A chilling tale from inside LAX security
The Editorial Board
LA Daily News
The ways of airport security forces have been criticized in this editorial space before, usually after a study or statistic highlights Transportation Security Administration misconduct or ineffectiveness.
Today we bring you a story of one traveler’s experience with Department of Homeland Security agents at LAX. The story is all the more chilling because it appears the agents were operating within the rules set out for them after 9/11 scared public officials into valuing zealous security over constitutional rights.
On July 14, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Maria Abi-Habib landed in Los Angeles after flying from Beirut by way of Frankfurt. Abi-Habib, who covers the Middle East for her newspaper, is a U.S. citizen who was traveling on a U.S. passport. She came here to attend a wedding.
As Abi-Habib tells the story on Facebook, she was in line for the immigration checkpoint when a DHS agent approached her. Sounding as if she knew a surprising amount about the journalist and her travels, the agent offered “to help you get through the line.” Soon the agent was leading Abi-Habib to a back room, where another agent joined them.
They “grilled me for an hour,” Abi-Habib wrote, asking personal questions about her, her family and even the wedding couple.
“I answered jovially, because I’ve had enough high-level security experiences to know that being annoyed or hostile will work against you. But then she asked me for my two cellphones. I asked her what she wanted from them. ‘We want to collect information,’ she said, refusing to specify what kind.”
Abi-Habib told the agents about her First Amendment rights and a journalist’s right to protect her sources.
“‘Did you just admit you collect information for foreign governments?’ she asked, her tone turning hostile,” Abi-Habib wrote. “ ‘No, that’s exactly not what I just said,’ I replied, explaining again why I would not hand over my phones.”
The first agent handed Abi-Habib a document spelling out their right to seize her phones.
“So I called their bluff,” Abi-Habib wrote. “‘You’ll have to call The Wall Street Journal’s lawyers, as those phones are the property of WSJ,’ I told her calmly. She accused me of hindering the investigation.”
The agent went to talk with a supervisor. A half-hour later, Abi-Habib and her phones were allowed to leave.
She never knew why the agents wanted the phones. Or why she was let go. Maybe because she hardly fit an Islamic-terrorist profile — her full given name is Maria Teresa.
For most of us, the surprising thing about this story is that the agent was technically correct about airport authorities’ power to search people’s possessions and digital devices, even without reasonable suspicion. Fourth Amendment constraints on searches and seizures don’t apply to travelers at ports of entry and within 100 miles of borders. The DHS claims that a change in that policy would weaken security.
Call it the latest example of “homeland security” endangering the constitutional way of life it should be protecting.
Abi-Habib had the savvy and journalistic chops to deal with the DHS agents and to get her story out. But many people in her fix wouldn’t.
Wall Street Journal editors and executives and privacy advocates have criticized the DHS policy, and justifiably. It should be reviewed.
Source: www.dailynews.com