the new face of terrorism today. We clearly need to either expose them to potentially lethal radiation or molest them. FOR THEIR SECURITY. Don’t be fooled by their adult diapers or transformers t-shirts; for all you know, grandma gave up 75 years of Christianity to blow up airplanes for Allah.

And if you disagree, well, you clearly hate America and want the terrorists to win. (Or you read the Constitution.)
theregjoe

It sounds like business as usual at the flights maerket. the customer comes last.
http://theregjoe.blogspot.com/2011/05/flight-nightmare.html
pbrpunx14

their initial response was most likely “legal? when the TSA does it, that means that it is not illegal.” now they wonder where we got the audacity to question them.