{"id":21968,"date":"2025-10-07T08:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T12:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21968"},"modified":"2025-10-07T09:14:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T13:14:31","slug":"are-you-on-a-secret-tsa-watchlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/07\/are-you-on-a-secret-tsa-watchlist\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You on a Secret TSA Watchlist?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>

Thanks to TSA for tracking my every step and thanks to CoPilot for making the copyright-free pinata shot.<\/p><\/div>\n

Are You On a Secret TSA Watchlist?<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

By James Bovard\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized in that the \u201c\u2018constitutional right to travel from one State to another\u2019 is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.\u201d Unless federal agents secretly disapprove of you, your beliefs, or your suspected connections. Or unless those agents are feeling ornery and simply want to harass or taunt hapless people passing through TSA Whole Body Scanners.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Transportation Security Administration has vexed Americans ever since it was created in 2002. Last week, three separate idiotic TSA surveillance programs were exposed by Congress and the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) created a secret watchlist of individuals who publicly opposed President Biden\u2019s Covid mask mandate. Operation Freedom to Breathe<\/a> resulted in dozens of individuals being either banned from flying or hit with additional groping or patdowns.\u00a0 As journalist Matt Taibbi reported, \u201c12 were placed on a watch list for removing their masks in-flight,\u201d which a TSA memo characterized as\u00a0 \u201can act of extreme recklessness in carrying out an act that represents a threat to the life of passengers and crew.\u201d That covert crackdown only ended when a federal judge struck down Biden\u2019s mask mandate in April 2022. Only in Washington would an edict to banish all dissidents be labeled Operation Freedom to Breathe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Biden\u2019s TSA secretly condemned hundreds of people allegedly linked to the January 6, 2021 Capitol protests.\u00a0 TSA approved \u201cenhanced screening\u201d and watchlists for anyone \u201csuspected<\/em> of traveling<\/a> to the National Capital Region\u201d for that protest, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed.\u00a0 TSA bloated the list of January 6 suspects by tapping a George Washington University database of alleged extremists – which was as credible as randomly selecting names of Trump donors.\u00a0 A TSA privacy officer protested: \u201cTSA is punishing people for the expression of their ideas when they haven\u2019t been charged, let alone convicted of incitement or sedition.\u201d \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0New dirt also came to the surface about the Quiet Skies program<\/a>, which sent TSA air marshals to covertly surveil travelers on the flimsiest pretexts.<\/strong> If you fell asleep or used the bathroom or glared at noisy kids during a flight, those incriminating facts might have been added to your federal dossier. Air marshals noted whether suspects gained weight or were balding or were paranoid about the undercover federal agents who followed them into the parking lot to their cars. \u00a0If you fidgeted, sweat, or had \u201cstrong body odor\u201d \u2014 BOOM! the feds were onto you. Air marshals also zeroed in on \u201cfacial flushing,\u201d \u201cgripping\/white knuckling bags,\u201d \u201cface touching,\u201d or \u201cwide open, staring eyes,\u201d and \u201crapid eye blinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quiet Skies, which cost $200 million a year, was scandalized last year after it targeted former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard<\/a> (currently the Director of National Intelligence) after she criticized Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.\u00a0 Turns out Quiet Skies was also tracking three Republican congressmen prior to the program being abolished in June. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, the first Arab American elected to Congress from Arizona, revealed last week<\/a> that he was one of the three congressmen TSA targeted. The names of the other two representatives have not yet been revealed.<\/p>\n

Legions of women bitterly complain on Twitter\/X about TSA screeners grabbing their vaginas and breasts during patdowns that feel like persecutions. \u00a0But if a woman pushes a TSA screeners hands away from her breasts, then she can placed on the TSA secret \u201c95 list\u201d<\/a> of potentially troublesome travelers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong> TSA\u2019s official watchlist defines troublemaker to include someone who merely \u201cloiters\u201d near a TSA checkpoint or demonstrates any \u201cconcerning behavior.\u201d Any behavior which is \u201coffensive [to the TSA] and without legal justification\u201d can get a person secretly listed, according to a confidential TSA memo. TSA assistant administrator Darby LaJoye told Congress that any traveler who demonstrated \u201cconcerning\u201d behavior can be secretly placed on the list. \u201cConcerning behavior\u201d is vague enough to add 10,000 chumps a day to the watchlist. The TSA would have been more honest if it announced that anyone who fails to instantly and unquestioningly submit to all TSA demands is guilty of insubordination.<\/strong><\/p>\n

