It seems pretty clear, as stated here elsewhere, that the 9th Circuit has disagreed with you, in
Torbet (
Torbet v. United States, 298 F. 3d 1087, 2002),
Gilmore, and
Davis.
So long as the prospective passenger has the option of turning around and declining air travel rather than submitting to the screening process, the court has found that the security procedures have not been unconstitutional. (Important: the courts have acknowledged
a constitutional right to travel, but NOT a right to travel by air per se.)
This was stated explicitly (
Gilmore) with regard to the challenge on the basis of the Fourth Amendment:
And why wouldn't the court find the same for a Fifth Amendment challenge -- so long as the prospective passenger retains the option of remaining silent and turning around and leaving rather than agreeing to interrogation (or agreeing, perhaps, to secondary screening in lieu of the preliminary step of interrogation)?
It would seem that the strongest constitutional challenge to this new security procedure would be directed toward being asked to state personal private information (eg purpose of travel and with whom you are/were meeting*) in full hearing of others, on the basis of an
expectation of privacy.(
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 [1967] [Harlan, J., concurring]). Is asking for that kind of personal, private information, particularly in public,
reasonable and, crucially, is it "
no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives"?(
Davis)
*It seems very unlikely that an argument that being asked to state your name to the screener in the presence of strangers would be considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment, given that I suspect the courts would be unlikely to find that there is a reasonable expectation of keeping one's name private in the screening process. By presenting him- or herself to the checkpoint, and subsequently to the gate, a prospective passenger implicitly consents to having his name spoken in public, just as occurs in a doctor's waiting room, a school, or in many government offices.