There’s only one way to end TSA’s political weaponization of surveillance

Only in Washington would an edict to banish all dissidents be labeled Operation Freedom to Breathe.

The Transportation Security Administration in 2021 created a secret watchlist of individuals who publicly opposed President Joe Biden’s COVID mask mandate.

Operation Freedom to Breathe resulted in dozens of individuals being either banned from flying or hit with additional groping or patdowns.

The covert crackdown only ended when a federal judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate in April 2022.

That was only one of a trifecta of TSA surveillance-gone-wild programs Congress and the Department of Homeland Security exposed last week.

Hundreds of Americans were hit by the Biden administration’s secret condemnation of anyone tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol protests.

TSA approved “enhanced screening” and watchlists for anyone “suspected of traveling to the National Capital Region” for those, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) revealed.

TSA bloated the list of Jan. 6 suspects by tapping a George Washington University database of alleged extremists — which was as credible as randomly selecting names of Trump donors.

A TSA privacy officer protested: “TSA is punishing people for the expression of their ideas when they haven’t been charged, let alone convicted of incitement or sedition.”

New dirt also came to the surface about the Quiet Skies program, which sent TSA air marshals to covertly surveil travelers on the flimsiest pretexts.

If you fell asleep, 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.

Quiet Skies, which cost $200 million a year, provoked a scandal last year after targeting former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (now director of national intelligence) after she criticized Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Turns out Quiet Skies was also tracking three Republican congressmen before the program was abolished in June. TSA has not yet revealed the names of those congressmen.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declared Quiet Skies had been used to “target political opponents and benefit political allies,” spurring her to remove five senior TSA officials.

“President Trump promised to end the weaponization of government against the American people, and we are making good on that promise,” she said.

But will Noem make TSA less odious to average Americans?

Thus far, Noem’s biggest reform is that travelers no longer need remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints. This is progress, but not quite the equivalent of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

What about other TSA vexations such as the pointless prying patdowns that do nothing for security?

It takes less than a minute to find busloads of women bitterly complaining on X/Twitter about heavy-handed TSA screeners grabbing their vaginas (“I swear it’s not a bomb!”) or breasts.

But screeners have legal immunity almost no matter how brazenly they abuse travelers.

If a woman pushes a TSA screener’s hands away from her breasts, she can placed on the TSA “95 list” of potentially troublesome travelers.

The agency’s official watchlist defines troublemaker to include someone who merely “loiters” near a TSA checkpoint or demonstrates any “concerning behavior.”

TSA can also place people on the watchlist simply because they are “publicly notorious.”

Did getting denounced by TSA chief John Pistole in 2014 for “maligning” and “disparaging” TSA agents in an op-ed qualify me for the list and endless TSA supplemental patdowns when I travel? 

Or maybe I got nailed by the most boneheaded terrorist warning sign ever: “Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures.”

How many other secret watchlists has TSA or DHS not yet revealed?

A 2023 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee report noted, “U.S. travelers may be screened for at least 22 different reasons.”

DHS receives requests from almost 20,000 people a year complaining about being banned from flying or otherwise penalized, and 98% of those people are not on terrorist watchlists.

If Noem truly wants to reform TSA, she should cease shrouding probably its most damning failure.

TSA whole-body scanners and checkpoints failed to detect 80% of the fake bombs and weapons smuggled past them by undercover agents in 2017.

The Trump administration tightened secrecy, and subsequent TSA failure rates have not leaked out.

But endless false alarms at TSA checkpoints are a clue the agency is still on par with a blindfolded drunk swinging at a piñata.

We have no idea how many Americans’ rights and liberties continue to vanish into TSA black holes.

Privatizing airport-passenger screening is the only way to prevent further outrages and future political weaponization of an agency that long ago forfeited its right to exist.

James Bovard is the author of 11 books, including “Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.”