By James Bovard
Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the pregnant daughter of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, tore into TSA last week over the abuse she suffered prior to a recent flight. Writing on X on Thursday, she called for abolishing TSA:
Some people responded to her broadside by urging her to tell her complaint to her father. But as she repeatedly patiently explained, TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Transportation Department. No wonder TSA seems to oppose transportation – or at letting people take a flight without running a boneheaded bureaucratic gauntlet.
Many women responded to Duffy-Alfonso’s tweet with their own experience of TSA abuse:
Many commenters slammed Duffy-Alfonso for failing to arrive at the airport a full two hours before her flight. Since when did an inept federal agency become entitled to blight much of the day for innocent travelers? Other commenters sneered that she should have taken the bus.
@AuntieFah420 responded: “Entitled little bitch. STFU”
and
Many of the people who scoffed at her complaint sounded like Trump supporters. Some commenters blamed Muslims for all of TSA’s abuses – since if not for the “Religion of Peace,” there would presumably never be any threat to air travel safety.
The backlash produced by the Duffy-Alfonson reminded me of the outrage proved by a 2017 piece I wrote for USA Today piece headlined, “Thanksgiving travel: Trump’s holiday gift is more invasive airport security.” TSA became abusive and intrusive after Trump first became president. My article discussed the case of Jenna McFarlane, a 56-year old teacher. A TSA agent told her “to spread my legs wider” and proceeded to “touch my vagina four times with the side of her hand,” as she formally complained to TSA afterwards. One Twitter user sneered: “Jenna McFarlane is just upset that it was only four times.”
I had been bashing TSA ever since it was created in 2002 by President George W. Bush. But “due diligence” was no impediment to readers enraged by any criticism of Trump policies. I was tagged as a pussy snowflake, libtard, moron, brain dead, clown, left wing bigot, dopey liberal, leftist loon, “leader of the idiots,” and stinkin’ libertarian.
I was surprised to see so many people’s devotion to the president lead them to absolve an agency that has long abused Americans.
Duffy-Alfonso’s scoffing at the CLEAR program resonated with my TSA experiences in the last couple years. When I was flying out of Dallas International Airport in 2023,
I saw two women loitering behind a roped off section for CLEAR, a new biometric surveillance program that works with 35 airports and coordinates with TSA. CLEAR involves travelers standing in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. The Washington Post warned that airport facial recognition systems are “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen.”
Though the CLEAR program is purportedly voluntary, TSA agents at Washington National Airport recently threatened long delays for any passenger who refused to be photographed by CLEAR, including U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Merkley said that TSA falsely claimed there were signs notifying people that the facial scans are optional. But the clock is ticking down on seeking voluntary cooperation. TSA chief David Pekoske announced in early 2023 that “eventually… we will require biometrics across the board.”
I raised my phone camera, snapped a few shots of the women, and the howling commenced.
“What are you doing?” screamed a young woman wearing a CLEAR jacket. “You can’t take my photo!”
“But you’re scanning people’s eyeballs,” I replied. What could be more intrusive?
“That doesn’t matter because you can’t take our photo – it’s not allowed!” She sounded as if I had desecrated a federal temple.
With her three-inch artificial fingernails, I wondered if she planned to audition for a Dracula movie. Her colleague speedily exited, perhaps to summon police to end my assault. But if airport officials had sought to seize those photos, they would have faced a legal ruckus.
When I was flying out of Palm Beach Airport in Florida in October, the TSA checkpoint was structured so that the default was for every traveler to get their photo taken for CLEAR. A middle-aged TSA agent got perturbed when I wouldn’t stand in the right spot by his desk for the photo. I said I didn’t want my photo taken. “You don’t want your picture taken?!” he responded testily. “Then I need to see your identification.”
I handed him my driver’s license and he held it up a couple different times as he looked past it to see if I falsely claiming to be someone TSA agents ritually hated. He took my boarding pass and looked at it intently – almost like he hadn’t done so well on his “Hooked on Phonics” refresher course.
He finally deigned that I could proceed to the frickin’ Whole Body Scanner but I was supposed to have a sense of shame for failing to trust Leviathan.
Duffy-Alfonso’s condemnation of TSA is refreshing regardless of whether it spurs the Trump administration to repent. But the outrage that her comment evoked on Twitter does raise the question: How many Trump voters abandoned their opposition to unleashing federal agencies after Trump was back in the Oval Office? Since Trump is in the Oval Office, are private citizens presumptively the villains whenever they clash with federal agencies?
TSA abuses will generate a new torrent of online complaints between now and New Year’s Day. Perhaps we will learn whether the Trump White House gives a damn about to any abuse of government power that doesn’t specifically target Trump supporters or donors, Unfortunately, Trump and all his billionaire buddies fly on official or private jets that are exempt from TSA abuses.
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