California is a "two party" state for audio/video recordings. He could get in trouble for posting these recordings made without the consent of all parties. And the records would not be admissible in court if he did get sued.
See this TSA webpage:
TSA does not prohibit the public, passengers or press from photographing, videotaping or filming at security checkpoints, as long as the screening process is not interfered with or slowed down. We do ask you to not film or take pictures of the monitors.
http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/taking_pictures.shtm
After that paragraph it does state that certain local laws may prohibit you from taping it, my above point about privacy comes into play here.
http://www.san.org/documents/corp_serv/Codes/Article%207/Cod...
Which makes trying to protect your civil rights during a pat-down even harder.
However, Wikipedia [1] implies this is not civil, but in regards to the government's view of privacy to you, not yours to the government, and is highly unlikely to supersede areas where filming is expressly forbidden, and which is indicated to you when entering that area.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_expectation_of_priva...
In Illinois and other two party notification states, you can't record audio of police officers in public places [1]. Video is fine, but since all video cameras record audio, it's a bit of a Catch-22. People get arrested all the time in two party notification states for video taping law enforcement and it's because of the audio function of their device.
[1] http://www.aclu-il.org/featured/2010/Complaint-ACLUvAlvarez....
EDIT: you are not allowed to film at TSA check points because of airport policy, not because the TSA policy. for San Diego see:
http://www.san.org/documents/corp_serv/Codes/Article%207/Cod...
I'm not aware of any major airport that allows filming in screening areas, which is the point I'm trying to make.
If you don't comply you can be fined, see section C of:
http://www.tsa.gov/assets/pdf/Sanction_Guidance_for_Individu...
(refusing to be searched violates a number of those provisions which adds up to $10k)
And you're not allowed to record in TSA sterile areas, there are signs at airports that say so.
I'm not saying I agree with the law (note I wrote 'good' case above), but your point that the TSA website says otherwise isn't true, and it's a shame I've been downvoted for it. Perhaps you'd like to edit your comment with the url on tsa.gov you are referring to?
The whole point of what I was saying, which you missed, is that if the TSA wants to make this case into an example case to set a hard line against those who don't want to do back-scatter, those videos are going to be damaging to him.
http://www.san.org/documents/corp_serv/Codes/Article%207/Cod...
I'm not aware of any major airport that lets you film secure areas, which is the point I'm trying to make - and so that could just get rolled up into a civil case against him. Which is the point I'm making.
The point is if this does go to court the videos will sadly count against him if they decide to throw the book at him.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/938543...
Some allow it but I'm pretty sure none (or close to none allowed) photographing the xray monitors.