TSA, FBI; No-Fly
How the FBI and TSA subvert the Constitution for your "national security"
The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) supervisor emphatically proclaimed, “What the hell are these idiots up in D.C. talking about?” No doubt a sentiment that many a federal employee and, undoubtedly, many citizens have oft agreed with; most likely while in the TSA line at the airport. The TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), both created in the wake of 9/11. TSA, established in late 2001, was originally designed to thwart similar events as happened on 9/11. A year later, in November 2002, DHS was officially created with the passing of the Homeland Security Act. DHS became the umbrella agency for numerous other federal agencies and entities, encapsulating 22 others at its inception.
The FBI also entered a new era of national security after 9/11. “The FBI needed to be more forward-leaning, more predictive, a step ahead of the next germinating threat. And most importantly, it needed to become adept at preventing terrorist attacks, not just investigating them after the fact. The key to that new mandate, Director Mueller knew, was intelligence—the holy grail of national security work, the ability to collect and connect the dots, to know your enemies and the threats they pose inside and out, to arm everyone from leaders in the Oval Office to police officers on the street with information that enables them to stop terrorist and criminal plots before they are carried out.”
That sounds nice. But when was the last time you heard of the FBI stopping any type of terrorist plot, or at least one where it didn’t itself create the plot and therefore could predict it, gather intel on it, know their enemies and the threats they pose inside and out in order to predict it? Examples of that truly happening are rare indeed.
Was it the FBI’s own plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? How about the frequently lauded January 6th investigation which the FBI touts as its largest investigation ever, even though they failed to stop it and had Confidential Human Sources (CHS; informant) and Undercover Employees (UCE) present? Maybe it was the Boston Bombing? Nope, and indicators abound that one of the brothers who perpetrated that attack was himself an informant. What about the Pulse night club shooting? Again, no, even though the assailant’s father was an FBI informant for 11 years, his own mosque reported him to the FBI and the FBI interviewed him twice. Perhaps it was the Parkland shooting? The FBI strikes out again after receiving a tip a month prior, and even had to pay the families of murdered victims $127.5 million. Like the Whitmer fed napping plot though, the FBI is quite prone to self-aggrandizement in the wake of foiling their own orchestrated terrorist plots; time after time after time after time.
The DHS/TSA and the FBI work in conjunction with one another regarding the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) which, after 9/11, became the one stop shop for all things “watchlist.” Prior to 9/11 there were other systems and lists in use, whereas the TSC consolidated everything into one. Part of the TSC’s purview is the “no-fly list.” Obviously, that aspect of the TSC’s work is pertinent to the TSA. Due to the ever present claims of “national security,” the US government determines the criteria for being placed on the no-fly list and the process for being removed from the list is also a state secret. Can’t have people of this country knowing what their government is up to after all. Don’t worry though, it’s for your safety. They promised.
It’s so imperative to your safety that you could be put onto the no-fly list yourself. For no other reason than not agreeing to be an informant for the FBI. No, seriously. If you don’t do the FBI’s bidding, they are prone to putting you on the no-fly list and throwing all sorts of hurdles your way. That’s what happens when you don’t do as you are told from your governmental overlords. Just ask people like Muhammad Tanvir, Jameel Algibhah or Naveed Shinwari. All were plaintiffs in a years long case against FBI agents called Tanzin v. Tanvir (2020). As the opening remarks of the opinion states, the plaintiffs claimed “that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents placed them on the No Fly List in retaliation for their refusal to act as informants against their religious communities.” The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, even going so far as to rule that plaintiffs could sue the FBI agents in their individual capacities considering the gravity of their civil rights abuses.
Tanvir was first approached by FBI agents in 2007. After refusing their “offer” to be an informant, he was placed onto the no-fly list. From that first encounter until the Supreme Court’s ruling, 13 years had surpassed, and as far as can be told, the case is still “ongoing because the money damages were not determined in the initial proceedings.” I happen to know one of the FBI agents involved in the civil rights violations laid out in this case. Any idea what happened to that agent? The FBI has promoted them. Twice. They are now an Assistant Special Agent in Charge and on track for more promotions.
Just so everyone is fully tracking. If you go to Congress with a reasonable belief that the FBI is engaged in wrongdoing, even though that is statutorily protected under 5 USC 7211 and 5 USC 2303, you get your security clearance suspended, and therefore everything else regarding your position as an agent; including pay. If you willfully and wantonly violate people’s Constitutional rights as the agents did in Tanvir, you keep your job, your duty, your anonymity, your pay and perhaps you even get promoted a few times. Does that sound like a government that is “for and by the people?” Perhaps it does to you. This is one of the things the public at large doesn't understand about the FBI, or at least seems to not understand. Many of the people in those positions don’t really care about your rights. They care about punching in, punching out, the prestige, making it to retirement and/or promoting. That, for the most part, is it. Not everyone, but many of that type of mindset have infected the FBI.
