A nude awakening — TSA and privacy

A nude awakening — TSA and privacy
Evan DeFilippis/The Daily

Consider a quote from United States v. Guest (1966): “In any event, freedom to travel throughout the United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution.” Another quote from Shapiro v Thompson (1969): “‘The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.’ … This constitutional right, which, of course, includes the right of ‘entering and abiding in any State in the Union,’ is not a mere conditional liberty subject to regulation and control under conventional due process or equal protection standards. ‘[T]he right to travel freely from State to State finds constitutional protection that is quite independent of the Fourteenth Amendment.’ As we made clear in Guest, it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.”

If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA’s newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSA’s regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.


http://www.oudaily.com/news/2010/dec/06/column-nude-awakening-tsa-and-privacy/