Secret TSA directive resulted in Delta bathroom fiasco

by Charlie Leocha on April 17, 2009

The incident described in Tripso and other media earlier this week, where 43-year-old Joao Correa of Concord, Ohio, was blocked from using the restroom in business class, was defended by Delta as simply following TSA orders.

He ended up spending two nights in jail because of a secret directive, so secret that we can’t even see it.

Our friends at WSJ Middle Seat Terminal told the story, but added a comment from TSA.

…a Delta spokesman clarified, saying the carrier was following “TSA guidelines requiring passengers to use the lavatory in their class of service on flights arriving into the United States.”

The TSA does indeed have such a directive, according to an e-mail from Lauren Gaches, a spokeswoman for the agency. She declined to elaborate on the TSA policy, writing “the security directive is sensitive security information. The directive was put in place in 2006 to address security concerns resulting from credible intelligence.”

There is no FAA rule about using separate bathrooms on international flights.

Ah ha! Another secret rule, like the one requiring us to show IDs when going through security. We can’t read or publish the rules for IDs nor the rules for using toilets because the security of the United States might be compromised.

Please. No American citizen should be expected to obey any rule that is so secret that they cannot read it. What horse-hockey!

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Tagged as: inflight bathrooms, secret rules, TSA

  • Ed

    It’s been too many years since my high school civics classes than I want to admit, but I seem to recall something about the Consitution saying laws have to be public?

    While i can understand the *REASON* for the rule being kept secret, I can’t think of any excuse to keep the directive secret.

  • Mr Bad Example

    Has anyone tried to pry these documents out of their hiding place using the Freedom of Information Act?

  • http://www.ffocus.org Bruce InCharlotte

    Having passengers sticking with the lavatory in their section of the cabin makes logical security sense. You should not want a bunch of folks hanging around in galleys near the exit doors or near the flight deck door.

  • Hapgood

    If you read the TSA’s “Evolution of Security” blog, you’ll see that most of what the TSA does (its “standard operating procedures,” or SOP) is “sensitive security information” (SSI). It appears that secrecy is a cornerstone of the TSA’s strategy, and is key to the TSA’s effectiveness. Secrecy and unpredictability (the other cornerstone of TSA security strategy) keep terrorists continually off balance, allowing the TSA to always remain one step ahead of plotters. That might sound like something I’m making up, but that’s what TSA press releases and blog posts actually say. You can read them for yourself.

    Of course, the secrecy and unpredictability that protects all of us by keeping terrorists off balance also unavoidably causes confusion and difficulty for the millions of travelers who aren’t terrorists. The TSA sort of acknowledges this inherent problem (the subject of countless comments on the blog). But they dismiss it as a small price to pay for highly effective protection against terrorist threats. It’s easily dealt with on an individual basis by administering appropriate sanctions or punishment to travelers who violate the rules. As always, ignorance of the law is never an excuse.

    So there may be cases like this where a traveler ends up forfeiting belongings at checkpoints, or even serving prison time for a felony conviction resulting from the violation of a rule that he can’t know about (and indeed must not know about, because the rule must be secret to be effective). But we’re at War, and casualties from “friendly fire” are the inevitable and necessary price of Victory.

    The real problem here is that Mr. Correa’s violation has severely compromised the security of the United States. The publicity it created has destroyed the secrecy of the bathroom rule, which means the terrorist enemy now knows about it. We have thus lost the protection the rule was intended to provide Even worse, people who don’t know the credible intelligence behind the rule are likely to consider the rule absurd and pointless. That will only undermine confidence and trust in the TSA, which depends on the public having trust and confidence that there is a valid (but necessarily secret) reason for everything the TSA does, even though it looks ridiculous.

    I hope the prosecutor, jury and judge recognize the severe damage Mr. Correa has done to national security, and convict and sentence him accordingly even though he had no way of knowing the true seriousness of his offense when he committed it.

  • Mr Bad Example

    @Hapgood,

    Spoken like a true Neo Fascist working to deprive the citizens of their Civil Liberties as defined in the US Constitution

    You can not uphold American Ideals by engaging in Un American activity in the name of security.

    Ben Franklin made the definative comment on this many years ago

    “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

    Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

  • Karen

    I always thought people in coach could not use the first class bathroom because airlines didn’t want the riff-raff from the back of the plane mingling with the higher paying customers. Who knew it was a matter of national security?

