Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds

by Rand Paul

  Children also fall victim to the TSA’s abuse. Four-year-old Ryan T. was born sixteen weeks premature. Developmentally disabled, he has to wear leg braces because his ankles are malformed and his legs are not fully developed. This young boy only recently learned to walk on his own, and can only take a few small steps before needing support. In March 2009, his parents took him to Disney World. If any child deserved a vacation and some fun, it was Ryan. But while traveling through security at the Philadelphia airport, his family ran into some problems. The TSA did not care that Ryan was a four-year-old child with disabilities. They did not care that he relied on his leg braces for support. As his mother carried him through the scanner, the alarm went off, as expected. The agent replied that Ryan must take off his braces and walk through the scanner on his own. The mother attempted to explain that Ryan could barely walk with his braces, let alone without them. The compassionless screener did not care. Exhausted from arguing with these bullying screeners, Ryan’s parents finally succumbed to their demands. According to senior TSA authorities, Ryan should never have been forced to remove his braces. But the senior authorities’ response was too late. The agency expressed a “better luck next time” reaction to the whole ordeal. The TSA has yet to issue a formal apology to the Thomas family.

  An eight-month-old baby was frisked by TSA screeners while traveling out of Kansas City International Airport. The baby’s stroller set off an alarm in the scanner, so of course TSA agents felt they just had to pat down an eight-month-old baby. An eight-month-old child! This is extreme abuse by our government and certainly has nothing to do with our safety. It is an infringement of our constitutional rights. Our government is harming citizens, not helping them.

  When I read that eight-month-old children are being frisked before they fly, I can’t help but think that the terrorists have won. They have so changed our day-to-day way of life that we voluntarily give up our constitutional right to simply fly from one state to another.

  If the TSA isn’t sexually harassing you, invading your personal space, or humiliating you, chances are they might be stealing from you. Since 2007 over three dozen TSA agents have been fired for stealing from checked and unchecked baggage. In 2009, a former TSA agent at Newark Liberty Airport was charged with stealing between $200,000 and $400,000 worth of electronics, jewelry, and money from passengers in transit. In the same New Jersey airport, two agents were charged with three counts of theft, one count of conspiring to commit theft, and one count of accepting bribes. These agents targeted foreign passengers flying via Air India. They would steal money from the passengers’ luggage or small carry-on items while they went through the screening area. On average, the agents would steal approximately $400–$700 per shift. One TSA agent was accused of stealing money from a passenger in 2010. While searching a passenger’s purse, he pocketed almost $500 of the woman’s money. The passenger immediately noticed that the money was missing and complained to supervisors. Security cameras showed the agent taking the money out of the woman’s purse and putting it in his back pocket.

  When traveling, we are not only expected to hand over our purses, laptop cases, briefcases, backpacks, and duffel bags—we are also expected to hand over our dignity and constitutional rights. Just trying to take a vacation, we are expected to surrender our Fourth Amendment rights. Surrendering these rights and our civil liberties has done little to actually keep us safe.

  The TSA should not be at liberty to universally insult all travelers—they should, however, research, track, monitor, and target people who are in fact actual threats to our nation.

  The TSA’s primary function as an agency is to blatantly violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against unwarranted search and seizure. This agency has insulted and humiliated countless American citizens. I, along with many other travelers, do not view traveling as a crime that warrants routine government-enforced search and seizure. In fact, I view traveling as a basic right, in which Americans should be free to travel from one state to another without having to succumb to sexual harassment, public humiliation, and government theft—of both our possessions and our pride.

  America is better than this.

  15

  How Can We Solve the Problem?

  “ ‘Security theater’ refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.”

  —BRUCE SCHNEIER, SECURITY SPECIALIST

  “If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

  —JAMES MADISON

  The right to travel “is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association… it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all” (Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, Shapiro v. Thompson, 1969).

  You’ve heard my personal story concerning the TSA. You’ve read much worse stories in this book. You can find a dozen more similar stories on any given day, simply by reading or watching the news. The regular abuse of the American people by our increasingly police-state government—the TSA being a prime example—cannot be overestimated or denied.

  I sympathize with the problems political leaders have had to deal with in this post–9/11 era. But legislators and executives have had to contend with such problems for as long as there have been governments.

  When something bad happens, to whatever degree, there is always someone clamoring for the government to “DO SOMETHING!” about it. Understandably, such outcries often come from the victims or their families. But more often the cry for government “solutions” comes from journalists, eager to stoke the fire.

  Such is the nature of the irrevocably intertwined worlds of politics and journalism. Consider the following, not so uncommon scenario: A young reporter and a young city councilman each begin their respective careers. The councilman needs to get his message out; the reporter needs a message to cover. They work in conjunction as a matter of circumstance.

