In mid-September, Nathaniel Heatwole sent an e-mail he will never forget. The 20-year-old student — a political science and physics major at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. — dropped the note to the Transportation Security Administration, letting them know that he had planted box cutters and other items aboard Southwest Airlines jetliners, according to an FBI affidavit.
Now, such a message should attract at least some immediate attention. But, the first response from any level of government came weeks later: Only on Oct. 20 did federal authorities charge Heatwole with carrying a concealed weapon aboard an aircraft — a felony.
Critics like U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio, who called Heatwole’s actions “foolish” in an interview with CNN, blasted him for needlessly endangering others. Heatwole and his supporters have denied his wrongdoing, characterizing his actions as justifiable — if not responsible — civil disobedience.
The last time an act of “civil disobedience” hit the national news was when misguided, self-styled “human shields” traveled to Iraq and camped out around strategic targets in an effort to deter U.S.-led coalition bombing, implicitly threatening the government with severely negative media attention for (inadvertently) killing American civilians in the attacks.
But these claims make the present a good time to review what legitimate civil disobedience actually entails.
Civil disobedience does not include exposing others to undue harm. Heatwole claimed in his affidavit that stowing in airplane lavatories the same kind of weapons used by the hijackers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was “an act of civil disobedience with the aim of improving public safety for the air-traveling public.” While an otherwise merely disgruntled passenger likely wouldn’t be nudged into an impromptu hijacking of a plane just because he or she found a knife in the mile-high bathroom, such a passenger could use the weapon to rather dramatically infringe on a fellow passenger’s life, liberty or happiness while granting the victim (obviously) little opportunity for escape.
While Heatwole’s ends don’t justify his means, his actions have drawn the media’s spotlight to the difficulty of filtering the countless suitcases, duffel and messenger bags, purses, wallets, compacts and keychains that make their way through now federally managed airport security checkpoints. Moreover, they illuminate just how far the TSA is from totally protecting the modern air traveler in American airspace.
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Virginia, echoed these grave sentiments in a letter to TSA chief James Loy: “Despite significant seizures of prohibited items from passengers going through TSA security checkpoints, this week’s events highlight possible weaknesses in the system which need to be addressed.”
Heatwole’s point about America’s difficult adjustment to burgeoning threats to the civilian flier may have been illustrative and illuminating, but it was also illicit, illegal and ill-conceived. In any case, his acts were clearly not malicious, and thus is likely no further material threat to society. Accordingly, should he be convicted, the government should not incarcerate him. Rather, we propose that he be sentenced to tag along with an airport security checkpoint team for a week.
Perhaps sorting through piles of dirty laundry, holey socks and other unmentionables isn’t as easy as it looks.