Civil liberties crusader strips for TSA

by Lisa Simeone on April 19, 2012

As many of you have heard by now, yesterday a man carried out a protest against the abuses of the TSA by stripping naked at Portland International Airport. His name is John Brennan.

He said he was sick of being harassed by the TSA and stripped to show that he had nothing to hide. In a demonstration of hypocrisy and irony at which authoritarians everywhere excel, the TSA — and several onlookers — harrumphed about Brennan’s “indecency.” Some had to — gasp! — avert their eyes. Brennan was promptly carted off by the authorities for his crime.

The comments in the blabbosphere range from heartening huzzahs to the predictably pearl-clutching. Some people were shocked, shocked, I say! Others pointed out that it’s legal to go nude in Portland, a city famous for its open-mindedness and annual bike ride in the buff.

Brennan isn’t the first person to protest the TSA’s security theater in a creative way, as I wrote about here.

And let’s hope he’s not the last.

Tagged as: abuse, Airport, protest, Security, Strip, Travel, TSA