  A tragedy happens in their hometown. A somewhat busy street corner with no traffic light becomes the site of an accident, causing the death of young students on their way home from school. It is a horrible tragedy. We’ve all seen stories like this, and our hearts always go out to the victims and their families in any tragedy.

  The journalist interviews local citizens who say they want a traffic light at that corner. If only a traffic light had been there, they say, the accident could have been avoided. Never mind that the other car was speeding, the driver was drunk, and a traffic light probably wouldn’t have stopped him anyway—such logic or facts are beside the point.

  The journalist writes story after story about this issue. People start showing up at city council meetings. Groups are organized. Flyers are distributed. The public wants a traffic light, and with it, hopefully a better sense of security.

  The politician sees an opportunity. He can instantly be a hero to his constituents. So of course he fights for and ultimately gets the traffic light.

  This is a small example, but the lesson remains the same—government grows. The government solution itself would have done little to nothing to prevent the tragedy the traffic light was meant to address. It does little to prevent possible future tragedies. Still, the journalist wins a prize for his coverage of the event. The politician ends up getting elected mayor. The guy who owns the traffic light company makes a profit.

  Such scenarios are repeated day after day, in city after city across the United States, and this has been the case for a very long time. But while a traffic light is no big deal, here’s where it gets more troubling. Imagine that the local journalist has worked his way up to the New York Times. The former councilman turned mayor has become a U.S. senator. Larger tragedies strike. Greater government action is clamored for. Perhaps even some corporations stand to make significant profits through these “solutions.”

  The players involved, from the reporter to the politician,
grew up in and around politics. This is all they know. They believe that every tragedy, no matter how it occurred, whether great or small, must be followed by journalists and politicians rushing to “do something.”

  Many of the government reactions to 9/11 were justified. Many of them were not, and those experiences should teach some lessons. But let’s first talk about a few things we did that made sense.

  In 2001, we had in our possession a prisoner with a laptop. On that laptop were many of the details of the 9/11 plot. But we didn’t find this out until much later.

  Why? When this man was first arrested, we found nothing. The bureaucracies supposedly responsible for handling such matters were not functioning properly, if at all. Local field agents in Minnesota, where the prisoner and laptop were captured, requested dozens of times from their superiors permission to seek a warrant to enable them to investigate further, including looking at the suspect’s laptop. But nothing was done.

  The man in custody was Zacarias Moussaoui, often referred to as the twentieth hijacker. He had direct links to eleven of the nineteen hijackers. He had travel and financial information about the 9/11 attacks. There was clear-cut evidence of this man’s guilt and complicity in carrying out the attacks.

  But we didn’t know it.

  Remarkably, no one at the FBI was fired over this, then or to this day. No one was held responsible. This has always galled me—that even though three thousand innocent people lost their lives and gross incompetence was shown throughout the investigation, no one had to pay the price. No one lost their job.

  No, instead, several agents received medals and commendations. Our government reacted by creating an even bigger bureaucracy—the Department of Homeland Security.

  What we should have done was to consolidate agencies, tearing down the red tape and bureaucratic walls that prevent the sharing of information, being effective, and simply communicating with each other, and make our entire law enforcement and intelligence culture more accountable in achieving results.

  But there were good reactions: We took steps to put air marshals on planes. Pilots are now allowed to arm themselves. We have reinforced, locked cockpit doors and we have much more training and awareness among flight crews about how to safeguard the airplane, the lives of the passengers, and potential victims on the ground.

  But the most helpful reaction to terrorists wanting to use a plane as a weapon didn’t come after 9/11 through government action. It came on 9/11—through the example of the heroes on United Flight 93.

  Those brave passengers on board that day had heard of what had just happened to the World Trade Center. They knew this was not a typical hijacking, where the plane would simply land somewhere and the hijackers would make demands. Those passengers knew that thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of innocent people might die if the hijackers succeeded in crashing the plane.

  So they acted. They overpowered the hijackers and took down the plane themselves, sacrificing their lives to save countless others. No one knows for sure how many lives they saved that day. It is hard to imagine an act of heroism any greater.

  That reaction, by those passengers on that dark day, makes it highly unlikely that terrorists will ever be able to use a plane as a weapon as they did on 9/11. The passengers simply will not allow it. The passengers of Flight 93 did more that day to stop another 9/11 than our government has done in the eleven years since.

  Still, this doesn’t stop the government from “trying.”

  The federal government’s reaction was to create the dog-and-pony show that is the Transportation Security Administration. We’ve seen the problems and read the stories. So what’s the solution?

  The solution is to take a step back. We are not preventing another 9/11 through this massive government boondoggle. The TSA is more security “theater” than security reality. We are not safer, we are just less free.

