Last August I wrote a post reporting that the non-profit civil liberties organization Judicial Watch was suing the TSA to gain access to documents outlining the sexual abuse of travelers at the hands of TSA workers. I said that Judicial Watch was joining a long line of of other organizations and individual people who had also tried to sue the TSA to get information, and that the TSA, predictably, had stonewalled.
Now comes news that Judicial Watch has been successful. It has finally obtained records detailing sexual assaults of passengers by TSA agents:
Judicial Watch announced today it obtained 58 pages of records from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that detail alleged sexually related assaults on passengers by TSA personnel at three major U.S. international airports. The documents describe incidents at Denver International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
The documents were released in response to a July 11, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:14-cv-01179)).
The press release by Judicial Watch goes on:
The TSA documents show that passengers strenuously objected to the alleged sexually related assaults, repeatedly saying they were “shocked,” “violated,” and “humiliated.” In one incident, a passenger reported that TSA officers, and “even the Supervisor … began to roar with laughter at the alleged sexual assault.” In other incidents, a breast cancer survivor reported she felt as if she had been raped. And an elderly passenger with a colostomy bag said she felt violated after being informed by a TSA agent that she had to “touch her bag so I could then touch her hands.”
I will remind readers that we here at TSA News have been documenting such assaults since 2011, and I personally have been documenting them since 2009. My Master List of TSA Crimes and Abuses, both pages of it, contains thousands of accounts. And again I repeat, these are only the crimes we happen to find out about. Logic dictates that there are more, many more. It is impossible to know how many.
Yet no matter how much evidence we present -- solid, fact-based evidence, eyewitness testimony, risk assessment, statistical analysis, GAO and DHS reports -- millions of people in this country persist in denying that the TSA is doing what it's doing.
I urge you to read the Judicial Watch press release in its entirety, for yet more sickening details on the sexual assaults; my first post about Judicial Watch; this post by Sommer Gentry; and, of course, the Master List of TSA Crimes and Abuses.
Finally, I will re-post here what I originally posted in August 2014 -- the verbatim comment of one typical American traveler, who goes by the internet moniker "PsyGuy":
“I have long advocated and practiced that I do not care what the TSA does. At some point it will not surprise me if we have to give blood samples at a check point to be cross checked against a DNA profile to insure I am who I am, and I will care no more then than I do now, which is zero. I am happy and content to be a sheeple, my goal is to get from the counter to the gate of the plane with as little hassle and problems, and my experience has been that exercising right is an ineffective and draining use of time, resources and energy. I do not care if the TSA has never stopped a terrorist or even if they have in some way aided terrorism, I don’t care. I care about getting on the plane, that is the only thing that matters to me, and anyone in a position to effect that goal needs to be dealt with in the most efficient manner, in this and all cases that means compliance. I do not care about courtesy, humility, or any other such nonsense, i care about getting on the plane. I do not care if I get safety or security or neither, I do not care about my rights, your rights or if the constitution clutches its chest and dies a little more each day, or even if the founding fathers are turning in their grave, I care about getting on the plane.”
You've heard of schadenfreude? It's because of PsyGuy and people like him that I have plenty of it stored up, just waiting for release.
