Originally Posted by RichardKenner

Yes, but there's a serious problem here. When you get into the issue of "consent", you mean "informed consent". Sure, when I buy a ticket, I'm consenting to a "search" in a general sense, but what exactly am I consenting to? There are several problems here:

(1) The details of the nature of the search is SSI, so I can't be told what I'm supposedly consenting to.

(2) Even if the search details weren't SSI, the procedures can be changed at will, so any consent I gave at the time of ticket purchase would be for the procedures in effect at that time.

As a practical matter, I think we can all agree that the consent includes going through a WTMD and putting bags through x-ray. A large majority of people understand that it includes consent for a complete physical search of bags, but unless everybody does, I'm not sure you can argue that there's even consent for that.

But as to search of a person, there's a huge amount of ambiguity on what's been "consented" to. Certainly a person hasn't consented to a body cavity search or a strip search. I think most people would know that they're consenting to some sort of a patdown, but most won't know the details (and, see above, they're changing). So it's really hard to make the "consent" argument in much of this.


Here I'm confused. The question related to procedures for insuring that passenger's property is in their view at all times. There are no security implications there (everybody understands that passengers can't have physical access to their property before screening is complete and why), so what's SSI about that?