Full text of my subpoena from the Department of Homeland Security

The TSA just doesn’t know when to stop. This is an agency that can do nothing right except find new ways to waste money. Look at the list of types of airline employees who were supposed to receive the information. After dissemination, the list has to include many tens of thousands of people across the globe. Did they really think they could keep the details secret? The details of this were posted and broadcast all over the place.

I think very little of Chris’ work as a journalist, but I FULLY SUPPORT him on this.

Start the legal defence fund. You have helped so many readers, I’m sure that many people will be willing to give back. Even if you decide to comply without a fight, you should probably get legal advice and that’s expensive. But I’m guessing that it’s an anonymous source and as a journalist you’ll want to protect that if you possibly can.

Wow. I’ve never been served in my capacity as a travel journalist. I once was threatened with a libel suit. The newspaper took it very seriously. In that case, truth was an excellent defense.

In your case, I applaud you for laying the heavy timber to make the TSA accountable. It’s a big job.

The TSA displays their abject weenieness, IMHO, in their efforts to obscure their bullshit. They have no moral authority. They don’t know what they’re doing. They have no special privilege and they are stuck on mission-creep….to Snoop and Control. OMG.

You ROCK. TSA S-U-C-K-S. They need to go back to Walmart. Or Love Canal. Or wherever, on GOd’s Green Earth, they came from. In my opinion, it appears to me that way.

Chris,
Sorry to hear about this. When I posted the comment below in your post with the document I was mostly joking. I didn’t think they actually would come after you. But then again to just say it wasn’t stamped TOP SECRET doesn’t mean it is not a violation of some rule. And as I had pointed out the document you posted does specifically say that Unauthorized dissemination is prohibited by 49 CFR part 1520. I might have checked with my attorney first before posting but for sure you need to now.

If I was your source I would be pretty worried right about now. I hope they were smart and sent this to you in some untraceable way. But if not then how willing are you to protect your source? Unfortunately I think this is a very sticky situation.

I hope some sense of reason and common sense returns quickly with the TSA and airline travel. At least now the TSA can say see we weren’t lying about the liquid threat. I think we should all be very concerned because it is way to easy for this to happen. Think of how hard it would have been to strap some baggies of whatever liquid or powder inside your clothing. Now the real question is how do we prevent this? The puffer machines were a bust. And no one seems to want the virtual strip search machines. So how do we prevent this??? And why are we still hearing about failings of information to flow freely between agencies in the government regarding things like this? The father reported his strange behavior before this happened.

Good luck and let us all know how we can help.

Frank Palmer December 27, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Unauthorized dissemination of this document or information contained herein is prohibited by 49 CFR Part 1520 (see 69 Fed. Reg. 28066 (May 18, 2004).

Hey where did you get this from Chris?? I hope the goons at TSA don’t show up at your house. ha ha

@Noah

My point was more that it’s ridiculous for the TSA to go after people like Chris for posting this.

Any document that is going to be disseminated to thousands of people will be leaked (especially low level staffers w/o security clearances) and it should be written with the expectation that it will be leaked.

You can bet your paycheck that every email that is sent by senior leadership at companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! etc. to the entire staff is written with that expectation.

And there’s also the eventual disclosure of much of the contents by the actions that the carriers are supposed to take. Did they expect pax not to post that they weren’t allowed out of their seats for last hour b/c of new “security” restrictions from TSA?

My husband, who is a lawyer, also suggests you look for the ACLU or other. It seems that at this point you might have to file a motion for protective order to protect you against having to produce the information and to provide you with additional time to explore your options.

DM me if you want to chat with him.

Absolutely, positively lawyer up and let him or her speak for you at ALL TIMES.

Fight the man Chris! Another long time reader who gives you her full support!

Wow Chris!! Definitely get yourself to a lawyer of some kind, whether a personal attorney, the ACLU, or some other organization ASAP!!!

Heck, I’ve seen this document from multiple places – are they going to go after everyone now?

Unbelieveable! While it’s good to know that the TSA rep played it cool so as not to worry your family, I can’t believe that my tax dollars are hard at work coming after you/your source about this issue. Don’t give up without a fight – we are all on your side. And maybe there will end up being a way for you to exploit the “free publicity”, as Jay suggested, to draw even more attention to these issues.

So instead of catching terrorists, they go after bloggers who got ahold of their stupid security procedures that make them look like idiots.

Standard big government.

How about they just act like professionals and admit their SD was crap and a knee jerk reaction. Rescind the worthless procedures and focus on keeping terrorists trying to kill us all off the plane in the first place.

I’m with everybody else. Get yourself a good lawyer, protect your sources, and if you put up a link to a legal defense fund, I’m there with a donation.

I think while all you guys are gun ho here, you forget some very serious things. The U.S. isn’t the free place it use to be. We have the Patriot Act, NSA Wiretappings, etc. Speak out as you might, don’t kid yourself people. The government is going to do what it damn well pleases. Matter of fact, remember the New York times Journalist who spent 85 days in jail for FAILING to disclose her source.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/07/29/judith-miller-the-media-shield-law-is-long-overdue.html

Thanks to the Bush Administration who took us down this slippery slope, and eroded Consumer, Media, and our Civil Liberties, you’re pretty much screwed Chris. I hate to take the devil’s advocate here. However, once you give someone power, they damn well aren’t going to return it. Obama doesn’t seem to keen on bringing things back to old, either, contrary to his “promises”. Best bet, get a DAMN GOOD lawyer and a BIG legal fund. Maybe ask your readers to donate.