  I have a two-pronged solution for the TSA.

  I don’t actually want two solutions. My first solution is my favorite. It is the simplest and most positive thing we can do: End the TSA as we know it.

  My bill would privatize all screeners, as they had previously been. The person at that checkpoint should not have the power of a government badge on their side. They should simply be the conduit in a private transaction—you, the private citizen, have contracted with the airline, a private company, to provide transportation. All the government does is muck it up.

  If the security is in the hands of the airlines and airports, they have to still treat you as customers. As a matter of good business, they will have to treat you with respect. They have to design rules that both move their commerce along and keep it safe.

  Airlines and airports have a great interest in their product being safe. It would put them out of business quickly if there were a rash of attacks. They too would’ve had reactions and solutions after 9/11, but government stepped in before we had a chance to see what those solutions would’ve been.

  Unlike private entities, government has no incentive to make its product customer-friendly—or even human-friendly, in my experience. It’s like going to the Department of Motor Vehicles, but somehow it takes even longer and involves groping you. (I sincerely hope no one at the DMV is reading this and thinking of adding groping to that experience as well.)

  So my bill forces the government to get out of the airline business—to get out of our business. Let the airlines and the airports hire the contractors and largely put the systems in place, leaving in place some minimum government rules and oversight. This is by far the easiest and best solution.

  But since I know government often has no interest in the easiest or best solution, I have also introduced what I call the Air Travelers’ Bill of Rights. These are rules that the TSA must follow for as long as they are still in charge of security at the airports.

  Many of the TSA’s screening procedures simply defy common sense, such as “enhanced patdowns” of elderly passengers, young children, or those with disabilities. It seems that every day we hear a new story about mistreatment at the hands of TSA agents during the screening process. While aviation security is undoubtedly important, we must be diligent in protecting Americans from being subjected to humiliating and intrusive searches by TSA agents, especially when there is no obvious cause.

  It is important that the rules and boundaries of our airport screening process be transparent and easily available to travelers so that proper restraints are in place on screeners. Travelers should be empowered with the knowledge necessary to protect themselves from a violation of their rights and dignity.

  Among the seventeen minimum rights laid out in the Air Travelers’ Bill of Rights:

  A TSA screener “opt-out” for airports, allowing them access to the Screening Partnership Program (SPP) and private screeners;

  A one-year deadline to implement a screening process for precleared frequent fliers at all airports with more than 250,000 annual flights;

  Authority to permit travelers who fail to pass imaging or metal detector screening to choose to be rescreened rather than subjected to an automatic patdown;

  Expansion of canine screening at airports, a more effective and less invasive method of screening passengers for explosives, as well as a strong deterrent;

  Eliminating unnecessary patdowns for children twelve years of age or under;

  Right of parents to stay with their children during the screening process;

  Guaranteeing a traveler’s right to request a patdown using only the back of the hand;

  Protection of a traveler’s right to appropriately object to mistreatment by screeners;

  Protection of a traveler’s right to decline a backscatter X-ray scan, a screening method with potentially harmful health effects;

  Protection of a traveler’s right to contact an attorney if detained or removed from screening.

  The bill would require these and other reforms be collected into a single “bill of rights” to be distributed by the TSA at all airports an
d featured on the TSA’s website. This bill of rights would remain in force whether or not the TSA or the airlines ran the screening.

  Our current approach—that everyone is an equal risk of being a terrorist—makes us less safe. By wasting time patting down six-year-olds we are spending less time monitoring the guy who has been to Yemen three times in the last year. Instead of harassing Grandma, I’d rather know where each of the eighty thousand students visiting from the Middle East are. I want to know when students visiting from Pakistan or Saudi Arabia are getting on a train, plane, or bus, and am much less concerned with where the salesman from Omaha travels every week.

  Wouldn’t it be nice to look forward to getting on a plane again? I remember as a younger man being very interested in flight. It is a magical and wonderful thing we have invented, to take us across the heavens to visit our loved ones or enjoy a much-needed vacation.

  We can be safe while being free. Not 100 percent safe—but then no measure of security can make us 100 percent safe, and anyone who tells you that it can is lying to you.

  Or perhaps selling the “security” equipment.

  16

  Foreign Bullies

  “Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.”

  —JOHN STUART MILL

  In the spring of 2012, I met in my Senate conference room with David Kramer, president of the human rights advocacy organization Freedom House. We were joined by his staff and Nancy Okail, an Egyptian mother, wife, and political activist who had an important life decision to make—a decision that included not only her, but her husband and children. She was visibly upset throughout the meeting. She feared for her family’s safety. She feared for her own safety.