TSA can also place someone on the watchlist simply because they are \u201cpublicly notorious.\u201d<\/strong> The Brennan Center for Justice warned that TSA could add\u00a0 \u201cpretty much anyone with even a modest public profile, such as journalists or activists,\u201d to the \u201c95 list.\u201d\u00a0 ACLU attorney Hugh Handeyside warns that the new watchlist \u201cpermits TSA officials to blacklist people for conduct that could be wholly innocuous. This is conduct that\u2019s so completely subjective, and in many cases likely completely innocent, it just gives officers too much latitude to blacklist people arbitrarily and to essentially punish them for asserting their rights and in doing anything other than complying with officers\u2019 demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are other TSA surveillance programs and watchlists that desperately need sunshine if not legal de-lousing.<\/strong> \u00a0A 2023 report<\/a> by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee noted that \u201cU.S. travelers may be screened for at least 22 different reasons.\u201d An Iron Curtain of secrecy covers the operation: \u201cThe executive branch has revealed hardly any information about what watchlists it maintains, who is included, and why or how those lists are used.\u201d<\/strong> DHS receives requests from almost 20,000 people a year complaining about being banned from flying or subjected to enhanced screening, and 98% of those people are not on terrorist watchlists, according to TSA.<\/p>\n

The Senate report revealed the existence of TSA\u2019s Security Notification List which \u201cincludes individuals who may pose a threat to aviation security, but who do not warrant additional screening.\u201d So if they pose a threat to airline safety, why are they permitted to fly? The report noted: \u201cThese individuals may seek to intentionally evade or defeat security measures or may attempt to disrupt the safe and effective completion of screening\u2026 Individuals on this list may not be referred for additional screening solely by virtue of their placement on this list, but TSA personnel may be given forewarning of their travel.\u201d\u00a0 Is this simply the \u201cBad Attitude List\u201d \u00a0or the \u201cGive Hell to Anyone Who Complained Since 9\/11 List\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Senate report warned: \u201cA watchlist that is not properly maintained\u2026 \u00a0<\/strong>breaks the trust with innocent Americans who get caught up in this net with no way out.\u201d TSA watchlists are perilous to freedom because\u00a0 TSA proudly hires many employees who failed every intelligence they ever took. \u201cSenator Ted Kennedy and former U.S. Representative John Lewis, and even babies, have been stopped at airports because they shared biographical information with individuals on the [No Fly] terrorist\u00a0 watchlist,\u201d the Senate report noted.<\/p>\n

Did getting denounced by TSA chief John Pistole in 2014 for \u201cmaligning\u201d and \u201cdisparaging\u201d TSA agents in an op-ed qualify me for the list and endless TSA supplemental patdowns?\u00a0<\/strong> When I traveled out of Portland, Oregon on Thanksgiving Day in 2015, my hand sanitizer apparently triggered a false alarm from a TSA explosive detection gizmo, resulting in a Gitmo-caliber patdown that I memorialized in a USA Today piece headlined, “My Too Intimate Relations with the TSA<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0The illustration for this article shows an outtake from TSA surveillance video of me that day. In recent years, I was hit with a TSA supplemental patdown solely because of the zipper on my Levi\u2019s jeans. On a flight out of Hartford, I got nailed because a TSA agent said the \u00a0\u201cscanner alerted for something around your shoulders and upper arms.\u201d Shizam, I\u2019d been working on my bench press but I didn\u2019t think the results were that impressive. Maybe TSA screeners thought the wool in my shirt came from sheep that were raised by Al Qaeda in Yemen?<\/p>\n

How many other secret watchlists has TSA or DHS not yet revealed? We have no idea how many Americans\u2019 rights and liberties continue to vanish into TSA black holes.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Endless false alarms at TSA checkpoints are a clue that the agency is still on par with a drunk blindfolded person swinging at a pinata. \u00a0Airport security seems like a perpetual psycho-pathological experiment to determine how much degradation Americans will tolerate. Despite squeezing millions of butts and boobs, TSA has never caught a real terrorist. After pointlessly groping\u00a0 millions of Americans, TSA has no excuse for groping millions more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Here’s a different version of the illustration without the Bill of Rights.\u00a0 May God forgive my cultural appropriation.\u00a0 I’m not sure which image works better.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are You On a Secret TSA Watchlist? By James Bovard In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized in that the \u201c\u2018constitutional right to travel from one State to another\u2019 is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.\u201d Unless federal agents secretly disapprove of you, your beliefs, or your suspected connections. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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