As it stands, SHIELD (Legislation to protect Journalists against such threats) has NOT PASSED. It has stalled and been stripped.

So while all you guys here talk tough, Chris has one hell of an up hill fight.

Why bother with a lawyer? Just turn to your loyal minions for advice, ask them what they would do, collect their C-notes and validation.

But by all means DO NOT reveal your source! I, for one, would love to read your prison blogs.

On a side note,

Chris really has 4 options here:

1) Disclose his source. There by, shredding his credibility in journalism.

2) Contact ALL his friends (CNN, etc) and create HUGE NATIONAL coverage of this issue.

3) Get a good legal team.

2+3 and Fight…BUT be prepared for #4

4) Being if you lose, you may be forced to either roll on your source or suffer the fate of the New York Times journalist, Judith Miller.

Either way, I think bringing NATIONAL HARD CORE PRESS would be a great jump start to getting the SHIELD legislation passed. While they STRIPPED the language to cover unpaid bloggers, paid journalists would be protected.

I don’t imagine it is too hard to find you, so the person who left it in your mailbox was smart and didn’t leave their name and address, under the potential threat of a law suit, would you? I too will support you in need, if all your readers chip in a little bit, it should add up!

Wow, this is ridiculous. Add me to the chorus of readers who would be more than happy to pitch in toward a legal defense fund, if it’s needed. Hang in there Chris, and thanks again for all you do.

@Justin– Judith Miller didn’t “fail” to disclose her source; she refused. There’s a big difference. Any journalist who isn’t ready for this sort of (potential) battle shouldn’t use anonymous source to write about sensitive matters. Period.

I agree that a federal shield law is long overdue.

I agree with the comments above, you need to alert the mainstream media of this attack on the first amendment. I am sure that there will be attorneys out there who would love to take on the TSA in a first amendment case. Your source should be kept confidential, but the more attention paid to this by the media the better. Wishing you best of luck!

This cannot be the full text of the subpoena, or else it is plainly (and facially) invalid. It must be issued pursuant to a proceeding, the caption of which should appear at the top of the page. This is significant, because the standards for quashing a subpoena require balancing the purpose for which the information is sought and the difficulty of accomplishing that purpose against the burden on the subpoenaed witness.

It makes a big difference if, for instance, this was issued because TSA knows of someone who has been selling falsified TSA directives to travel journalists in order to undermine the sense of the public that TSA is doing its job (no, I do not think this is going on here. But it would be a different kettle of squid if it were).

At the end of the day, you printed something you had no reason to have nor any right to publish.

You should prepare for a long legal battle if you refuse to reveal your source.

On a side note, what reason can you give for actually posting this? Why not just say “the third magnetometer from the right about LAX doesn’t work” Posting things like this serves nothing but to fuel the paranoid “they are taking all my rights” crowd.

I am all for bomb sniffing dogs, profilers (ala El Al) and the backscatter readers. I prefer flying safe. I have nothing to hide so I don’t care.

Chris, what is MSNBC and NatGeo and such saying to you about this?

@ Rich Green & Ryo

There was nothing in that document that wasn’t public knowledge by the time Chris published it. Chris was simply trying to make his readers aware of new security procedures to help them navigate their way legitimately through TSA security and to prevent a passenger from incurring the wrath of a on overzealous FA when they wanted to go to the bathroom in the last hour of a flight.

Unelss a terrorist got the bright idea of trying to impersonate the Queen of England I’m pretty certain there’s nothing in that document that couldn’t be revealed.

I’m sure TSA is still recovering from the TSA handbook that was leaked a few weeks back. TSA also has to learn that it is important to disseminate information — like revised screening processes — PDQ — or risk being seen as outdated. They have a lot of egg of their face because of this situation and are have to answer a lot of questions — detailed questions.

The person(s) who violated the confidentiality agreement by distributing it should have their hands slapped. This was not a situation of whistle-blower and those individual(s) had no right to decide if or not this document would have hurt national security. Unfortunately, the nature of today’s news and media really challenges the ethics of employees whom companies — and government have trusted with confidential documents. There is financial incentives to bragging rights to be the first out with news. One day, someone will give out too much information to the wrong media outlet and we will pay the price. Luckily, the rules that TSA devised made no sense or difference what so ever and this time it didn’t matter that they were leaked. They only served to make TSA look even more ridiculous — and maybe that, is part of what this is all about.

This is “Nothing but the Truth” all over again…This only means that the TSA Document is/was THE OFFICIAL screening guide, and it also means that Those Stupid Agents don’t know their head from their ASS..People, buckle up. Cases like this will pop up even more, eventually turning the US of A into US of Soviet America, a dictatorship, (I guess that’s what Obama means by “improving relations with Venezuela”) much like the Soviet Russian government doing with religious groups.