ACLU Wants Court to Order Release of TSA Records on Electronic Device Searches

​The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California wants a federal court in San Francisco to order the Transportation Security Administration to release records sought under Freedom of Information Act requests into the agency’s policies on searching domestic air passengers’ electronic devices at San Francisco International Airport, ACLU-NC said in a Monday complaint (in Pacer). TSA “has provided ALCU-NC with no records” in response to two FOIA requests it sent Dec. 20, one (in Pacer) to TSA headquarters in Washington, the other (in Pacer) to the agency’s San Francisco field office, said the complaint. The requests sought copies of emails, text messages, reports, training manuals and other records and documents germane to the “policies, procedures, or protocols regarding the search of passengers’ electronic devices.” Recent statistics “demonstrate that the number of these searches have multiplied year after year,” said the complaint. “Access to information about electronic device searches at airports is necessary to inform meaningful public debate over the scope of government conduct that potentially threatens core civil rights and liberties protected by the Constitution.” Though federal agencies have published their policies for searches of electronic devices at international borders, “the federal government’s policies on searching electronic devices of domestic air passengers remains shrouded in secrecy,” it said. TSA representatives didn’t comment Tuesday.