Just because she offers advice on manners in the modern world, don't expect blogger/columnist Amy Alkon to stand by quietly if she thinks a government employee is violating her rights at the airport.
"I'm just a normal girl from the Midwest who doesn't believe that she gets to have these rights and then doesn't have to stand up for them when they're violated," Alkon says.
It's hardly the first time somebody has complained about being groped improperly going through a pat-down at the airport.
It's not even the first time Alkon, author of I See Rude People (McGraw-Hill), says she has been the victim of an intrusive pat-down by employees of the Transportation Security Administration on her way to catch a plane.
But Alkon's heated reaction to her March 31 run-in with the TSA at LAX has led to the first time a TSA employee has actually threatened to sue for defamation over someone's response to a pat-down.
Alkon reacted emotionally and used strong language in objecting to how her pat-down was conducted — and then wrote about it on her blog, naming the TSA employee, Thedala Magee.
According to Alkon, Magee placed her fingers inside Alkon's vagina through her pants four times and groped her breasts, while Alkon sobbed loudly and exclaimed, "You raped me."
Then she wrote about it on her Advice Goddess blog.
This spurred Magee's lawyer, Vicki Roberts, to write Alkon a letter, labeling Alkon's account of the pat-down false, accusing the blogger of defaming Magee and demanding that Alkon take down her blog post.
In addition, lawyer Roberts demanded Alkon hand over $500,000 to Magee.
Alkon responded not by taking down the post but by writing more about it. She also found herself a lawyer, who wrote back that Magee's lawyer didn't know what she was talking about, that Alkon's speech was legal, either because the conduct was indeed close to fitting the definition of rape or because she was entitled to use rhetorical hyperbole in response to the pat-down.
Says Alkon: "When I said, 'You raped me,' I don't think anybody thought that she [Magee] had taken me out into the alley and sexually assaulted me. But it's still rape, even if you're doing the government's business."
In his Sept. 6 letter to Magee's lawyer, Alkon's lawyer, Marc Randazza, wrote: "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."
Alkon is the blogger/advice columnist who offers guidance for appropriate manners along with a strong dose of libertarian philosophy, delivered with a droll sense of humor and more than occasional bite.
She has taken up the cause against the TSA, which critics — including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the libertarian Cato Institute and Reason Foundation — contend is attacking our most basic civil liberties while at the same time failing in its basic mission of protecting air travelers.
At issue in particular are pat-downs TSA conducts when air travelers refuse to go through body scanners at the airports. Alkon and others say the scanners aren't safe for human use; the TSA insists that they are. Alkon and others say the pat-downs are conducted to be harsh retaliation for travelers who refuse to submit to the body scanner.
Ginger McCall, open government counsel of the Washington, D.C.–based Electronic Privacy Information Center, says she has reviewed hundreds of pages of complaints filed against TSA, which her organization obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
While she was not familiar with the circumstances of Alkon's pat-down, she says it sounded "extreme" compared to the complaints she has reviewed.
"We've seen reports of touching of breasts and buttocks," McCall says. "People are uncomfortable with the level of contact. It seems that the pat-downs are designed to be retaliatory and invasive."
Most complaints are met with a form letter and little else, McCall says, though the TSA recently changed its procedures for pat-downs of pilots after the pilots sued. The agency also has changed its policies for pat-downs of children, she said.
A TSA spokesman says his agency has conceded that the pat-downs can be "intrusive and uncomfortable" but denies that they're intended to be retaliatory. The spokesman, Nico Melendez, also denies that there had been a lot of complaints over the pat-downs, relatively speaking. "We have received less than 1,000 complaints since October of last year," Melendez says, "and we screen 2 million people a day."
As to Alkon's allegations against Magee, Melendez says: "We had personnel at the security checkpoint when the pat-down occurred. It was witnessed and it was handled appropriately."
Melendez says about Magee's threat of a defamation lawsuit, "If our employee feels she has a lawsuit, that's being her as an individual, not on behalf of the agency, and it would be completely inappropriate for me to comment on it."
No way a person can get their fingers INTO a vagina THROUGH the pants and panties. I know it's popular to rag on the TSA but i really doubt this happened like Amy claims, and frankly if she had the wherewithal to stand there and scream and make a scene while her vagina was probed FOUR TIMES she could just as easily have stepped away and demanded to see a supervisor. Sounds like she wanted the confrontation more than a resolution.
