Continuing on with the airport security theme, even though the holiday travel season has came and went:
Wired.com’s Threat Level blog reports on an attempt by the TSA to censor two bloggers who posted a TSA document describing screening procedures, sent to many major airports worldwide (not just in the US). According to one of these blogers, Steven Frischling, “they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”
The TSA agents who visited Steven at his home the evening of 2009-12-29 aggressively questioned him about the source of the document as well as threatened him with the loss of his job and a “security risk designation”– something which may be a mere annoyance for people like me who don’t fly very often, but which carries far greater ramifications for someone who works for an airline as Steven does.
It’s a pretty low blow to aggresively and mercilessly threaten an airline employee while he is holding his three-year-old daughter (as Steven was). This is a huge abuse of Steven’s civil liberties, and it is alarming to me that the TSA would use a subpoena in a similar manner to a search warrant. The two are not the same thing.
Shame on you, TSA agents who did this. How disgraceful, cold, thoughtless, and unkind of you.
For those of you out there who find yourself in a similar spot, be aware of the difference between a subpoena and a search warrant. It’s a good idea to have contact information for the local office of organizations like the ACLU and the EFF handy, especially for bloggers who write about issues the least bit controversial. (And let’s face it, blogs without a little controversy once in a while tend to get a bit boring.)