This is how the myth continues.

In a long and interesting (but either too quotable, or not at all quotable) article about what has happened to the civil rights of people in the US since the 11th of September 2001 attacks: 

I think the FBI are as smart as they get, and if they didn't want me to find the tracking device, I probably would have never found it.

Right. That right there is the problem. They're like demigods. They can do this:

The first man who took me, I came to learn his name was Inspector H. He said something to the effect of, "People are offended because of your T-shirt. People complained."

I looked down at my T-shirt to see which one I was wearing. It was black, and said in both Arabic and English, We Will Not Be Silent. An artist group in New York had made the shirt and given it to me as a gift. For me, the message meant, "We will not be silent about the murders that are happening in Palestine or Iraq." They had other T-shirts in Spanish. At the time I'd said, "Whoa, it's such a smart idea, because the Spanish one makes it seem like it's about immigration, and the Arabic one makes it seem like it's about wars."

Inspector H asked me, "What does it say?" I said, "It's the same thing that it says in English. We will not be silent."

He said, "Oh, but we can't be sure that's the translation."

I was so confused that I didn't know how to answer. Then he said, "We want you to take the T-shirt off, or put it on inside out."

I said, "It's my constitutional right to wear this T-shirt. If you have any regulations against Arabic T-shirts, show them to me and I will take it off or cover it."

I was very polite, but it was becoming a scene and people were looking at us. A fourth guy came – very hostile. He talked to me without looking at me. He said, "You've got the nicer guys here, so you should just do whatever they've told you."

I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa – where is this going? The woman from JetBlue saw the escalation, and said, "Why don't we just reach a compromise? We will buy you a T-shirt and put it on top of this one.

 And this:

The FBI drove us to Pennsylvania, across state lines, without my parents' permission. We got to the juvenile detention centre late at night. The female guard told me and Tashnuba we had to get strip-searched.

I was in tears. My own mother doesn't look at me naked. I said, "It must be against some law for you to do this to me."

The female guard said, "It's not. You no longer have rights."

She said, "Lift your breasts."

I lifted my breasts.

She said, "Open your legs."

I opened my legs.

She said, "Put your hands in there, to see there's nothing."

I said, "There's nothing there!"

She said, "Just do it."

I did it.

And they think it's OK. So they sure as shit aren't demigods who will only allow you to find a bug if they want you to know about it.