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Comment by jdp23 | Hacker News Reader

this is a belated answer to the geophile's question a few days ago at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898257 : if you feel you're assaulted, you should call for the local police. They tried to discourage him, but he stood his ground. Here's what happened:

Finally Metro PD shows up. It's really interesting. First of all, the cop is a BIG P&T fan and that ain't hurting. Second, I get the vibe that he is WAY sick of these federal leather-sniffers. He has that vibe that real cops have toward renta-cops....

I tell the cop the story, in a very funny way. The cop, the voice of sanity says, "What's wrong with you people? You can't just grab a guy's crank without his permission." I tell him that my genitals weren't grabbed and the cop says, "I don't care, you can't do that to people. That's assault and battery in my book."

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Penn came out OK, but it seems like Penn he had a few good breaks. The guy in San Diego didn't fare so well, possibly because he threatened to call the cops if he was groped. Penn was groped, and then he called the cops. While I don't think that we're going to see consistent cause-and-effect from the entire TSA workforce, these cases are definitely useful in finding out how to react.

I've also been wondering about civil suits. Maybe that approach will be tried soon. It does seem like the number of incidents (or incidents becoming known) is increasing.

agreed. there's so much variation that it's hard to generalize -- and on top of that, he's Penn. still it's interesting data points.

the attitude of the local cops to the TSA is one of the things I was thinking about in the other thread. it's a situation with overlapping jurisdictions ... and also, most cops I've talked with about airport security see it as ineffective and see the TSO's as not having a lot of training in police work [which is in fact true].

The problem with the get-groped-then-call-cops approach is that most TSA employees will tell you that they're about to touch you, giving you the implicit option to leave (which of course costs $10k but is still an option). This particular employee did not give Penn this choice, which is what makes it assault.

Further, it's been mentioned elsewhere that the Supreme Court determined that TSA does have the authority to detain you in the airport, which means that even if you choose to walk out and risk the fine, they can still physically restrain you without legally assaulting you.

on civil suits, here's a post from Prison Planet describing a couple: one from 2008, and one that by Rutherford Institute on behalf of pilots. http://www.infowars.com/tsa-hit-with-lawsuits-as-revolt-expl...

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