There is a major difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. Law Enforcement can only detain a person for 10 minutes on reasonable suspicion. After that time frame, it is considered an arrest, becuase you are being deprived of your freedom of movement and liberty. You can only conduct a visual and a pat down for officer safety while you have someone on reasonable suspicion. This is done to establish probable cause that a crime is actually being or has been committed. To enter a secure and/or locked area or compartment of something not in "PLAIN VIEW", law enforcement needs a search warrant
to legally conduct that search, i.e. a trunk of a vehicle, unless you want to get into the warrantless search issues, because there are a few reasons.
In reasonable suspicion, law enforcement must advise the person being "STOPPED", AKA "Terry Stop" (law enforcement term). (a) the reason that they are being stopped and questioned (not interrogated) (b) that they are not under arrest (c) the law enforcement agency they represent.
Now, my question to everyone is this. Are screeners a part of a "law enforcement agency" or are they civlians just doing a job. If they are not a licensed law enforcement officer, i.e. someone possessing police arrest powers, than technically speaking from how the law is written, these searches should be found as unconstitutional and should not be permitted under the constitutuion. Then everything would be deemed "fruits of the poison tree" and everything from the illegal search would or should be thrown out as evidence in court.
Law Enforcement is not one who is only a security guard. There are ones in this area who are called "Special Police Officers" but they have police powers, who CAN conduct anything a normal police officer would do. Both a security guard (half moon red patch) and a Special Police Officer MUST be licensed in the jurisdiction that they work, and patches of such should be displayed on thier shirts and/or jackets while on duty.
I think that now that 9/11 has happened, the federal government is using this national safety issue to contradict what it has written, ruled upon, and upheld in the supreme court. To me, all of these United States Supreme court rulings which upheld citizens rights to illegal search and siezure, has been a waste of a few hundred years, since the government can change all of it overnight.