  • Louise

    I think “Hapgood” really has a point. Everybody should just pee all over the plane in the interest of security. Let it all spew out.

  • Carrie Charney

    @ Mr. Bad Example:

    You mean you took Hapgood literally? Did I miss something here??

  • Hapgood

    The first paragraph of my previous post is indeed serious. It reflects actual TSA statements. Truth really is stranger than any fiction. As for the rest, you’ll have to decide for yourself.

    In complete seriousness, I was hoping that the Obama administration would make a priority of reviewing the effectiveness and appropriateness of TSA policies and practices. The TSA’s entire operation reflects the Bush administration’s approach to “security” that was pretty much as Mr Bad Example describes. It really is unconscionable that travelers are held accountable for obeying secret rules that they can’t know about until they violate them and are punished for it. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has so many intractable problems to deal with that the TSA has to be pretty far down on the list. So the TSA continues to operate as a lasting remnant of the Bush administration’s utter contempt for the rule of law.

  • Inspector Clouseau

    It is quite troubling to know that if you are faced with a choice of soiling your clothing or going to the nearest toilet of opportunity, if you choose the latter you get two nights in jail and a TSA dossier as a minimum, and perhaps more jail time and/or fines going forward.

    What other secret rules are out there? I wonder if there is one where if you question TSA tactics in public you have your own TSA dossier started?

    Maybe TSA should direct the airlines to rearrange the seating and put first and business classes in the rear of the airplane. That should befuddle the terrorists for a little while and is in keeping with TSA’s one-dimensional approach to security.

  • http://www.abpanama.com Jim Walker

    All of these stories make me glad I moved to Panama. The United States is not the country I grew up in. I am reminded of Lincoln’s comment that a foreign power could not take a drink from the Mississippi nor the Ohio but that internal strife (a house divided) would bring us down. I am also reminded of an old book, “The Crazy Ape,” written by a nobel laureate in his later years where he notes that institutions, whatever their original purpose, mutate to serve the needs of their managers, not those who started them. The military/industrial complex has morphed into the homelandsecurity/political/industrial complex serving the needs of its employees.

    Sorry about my grousing. I am going back to sip my Panama coffee amongst my houseplant jungle on the balcony.

  • Bela Fleck

    I hardly think the Obama administration can be expected to come in right now and undo everything dumb thing the Bush administration did. It’s like losing 100 pounds. It took time to put them into place and it takes time to get rid of them. Our job is to keep these on someone’s radar until they can be fixed.

    Now…as for this weird bathroom rule…I don’t think it’s smart in a bathroom emergency to bar someone from an open bathroom just because it happens to be in the wrong seating class. That has absolutely NOTHING to do with having a line forming. If there is no open restroom, that’s different. But if you had diarrhea, all available restrooms in cattle class (where you’re sitting) are full, but there are several open elsewhere, does it make any kind of sense to keep you from using it? I guess this is where somebody stands up and pees on the woman they’re sitting next to, completely ruining her vacation and causing the FBI to investigate?

  • The man who notices things

    You want to see a Security directive and how meaningless the information in it really is? Want to see the type of info TSA wants you to believe is ‘sensitive security information not subject to disclosure?’

    Right here:
    http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_TSA_Security_Directive_establishing_a_new_aviation_ID_card_scheme%2C_1542-04-08F%2C_10_Dec_2008

    Read it – it is non-disclosable super secret TSA information – what a bunch of worthless drivel – how is ANY of it going to compromise airport security?

    How can anyone in their right mind conclude half of what TSA says or does will remotely contribute to airliner security?

    given this – what do you suppose the rest of what TSA consists of? Pretty much the same worthless information. What contributes to airline security today is passengers not wanting to be vaporized in the next terrorist ‘idea.’ TSA has not caught a single terrorist trying to get on to an airplane so far as we know – what we know is that they stop rednecks from bringing chainsaws and Hollywood ‘stars’ from bringing guns and knives ‘inadvertantly’ left in their bags. Oh, and the occasional granny smuggling a nunchuck in her wheelchair.

    If TSA EVER stopped a terror attack they’d be on Fox News and the Today Show in a heartbeat bragging on how they’ve saved America from the evil terrorist empire or whatever Obama wants to call it. . .

  • Frank
  • Karen

    Quote of the day from CNN — Frank Lloyd Wright – “There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.”

  • Pingback: Touching Sensitive Areas | jimcofer.com

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