TSA: We're Allowed to Lie to You

Remember the guy who made a video that went viral proving that the body scanners used by the TSA were easily fooled by a simple sewing trick? When the video was made by Jon Corbett, an engineer, some mainstream media outlets were threatened by the agency not to cover the story! Now, Corbett has filed suit against the Transportation Security Administration for unlawful detention by their officers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

In order to prove his case, Corbett filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a copy of video taken of the incident where he was detained for over an hour for refusing an 'advanced pat down'. There were at least a dozen video cameras in the direct area of the incident according to Corbett and signs saying "Checkpoint under video surveillance," everywhere.

Broward County authorities answered the FOIA request by saying, "There are no documents, photographs, audio, or video that exist for this request." Of course not! Corbett added that the authorities were lying about the footage to his lawsuit. According to their response, the Transportation Security Administration can lie to the American public all they want...for 'security purposes', naturally. Your own safety and all that.

Asking the judge to throw out the claim of lying about the FOIA, they wrote, "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."