Feds Remove from Plane, Detain Civil Rights Advocate for Possessing TSA Docs

>was admittedly non-cooperative when it came to answering questions that I had no obligation to answer, but always polite. When they asked me to explain myself, I declined their offer, but did not mock them as I do after the fact on my blog.

I wasn't implying you called them names there, I was implying you calling them names in the blog was a symptom that you were less than fully cooperative with them, and in fact in exactly the way that you describe, not doing anything more than the bare minimum required by law for them, because it's your right.

And it is your right.

But to me it's similar to people who start repeatedly asking if they're being detained as soon as an officer pulls then over, yes it's in their right, but it sets the tone for the interaction between them and the individual they're speaking with.

I don't believe that if you had explained yourself you would have had Feds coming down the jetway for you. You have the right not to explain yourself, and as human beings they have the right to respond to what they think is someone carrying classified documents with no offered explanation in the wrong way.

And I don't think you should compare this to Eric Garner, but if you insist, as a younger black man my main take away of Eric Garner is cops who think their job has become a war on poor people (not just us blacks). Eric Garner wasn't put in a chokehold because he moved his arm, he was put in a chokehold because Pantaleo hated him as a person, probably for no more reason for being a poor black male. He probably stopped him for the same reason.

I 100% think the attitude of parties involved in a confrontation is newsworthy. Part of what was so sad about Garners death was that moving his arm wasn't a violent gesture, so Pantaleo would likely have mishandled him regardless of it ( Pantaleo's record supports that reasoning as well)

But there is a difference between a person detained after not cooperating fully (which you don't have to) was then released after someone dug out the details that were needed to acess the situation and detaining someone who has fully cooperated and shown you that they're carrying documents which they're allowed to carry. The law says there shouldn't be, but the nature of people tasked to protect very similar looking documents will inevitably lead to situations like this.

I think you know that, and wanted the exact out come you got because it'd make an excellent case against the TSA. And I think that's totally fair, almost like a type of "freedom fighting" through legal disobedience. But I don't think that after the fact you should write a piece that focuses on that particular instance involving you, because your own case is atypical, and you did things that elevated a situation that might not need to have been elevated. I personally would have seen it better as a springboard to talk about the TSA's more general misgivings, but instead it read to me as a guy saying "look at me, I did absolutely nothing wrong and the dumb TSA picked on me" when it it really is "I did absolutely nothing illegal and the TSA picked on me". What wrong, and what's illegal, are often two separate things once you're dealing with imperfect human beings. It might not be illegal to flip off a cop, but I wouldn't recommend it if you have somewhere to be.

Likewise, it might not be illegal to decline some of the TSAs questions, but to the extent they need to ask questions about what appears to be classified information in the wrong hands, I would answer questions if I had a flight I wanted to get on. You can argue where that extent ends, and if to you it ends where they've asked a question that you aren't legally obligated you're free to, but to me going a few steps further and explaining why I have the documents, and that the ones I have are redacted anyways, would be a reasonable way to handle the situation maturely

You can see my reply to the author's response, I think my reasoning is mostly explained there, but you have a good point about the follow up questions, except I would say that's exactly where one could stop answering questions and say it might affect litigation.

In my response I talk to the varying extent one can cooperate, ranging from doing the bare minimum required by law, to doing the bare minimum required when dealing with human beings less infallible than the written law. If there had indeed been a follow up question which could affect litigation, saying so would be a great way to end the line of questioning (and I actually do have a hard time seeing why the average TSA employee would say much more as soon as you said it was a redacted version). I imagine an exchange like:

Why do you have this document we're not supposed to share

Mine are a redacted version

Then what more? Maybe "Why do you have that"? (it's redacted so I don't think they'd even bother to ask), and you could answer "They're related to some litigation I'm involved in but I can't elaborate". It only gets harder to imagine the exchange going after that. But skipping that first explanation that it's redacted is legal, but also opens a rabbit hole of explanations for the agent who thinks someone has accidentally released confidential material to this person.

And as to why he was ordered of the plane, I imagine it's a lag in communication. Someone (or a chain of people) on and off-site made the decision to delve further after a note was made by the TSA agents, which had already let him go. And they wouldn't speak about a possible leak of classified documents on a plane. It's not hard to imagine if the flight had taken off this would have played out at his destination.