Originally Posted by
hkgphooey
This is the issue for me, in a nutshell. The US is a nation of laws, and every citizen is entitled to due process and equal treatment under the law. The TSA should have a clear, thorough, published, and freely available list of regulations, so that we know exactly what to expect at checkpoints, what our consent entails, and, most importantly, when our rights as citizens are violated.
Private companies can hide behind this "it's just, like, our policy, man!" stuff, but this is the federal government we're talking about. TSA agents, as federal employees, should be bound by applicable US codes and concomitant judicial rulings governing consent, search and seizure, and detention. But what I see at checkpoints is lawless authoritarian bullying, and it has to be stopped.Law, if it is to be meaningful, must be consistent. So, publish the rules and abide by them, you know?
The parts I bolded are where I most strongly agree. It's my bottom line. We need to halt this pattern of behavior from our government before we suffer what Egypt is going through right now. We shouldn't just take it and take it until our youth boil over into the streets and we have riots and shootings. We should never let it get that bad.
They key is to shut down the unconstitutional behavior now, not wait until it gets "bad enough". It's already bad enough, because we can see where it's heading.