Originally Posted by
TSORon
And of course the government rarely explains what it does in detail, and for well known and sometimes very good reasons.
The government typically explains what it does and why in exhaustive detail, and as a citizen you have a lot of ways to stay informed - from CSPAN, to FOIA and court transcripts. Only things regarding national security are debated behind closed doors, and even then in the end the government has to 'sell' the public on it, or it will get voted out. One of the problems that people have with TSA is that it hides things that should really be discussed openly under the pretense of national security. We may tolerate this for military operations, but we should never let discussions on domestic law enforcement hide from public eye.
This is even more important when individual rights are concerned. For example, the fact that TSA won't tell people what its agents are allowed to do in a search is bizarre and unAmerican because this nation is founded on understand and defending personal rights. How can you defend your rights when you don't know what they are? We get them piecemeal, like "no open hand genital groping of children (possibly)", or "no hands in underwear" - but what that translates into is that few people can recognize when the TSO is crossing the line.
Someone out there in the government knows what is done and why and they consider it valid. You don’t, oh well.
This is an incredibly anti-democratic point of view.
Why do you feel that government must “curry public support”? Government is here to serve a purpose, not to make 100% of its citizens happy or lick their shoes.
Public support means reelection, and policies that don't have public support are doomed to be short lived. And yes, government requires compromise which means that some people will be unhappy. And here in America what we don't do is force the citizen to lick government boot.
TSO’s have no arrest powers other than that of every citizen. We are not law enforcement officers, please stop indicating that we are.
This is actually a big reason why I disapprove of your new search powers.
I sincerely hope that one day you will understand that freedom is not free.
Hahaha yeah, it's definitely not free. But you aren't involved in safeguarding freedom, you're in the business of improving safety at the cost of freedom. Freedom... is risky. We obviously have to compromise between freedom and security in the public interest, but don't have any illusions that you're on the 'freedom' side.