The agent I know told one of the plaintiffs they could “help” them get off the no-fly list. The plaintiff just had to answer their questions. The plaintiff subsequently quit his job since his work required him to fly frequently. Another time the plaintiff and their wife were scheduled to fly. The agent I know told the plaintiff, a day prior to the flight, they would not be able to since the plaintiff had hung up on the agent the last time they spoke. After some half hearted attempts to build rapport with the plaintiff, the agent I know eventually told the plaintiff that they would not be allowed to fly until going to FBI headquarters to take a polygraph test. These are just a few footnotes of what these plaintiffs, and likely others, have faced when given the “option” to become an informant for the world’s most powerful law enforcement agency. The full brief can be found on the SCOTUS website.
When asked why it was important to continue the lawsuit after his name had been removed from the no-fly list, Tanvir answered in part, this way: “The FBI agents thought they could do anything to me and people like me and that no one could do anything about it or hold them to account. So I wanted to do my part to hold them accountable. Also, personally, I lost so much and my wife and family suffered greatly as a result of what was happening to me. These agents should be held responsible for that.”
Another plaintiff, Naveed Shinwari said of the whole experience, “The FBI agents ruined my life. I’m still suffering from what they did to me. Financially, I was ruined. I wasn’t able to travel from Omaha to Orlando in time to take up a temporary job I had been offered. I was unable to pay my bills as a result of all this. At the time, I felt depressed and anxious around others. Even today, socially, I still feel like I can’t trust people fully sometimes. America’s promise of freedom proved not to be real for me and others like me. The lesson I took away at the time was that the federal government can do anything to you at any time, and no one can stop it.”
Read more about the the experiences the plaintiffs had in Harvard Law Review’s “Reflection on Tanzin v. Tanvir: Q&A with the Plaintiffs.” It is disappointing and angering to see what they went through, but also important to know their story and that sometimes the courts [eventually] hold the government and FBI accountable for egregious constitutional violations; sometimes.
Of course the Court ruled as they did. Anyone with one semester of Constitutional Law under their belt would reasonably conclude that law enforcement officers cannot vindictively put people on a terrorist watchlist because they didn’t want to be informants. Why didn’t the FBI agents know this at the outset? Is it hubris? Certainly that plays a role. Is it “knowing” that no one would ever find out because “it's classified national security matters?” Thankfully their hubris led them to falsely believe that in this case. The “Radical Traditional Catholic” intelligence product put together by an FBI analyst and signed off on by two senior analysts and the Richmond Field Office’s Chief Division Counsel (that’s the highest ranking attorney in a field office) is in the news again this week.
Hopefully a Catholic group or organization will seek recourse under similar Religious Freedom Restoration Act arguments as the plaintiffs in Tanvir did. In Tanvir, and citing Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC. (2019), the Court opined that “A person whose exercise of religion has been unlawfully burdened may “obtain appropriate relief against a government.”” There certainly seems a reasonable argument to be made that this was the case, especially since the most recent information regarding this incident includes the fact that the FBI had at least one undercover employee already in play inside the Catholic Church gathering intel on parishioners and clergy members.
Maybe you aren’t that concerned about being put onto the no-fly list cause you aren’t a Muslim, or maybe you are, but 9/11 was a long time ago and that type of thing isn’t happening anymore…OK. Let’s accept those lines of reasoning as fact, although, don’t be too certain growing complacent in that thinking. Perhaps you won’t be placed on the no-fly list and won’t ever come close to the government abuse faced by the plaintiffs in Tanvir. But have you ever heard of or seen a boarding pass stamped “SSSS?” What about the TSA’s “Quiet Skies program?”
Aside from the no-fly list, the TSA uses the “selectee list” and the “expanded selectee list,” which again are mostly secret and for your “national security.” In 2013 The Intercept obtained a document regarding watchlisting, so some information is publicly available about these lists, however, some of the information may have changed in the last decade. Needless to say, all the lists mentioned here [no-fly, selectee, expanded selectee, etc.] are for your safety and “national security.” So, just trust the TSA, FBI and any other government agency to keep your national security a secret from you. According to that document, the selectee list is for people who are a member of a foreign or domestic terrorist organization designated pursuant to statute or executive order and is associated with terrorist activity and it can reasonably be inferred that the expanded list is somewhere on the same spectrum.
