TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search 'Rape'

[Demeter]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110906/11065015824/tsa-agent-threatens-woman-with-defamation-demands-500k-calling-intrusive-search-rape.shtml

Amy Alkon is an advice columnist and blogger who is just one of many people who has had a horrifying and traumatizing experience going through airport security lately. After being pulled aside for an "enhanced" search, she found the process to be so invasive and so in violation of her own rights that she was left sobbing. She wrote about the experience on her blog, noting that she didn't think the search was just "invasive" in the emotional sense, but flat out physically invasive:

Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked -- utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.

Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, "YOU RAPED ME." And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.

After investigating whether or not she could file sexual assault charges, and being told that this was probably a non-starter, she instead wrote about the experience, and named the TSA agent who she dealt with: Thedala Magee. Alkon felt that if people can't stop these kinds of searches, they should at least be able to name the TSA agents who are doing them.

Magee responded by lawyering up and threatening Alkon with defamation and asking for $500,000 and the removal of the blog post.

Alkon, with the help of lawyer Marc Randazza, has now responded, refusing to back down. Both letters are embedded below, but here are a few key quotes:

Your client aggressively pushed her fingers into my client’s vulva. I am certain that she did not expect to find a bomb there. She did this to humiliate my client, to punish her for exercising her rights, and to send a message to others who might do the same. It was absolutely a sexual assault, perpetrated in order to exercise power over the victim. We agree with Ms. Alkon’s characterization of this crime as “rape,” and so would any reasonable juror.

Furthermore, even if your client did not actually sexually assault my client, Ms. Alkon’s statements to and about Ms. Magee would still be protected by the First Amendment. The word “rape” itself has been the subject of defamation cases by far more sympathetic Plaintiffs than your client. In Gold v. Harrison, 962 P.2d 353 (Haw. 1998), cert denied, 526 U.S. 1018 (1999), the Hawai’i Supreme Court held that a defendant’s characterization of his neighbors’ seeking an easement in his backyard as “raping ” was not defamatory. This speech was protected as rhetorical hyperbole. Of course, we need not seek out Hawai’i case law in order to debunk your unsupportable claims. Rhetorical hyperbole has a strong history of favorable treatment in defamation actions. See Greenbelt Cooperative Pub. Ass'n v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6, 14 (1970). This doctrine acknowledges our First Amendment right to express ourselves, even when employing literary license. Accordingly, even if your client’s actions were not “rape,” Ms. Alkon had every right to characterize them as such.

No free woman should endure what your client did to Ms. Alkon. Fortunately, Ms. Alkon is capable of recognizing injustice, and for the good of us all, she had the courage to speak out on this matter of public concern of the highest order. After Magee’s assault on Ms. Alkon’s vagina and dignity, Ms. Alkon exercised her First Amendment right to recount this incident to others in person and through her blog. This was not only her right -- it was her responsibility.

I honestly don't know if this reaches the "technical" definition of rape, but I am massively troubled, if not horrified, by the idea that a woman who feels sexually assaulted based on what happened above ends up being threatened for saying she felt violated. Talk about adding insult to injury.

MORE AT LINK

[hedgehog]

1. Is it on tape?

TSA agents do the search with the hand held flat and perpendicular to the ground. Either the TSA agent wasn't following procedure, or the blogger is making shit up.

[MADem]

3. Someone needs to get to the airport ASAP and get copies of that exchange.

It should be on tape--that whole TSA area is under pretty intense surveillance. Even if there's no sound, a good lip reader should be able to suss out the convo.

[Demeter]

4. Not enough of it, I suppose

[emcguffie]

18. I'm confused.

If her hand was perpendicular, as I understand perpendicular, which is at a 90 degree angle to the ground, then the side of her hand could go between labia. If it was parallel to the ground, the flat of her hand would be against the vulva and wouldn't be able to go between the labia.

At least, that's the way I see it.

Are you saying they are supposed to do this with the hand parallel to the ground?

I don't mean to criticize or make trouble, just want to be clear.

Thanks.

[hedgehog]

2. From Ms. Alkon's post:

"I forgot to post the TSA woman's name when I wrote this last night. I think it might have been Thedala Magee. Or Magee Thedala. I was really upset, and neither name sounds like a typical American first name or last name, so I can't remember if I wrote it down in the right order. "


Code for "how dare they let a black woman touch me"?

[MADem]

5. Huh? That doesn't sound like a particularly "black name" to me.

It sounds like some Scottish woman got named after her great-grandmother, actually.

[hlthe2b]

7. I don't get that from the reply at all, hedgehog...

:shrug:

No, it is not a common name in the US... but I don't read any more into it than that...

[hlthe2b]

6. I really like her attorney, Marc randazza's response....

I hope this gets lots of "play."

There MUST be limits to these retaliatory tactics being perpetrated upon the flying public.

[LibDemAlways]

8. TSA screeners do not even need a high school diploma to

qualify for the job. This is government sanctioned abuse by people who would otherwise be asking "Do you want me to supersize that?" Give power to the otherwise powerless and the outcome is predictable. I blame Napolitano and Pistole. They've allowed the monster to get out of control.

