Originally Posted by
medic51vrf
AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENT the guy with the badge invariably has the upper hand and you will come off second best every time. Once again I have to quote (well, ok, paraphrase) Sun Tzu in The Art of War "Never enter a battle unless you can win it and never start a war unless the benefits of winning the war outweigh the costs of waging the war." In this case the was no chance of winning the battle and the costs of waging the war probably outweighed any sence of moral victory achieved by this thread.
A simple, polite response would have been a better move in my opinion.
Your advice is correct if self preservation is the priority but incorrect if you care more about mankind as a whole.
Under your mentality, the American Revolution never would have been fought because there was no chance to win many of the individual battles.
It is the brave few individuals who are willing to stand up to the the Redcoat musket fire, who refuse to move to the back of the bus, who are willing to refuse to answer questions or submit to "voluntary" searches by abusive cops and take the nightstick beating, who are willing to stand up to the TSA power tripping who help bring about change. These people are heroes. Unless someone stands up AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENT nothing will ever change because the courts and the government will claim no harm was done since the person "voluntarily" complied.
Answering irrelevant questions from TSA is particularly dangerous. IANAL, but it seems to me that our courts have a (bad IMO) habit of using a malleable definition of "reasonable expectation of privacy" that is largely based on what the public will put up with. 50 years ago invasive pat downs and virtual strip searches never would have been "reasonable," but because the camel got his nose under the tent with carry-on x-ray and WTMD in the 1970s, it became "reasonable." If passengers tolerate answering "voluntary" questions from TSA about their travel, property, and lives, that too will become "reasonable" in the eyes of the courts, and it will be impossible to stop them from asking even more personal questions as a mandatory condition of travel.
Originally Posted by
4nsicdoc
They need to learn that they are despised. We are trying to get that idea across here in S. Florida. We have started a "Hitch a Ride" program where aircraft owners and operators who are going somewhere on a non-commercial Part 91 flight and have an empty seat will offer that seat free of charge to anyone needing transportation for medical treatment. The program is open to anyone except TSOs and their family members.
^
Fantastic and glad to see someone is doing this. If this idea caught on in a variety of services, business, etc., even within the confines of a single city, it could make a huge difference. (Another personal desire of mine is to see animal shelters refuse to adopt to cops and their families because of the consistently dreadful treatment of pets by law enforcement who seem to think that pets are convenient consequence-free targets for sport shooting (google Cheye Calvo) and the cowardice of law-enforcement leadership and unions who both cover up and refuse to condemn this pattern of abuse.)