TSA can created problems and inconvenience for anyone, who do not follow their orders, even to the peoples who worked with them. And the problems started at the top...I, myself have an on going complaint against a TSA Director of DHS in Washington DC. I filed a complaint with Homeland OIG in mid August, and I have not heard back from them. I have called and checked on the complaint, and they asked me to be patience. The Director of TSA was at the Prime Time Pub in 2007 and again in 2009 to conducted a project, which proved to be disaster, that involved me and Dept. of Alcohol Beverage Control. After the project went bad, he is no where to be found. I knew this Director since 2002, in the beginning of Homeland when he was nobody important. He was bad before and now he is worst. Homeland is only 8 yrs. old and they already have over 130,000. agents, most of them only have High School diploma. Homeland requested a budget of 56.9 billion for 2012. That is double since its inception in 2003, and 14.2% goes to TSA...With all that money and agents, DHS have only a handful of peoples working at OIG Hotline. When I called and filed a complaint, Mickey, the girl who work at the main OIG building, told me that their OIG Dept. is not independent ( It is like come to a football game, and get to bring your own referee ). And she also told me, the best way to file a complaint is to email it in, and they will take a look at it, maybe they will open an investigation, or maybe they won't. The OIG expected the peoples, who may experiences problems with TSA, ICE or FEMA to know how to compose a letter, also have access to a computer, and be patiently waiting for them to decide maybe, or maybe not... After all, I do not expect much from a 2 yrs. old programs within a 8 yrs. old Dept...I am wondering is that good to give a very young Dept. a lots of money, and a giant agents with absolute powers. Homeland needs to be regulated before get out of hand...
This is disgusting. How many millions go through TSA every day. This attention whore is using the TSA as a media promotion tool and nothing else. I think it is referred to as being a chronic complainer. To cry rape.... HOW DARE YOU! Sweetheart, you don't know what rape is, and had you ever experienced the true horror of that act, you would not ever liken it to a TSA pat down. I hope the TSA employee's $500k suit shames you into no longer being a complete asshole.
Sounds like you are a liberal perv who is attacking a libertarian for defending her rights as an American. Freedom of speech only counts for those that agree with you, right? Idiot.
If Thedala Magee loses her frivolous lawsuit, will you be available for comment and if so, how can you be reached?
For TSA to say that they have received less than 1,000 complaints is not because they don't deserve them. Most of us are afraid that they'll innput our names in their system and make us more miserable the next time we travel.
Every member of the TSA is a part of a systematic raping of the American people of their constitutional rights. By putting her hands in between Ms. Alkon's labia, the airport security screener went even beyond the rape allowed by the TSA. Assuming truth of the accusation, Ms. Magee should be in jail.
Vicki's not just a lawyer--she's a celebrity!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm239...
"Michael Jackson Memorial (TV movie)Herself - VIP audience (uncredited) "
Vicki Roberts has quite the career. I wonder if she contacted the TSA agent and offered to represent her.http://www.restmycase.com/ente...
One of those TSA agents got a big surprise when she told me to stretch out my arms, which I did, then she walked into my left hand with her chest. I didn't move. A lady is not required to move when someone pushes up on her. She was so mad she walked away, without telling me I could leave. I waited until she finally told me to go. HA!
"At issue in particular are pat-downs TSA conducts when air travelers refuse to go through body scanners at the airports."
Nope.
These assaults are usually perpetuated against the docile majority who consent to irradiation. Not only are the machines medically hazardous, but they simply don't work. 40% of the time the submissive radiation victims are groped as a result of the machine having malfunctioned.
While 100% of the people who refuse to be irradiated are groped, 40% of those who submit to irradiation are groped as well.
Benjamin Cole, like so many people around the country, either is unaware of what is actually going on at airports, or is aware but in denial.
Amy Alkon is far from the only person who has been thus abused. Thousands upon thousands of others also have. Don't believe me? I've been tracking these abuses for over a year. Take a look:
"As to Alkon's allegations against Magee, Melendez says: "We had personnel at the security checkpoint when the pat-down occurred. It was witnessed and it was handled appropriately." "
So that's what all the male TSA screeners are doing when gawking at girl-on-girl action at the checkpoint: they are witnessing. Yep, they sure are.
How can a "witness" know whether or not a screener is sticking her fingers into a one's private parts, Nico?
Not only am I TOTALLY behind Ms. Alkon, if she ever starts a Legal Defense Fund I'll be sending money THE MINUTE I hear about it.
Go Amy Go! Those of us that complain to our government representatives about the violations done in the name of security are behind 100%!
Put it this way, if she STOOD in the middle of an airport and dug her fingers where they did in front of others, she's be cited for lewd conduct.
Yes Benjamin. Rape is the penetration of a person's body by another person, without consent for said penetration. So, being stabbed with a knife is rape, as is male rape (anal penetration).
Yes, Benjamin... at least in the surrogate sense. You might not understand (being that you are a "Benjamin" and all), but having some stranger stick fingers in a females' private parts does, to many of us,constitute rape.
Indeed Wendy. For any male that cannot fathom how that could be rape, or at the very least overly invasive, let that same hand delve an inch or so into his rectum and, even through the pants, I'm sure he might "get the point".
Benjamin Cole, like so many people around the country, either is unaware of what is actually going on at airports, or is aware but in denial.
Amy Alkon is far from the only person who has been thus abused. Thousands upon thousands of others also have. Don't believe me? I've been tracking these abuses for over a year. I can't post the link here or this comment will get booted to Moderation and may never come out. Go to Travel Underground (domain is dot-org) and look for Master Lists of TSA Crimes and Abuses.
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