[MineralMan]

9. She said; she said. This case won't go anywhere. nt

[hedgehog]

10. I looked through 20 pages of google on this and found only re-postings

of Ms. Alkon's original claim. Apparently, Ms. Alkon has long complained about TSA, yet no one questions her story accusing a TSA employee of a crime. Where are all the people stepping forward to say they witnessed this horrendous event? Did Ms. Alkon report the incident to TSA in a formal complaint at the time or since?

I would further note that it is not TSA suing Ms. Alkon, but the woman whom Ms. Alkon accused. If someone accuses you of rape, then spreads your name all over the internet, what recourse do you have to restore your reputation?

[saras]

11. Everyone agrees the agent did it. Far too many people, even here on DU don't think it's bad.

It's not even that they don't think it sexual assault, but that they don't even see it as ANY sort of a problem. Makes me wonder about their own childhoods.

We've been through this for years now - there are plenty of examples, with audio and video, of abusive TSA employees, yet so far we haven't done jack shit about any of it. So it's not like she's popping up out of nowhere or something.

[hedgehog]

12. Well, I don't agree that it happened, so i guess it's everyone -1.

[Hydra]

14. We've been posting cases here for months

And in fact, the people who have gotten it on tape have been harassed even more severely for having evidence.

This is your garden variety "show me your papers" BS that we used to look down on the Red Menace for. They've even done it to little kids. Feel free to excuse it, but if you do, you're supporting it.

[frylock]

13. one can probably refrain from jamming one's hand in women's vulvas..

i think that would go a pretty fucking long way to restoring one's "reputation."

[JoeyT]

16. Yeah, something really needs to be done about

all these victims of sexual assault getting all uppity.

Accusing decent people of rape without the decency to go through a system that's biased against them even when the perpetrator isn't a part of that system. It's fucking shameful is what it is. I bet she was even wearing high heels, so she probably asked for it, if it happened at all, which it didn't.

Funny how you automatically suspect the victim's story, but not the accused. Empathy: You're doing it wrong.

[trud]

15. that is rape

I'm not sure whether legally it is rape or object rape, but the distinction hardly matters.

As to the poster claiming racism, you really think this qualifies as a woman "touching me"? As opposed to rape? That it would be okay to be raped/object raped as long as the criminal were white?

[DirkGently]

17. "I am certain that she did not expect to find a bomb there." And we all know this.

There's nothing to debate. Groping people this way is not a security measure. It's an intimidation measure, at best designed to force people not to question the Underpants Scanner devices.

Edit:

Or, maybe, just a futility measure? Born of the ridiculous logic we keep employing on security issues. It goes something like this:

"If we check *crotches*, there's no WAY we could miss a bomb in the cargo hold."

How far we gone astray, that we're having this conversation?

The bottom line is that reasonable security measures can only go so far. We should look for bombs in luggage. Ban weapons on the airplane. X-ray the bags.

That's enough. Going further is paranoia, but note, STILL will not prevent every possible attack. We CANNOT prevent every possible attack.

These stupid, blindly applied assembly-line techniques are the same kind of idiotic approach we seem to take all the time: one-size-fits all overkill. It doesn't work. You can't keep heroin out of schools by expelling kids for having Midol, and you can't keep bombs off of airplanes by probing everyone's crotch.

[Demeter]

19. It Keeps a lot of people off planes, though

[saras]

20. Cargo hold hell. What about SAMs?

I can go downtown and buy all the stuff I need to make homemade missiles that will take down an airliner. Three or four different ways. And none of them involve the model rocket store and their premade engines. But from the rocket store, I can get 10,000 feet and a 200lb payload.

Until such time as we all have a chip in our head telling us, in the immortal words of Zager and Evans, everything we think, do, and say, there will be the potential for disrupting society in a way that causes people to fear - that is, terrorism.

Just sayin'

The thing is, fear is ALWAYS irrational. That doesn't mean it doesn't govern us. For any woman who's afraid to fly because of the gropings, the TSA are terrorists, pure and simple. They're preventing her from doing something entirely legitimate - using America's (and the world's) mass transportation system, by making her too fearful to risk the consequences. If that's not terrorism, the word has no useful meaning whatsoever.

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone saying they wouldn't fly if the TSA wasn't searching everybody...

[DirkGently]

21. A person determined to do harm can always do so. We can only improve the odds.

For example, the nail clipper ban (since lifted) The taking of the tiniest of knives and pocket tools. They nearly took a dagger-shapped brooch from my then 85 yr old grandmother. "Can't be too careful."

Well, yes you can, actually. Taking Grandma's brooch because someone could theoretically hurt someone with a one-inch pointy object is being too careful. A ballpoint pen or a belt can be used to hurt someone, certainly more so than a tiny knife. A high-heel shoe. A pair of eyeglasses.

We can strip everyone naked and chain them to the floor, or we can look for big stuff -- bombs & guns -- and get on with our lives.