Paul Joseph Watson ~ Lawsuit: TSA Claims It Can Lie To The Public

InfoWars | June 8 2012

“TSA Directives” supersede Freedom of Information Act

The engineer who garnered global press attention by proving the TSA’s fleet of body scanners were completely useless is causing the federal agency more embarrassment – by highlighting the fact that the TSA argues that it can lie to the public for “security” reasons.

The claim appears in a lawsuit brought by Jon Corbett over his unlawful detention by TSA officers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Corbett was detained for an hour at a TSA checkpoint after he refused to allow security screeners to perform an advanced pat down, which as we have documented often includes TSA agents literally touching people’s genitals.

After filing a Freedom of Information Act request in an attempt to obtain video footage of the incident, Corbett was told by Broward County authorities that “there are no documents, photographs, audio, or video that exist for this request,” despite the fact that the airport was littered with signs saying “Checkpoint under video surveillance,” in addition to Corbett personally seeing “more than a dozen visible camera domes.”

When Corbett included the charge that Broward County and the TSA had lied about the non-existence of the video footage as part of the lawsuit, Broward County attempted to have the judge dismiss the claim because of their belief that lying to the public is acceptable for “security reasons,” in turn tacitly admitting that the footage does exist, which represents a clear violation of the FOIA.

“The County was required by the TSA to withhold that information because it (the existence of video from any particular CCTV camera) constituted SSI (Sensitive Security Information). Any disclosure of the existence of the videotape would have violated both TSA directives and federal regulations pertaining to the disclosure of SSI,” states the lawsuit.

In other words, “TSA directives” apparently allow for the federal; agency to lie to the American public and also supersede the sanctity of the Freedom of Information Act.

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