Originally Posted by WillCAD

I think there are those who might disagree with your assessment of 1st Amendment suits being cut and dried. The issue, to me, is certainly cut and dried, but the legality of it has not been long established. There was considerable controversy about the filming of government actors in public places up until just a few years ago, with police all over the country blocking cameras and arresting people who tried to film them, typically on trumped up charges of disturbing the peace, interference, or obstruction, and falsely claiming later that it's not lawful to film uniformed government employees in public places performing their duties.

The overwhelming prevalence of cameras today, in everyone's phone, along with streaming video and cloud video storage, is what really turned the tide, since so many people take it for granted that they can and will record every aspect of their lives and put it all online, including any interactions they have with government officials in public. Those TSOs and LEOs who continue to harass people with cameras are merely holdouts for the lost cause of zero accountability.

Likewise, the issue of 4th Amendment rights are similarly cut and dried to me, but as you say, those issues are murky in terms of established law. In my opinion, however, the murk stems solely from government agencies whose wish is to bypass or eliminate 4th Amendment protections and strip those rights from the people. The legal contortions necessary to justify many modern TSA and law enforcement practices are truly mesmerizing, but in the end the arguments are simply that the sky will fall and the world will end if government actors are prevented from violating the rights of the people. And so I hope that more cases like this one will eventually make their way into the circuits and maybe even to the Supreme Court, to reign in the fear-mongers and bullies who have been chipping away at the Bill of Rights for decades.



I wonder if the "this is MY checkpoint" attitude stems from so many TSOs being military veterans? The "my place" thing has always seemed to me to be a military attitude - my post, my gate, my street, my town, my airport, my checkpoint. I've been placed in charge of this place, that makes it mine, and anyone who enters it must submit to my authority over it and them.

I see this type of attitude being part of a much wider problem in America.