The Sikh Coalition launched a free mobile phone app that makes it easier to file complaints with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The new app – called FlyRights – allows anyone to file complaints in just a couple of minutes, as soon as they leave airport security. FlyRights makes the process very user-friendly by automatically populating things like your name, contact information and the airport you are in, and will automatically submit your complaint to the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security. You can also choose to have the complaint shared with the Sikh Coalition, which is working to track all kinds of TSA civil rights complaints. While developed in response to the difficulties Sikhs often face at the airports, FlyRights allows anyone with an iPhone or Android phone to file a complaint of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or disability.
NCTE commends the Sikh Coalition for developing this app and we encourage transgender travelers, and anyone who experiences disrespect or mistreatment because they are perceived as gender non-conforming, to use this app to file complaints with TSA/DHS. If you file a complaint, be sure to indicate that it concerns gender discrimination. And share this app with family and friends so everyone knows it’s available.
TSA recently put up a webpage with information for transgender travelers, and has begun to incorporate respect for transgender people into employee training – but there is still a ways to go, and some problems will continue as long as TSA relies on invasive screening procedures. NCTE plans to put out a new resource on airport security in the coming weeks.
Instead of an app that files a complaint with the TSA when something inappropriate happens at a TSA checkpoint (or maybe in addition to), why don’t we have an app that automatically writes a letter to one’s Congressional representatives describing the incident?
TSA will deny that complaints were ever made (they’ll just get “lost” somehow), so Congress will never hear about them. It’s time to skip the lying, thieving middle-man, and go straight to the top!