On August 10, 2018, a Horizon ground operations employee by the name of Richard Bryan Russell Jr., stole a $32,000,000 Horizon Q400 airplane, N449QX, from the Cargo 1 / Line 1 area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The aircraft had been in maintenance status and was parked in an otherwise-vacant space for work on the plane's aft passenger door.

At approximately 7:15 p.m., Russell arrived in the footprint of the aircraft with Horizon Air tug #8, hooked up a push rod to the front of the aircraft and then pushed the vehicle 180-degrees toward the airfield. Russell left the tug running, detached the push rod, and then entered the plane at the forward passenger door via the stairs, which he subsequently retracted. Russell then taxied out toward the movement area, cutting off other aircraft, and departed runway 16L. Russell was the only person aboard the airplane.

Under the Air Transportation Security Act of 1974, the FAA created a category of sensitive but unclassified information, referred to as “Sensitive Security Information” (SSI), and issued regulations that prohibit the disclosure of any information that would be detrimental to transportation security.

Yes, any information.

Information properly marked as SSI is exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act. After the 1988 bombing of a commercial airliner that crashed in Lockerbie, the FAA expanded the definition of SSI, and later expanded it again to limit access on a "need-to-know" basis.

While the SSI designation can protect sensitive information, it is also vulnerable to misuse. When the TSA designates information as SSI, its disclosure is immediately locked down. That need-to-know basis? It's determined by the TSA, and SSI disclosure restrictions remain in force forever — until and unless they are withdrawn by the same TSA.

In May 2014, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a bipartisan report titled "Pseudo-Classification of Executive Branch Documents: Problems with the Transportation Security Administration’s Use of the SSI Designation."

The report identified some instances where the TSA had improperly designated information as SSI in order to avoid its public release, and many instances where the TSA had released information against the advice of the SSI Office and without sufficient documented justification.

Improvements were made after the report was published, but after Richard Russell's Q400 theft in August 2018, things slid backward—at least on the local level. The determination to withhold all surveillance videos associated with the Q400 theft was made on August 17, 2018, by Jeff Holmgren, Federal Security Director, State of Washington, when he sent the following email to Jerome Wilen, Port of Seattle's public disclosure manager:

"Good Day Jerome, I deem the CCTV video footage as Security Sensitive Information (SSI) and therefore shall not be released."

That was it. Conclusory magic words, and the records were closed off forever.

"But it's surveillance footage! Of course that's SSI, right?"

Nope, or I would be out of a job. And it's part of my job to have an okay understanding of how this all works. I receive improper SSI denials all the time.

The TSA publishes SSI Identification Guides to assist in doing what their titles suggest. SSIIDG 13-004 covers "Airport Security Cameras," and it could hardly be clearer: airport security videos capturing “Runways & Taxiways” are “Not SSI.” Actual quotes.

It doesn't say "unless someone stole a plane."

To share my personal opinion, a fundamental problem with the SSI designation is the absence of any mechanism through which the public can challenge or otherwise appeal an SSI determination. There is an internal mechanism through which TSA employees can challenge an SSI designation they believe is improper, but it is not available to the public.

You can file a lawsuit, which is something I have tried. It even worked. But it worked because lawsuits are annoying and expensive, and to the agency, it wasn't worth the fight. It didn't work because they had to release the records.

If you request records under a state or federal access law, and access is denied citing SSI, you're out of luck. It's as if the government thinks the only people who might be interested in transportation information are either (a) the government, or (b) malicious actors. No one else. Surely not you.

Though I probably should have said "'almost out of luck."

Because... here are the records.

So how did I get them?

DHS has a "Management Directive" that covers SSI in depth, and it contains a backdoor that I waited patiently to use: SSI that is three or more years old is subject to mandatory release upon request, unless certain specific determinations are made.

I didn't think those determinations could or would be made. Turned out, I was right.

Enjoy. And please don't steal planes.

00:00 The two-minute version
02:21 Real-time version, with ground, ramp, and tower audio

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