When you book a flight, airlines are required to submit your name, date of birth and gender to the TSA for a watchlist check. The TSA then compares your information against the no-fly list, selectee list, and other watchlists to determine if you are cleared to fly or if you require additional screening. This is part of their Secure Flight Program in which they utilize the FBI’s TSC to check the watchlists. TSA and their Secure Flight Program claim their goal is to “identify known or suspected terrorists or other individuals who may be a threat to transportation or national security.” This would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that the TSA is known to miss 95% of “weapons” utilized in tests to gauge their effectiveness at actually stopping potential “terrorism.” NINETY-FIVE PERCENT failure rate. Not only that, they seem to be living out the findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment in that TSA personnel treat travelers worse and worse, even with “anger and contempt” according to some travelers.
If your boarding pass is marked with “SSSS,” which stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection, you may really be in for it with the angry TSA agents since they will certainly assume you are on one of the three terrorist watchlists that have been discussed regarding flying. In 2012, or perhaps it was 2013, I had a boarding pass that was stamped with those quad S’s. I didn't know what they meant then, or why they had been put on my boarding pass. It took the lady at the airline counter about 45 minutes on the phone to even get me my boarding pass, and then once I got to security I was treated like a criminal. Numerous agents swarmed around me, pulled me aside for extra screening measures, spoke tersely if at all, told me to be quiet when I asked what was going on, ushered my wife away from me, etc. Eventually an older TSA employee spotted my old Army backpack and told the others he would handle the rest of my screening. Things were fine after that.
Years later, shortly before I was hired by the FBI, it began to make a little more sense. As one of the last processes of being hired, FBI headquarters had a handful of questions about an alleged group they claimed my brother was involved with. At that point I connected the dots that my boarding pass had been stamped SSSS because my twin brother had used my name numerous times when he was arrested and therefore I was listed as an alias for him in law enforcement databases. I suppose I could be wrong about that, but it seems the most likely case. One time on a connecting flight in Atlanta I was met by about 15 TSA employees. Thankfully by then I had two letters from the Milwaukee County District Attorney explaining how my brother had frequently used my name upon arrest. But, as the TSA “leader” told me, we weren’t in Milwaukee so they still had to follow their orders and search my carry on…even though I had already flown on one flight without being searched prior. Anyways, I digress.
Quiet Skies is another program by the TSA which first came to the public’s attention in 2018, thanks to the Boston Globe, even though the program had been around since 2012. Under this program, you can be followed even if you “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base.” That, according to TSA’s own bulletin about the program from March of 2018. If it didn’t sink in the first time, here it is again:
The government will follow you while traveling even if you “are NOT under investigation by ANY agency and are NOT in the Terrorist Screening Data Base.”
A 2020 audit by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security said that the TSA failed to “plan, implement, and manage the Quiet Skies program to meet the program’s mission of mitigating the threat to commercial aviation.” So not only were air marshals complaining about the ineffectiveness of the program as explained in the Boston Globe initial reporting of it, the OIG found that the program was not making air travel safer. A claim the TSA, of course, didn’t agree with. But why would they agree with the OIG of DHS whose job is to find the things agency’s aren’t doing right? They can’t agree, cause that might affect their funding. Once a government program, especially a domestic spying program, is created, it never goes away, it only evolves. More examples of that can be seen in COINTELPRO 2.023. Furthermore, we wouldn’t even know about Quiet Skies if it wasn’t for the investigative reporting being done at the Boston Globe, and most likely a TSA source working with them to make the information public. Information that every American should be aware of.
I travelled through a couple airports recently. In the first airport the TSA waited until there were approximately 200 travelers in line. Then, we walked in pairs past a K9. After that it was essentially like TSA Pre-Check. Yet I was still pulled aside because of a “random” alert. So I then had to go through the body scanner and normal procedure. Whatever. Then on my return flight, there was another “random” alert when I went through the metal detector. But, they didn't then check me for metals. They escorted me away and swabbed my hands for gun powder or other explosive material. That seems odd to me. Totally possible that I could have randomly been selected like that both times, or totally possible that I’m listed in the Quiet Skies database or one of the other lists mentioned. What do you think it is, random, or listed somewhere?
Both the TSA and the FBI have a 2023 budget of about $10,000,000,000. So $20 billion between the two agencies. That seems like a lot of money to spend on agencies who willfully violate people’s rights, fabricate terror plots and/or miss 95% of weapons that get sent through checkpoints to see how useful the “security” measures are. But what do you think and what other potential remedies are there besides simply learning about some of the atrocities our own government has implemented under the guise of “national security?”
As was stated in your post G: “So $20 billion between the two agencies.That seems like a lot of money to spend on agencies who willfully violate people’s rights, fabricate terror plots and/or miss 95% of weapons that get sent through checkpoints to see how useful the “security” measures are.” Ya think?? THAT pretty much says it all Garret! As always, THANK YOU for taking the time to share! 💪🏻
It does seem like TSA is sinking to the least common denominator in service. And the FBI has gone off the rails! Neither agency is doing their actual jobs. If TSA misses 95% of weapons, then they're essentially useless. We don't need them.