Originally Posted by Dovster
Shoe bombers do not represent a threat to the Constitution. They will never be able to overthrow the U.S. government. If you have reasonable cause to believe that a particular person's shoes represent a danger, you have a Constitutional right to have them removed and seached. Without reasonable cause, you are certainly violating the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
I would say that an x-ray of baggage is Constitutional but -- if nothing shows up on that x-ray -- opening the baggage and looking through it is not.
We have never put the possibility (or even the certainty) of casualties before the Constitution and we should not do so now.
If you really don't want to go through security, you don't have to. However, you agreed to undergo security as a condition for flying on a commercial airline. It's a contractual agreement. When you deliberately walk into a security checkpoint, you are consenting to security screening. No one forces you to walk to the checkpoint. This is something you do on your own with full knowledge that you are going to be screened.
The constitutional issue arises when you are deprived of your liberty. In other words, if you are arrested without a reasonable suspicion. When your bags are searched at security checkpoints, you are not suspected of committing a crime. You can stop the search at any time. However, when you do so, you are breaking your end of the contractual agreement and will not be permitted to fly.
I disagree with your interpretation of the constitutional issues regarding bag checks. However, I agree that there are only two reasons why your bag should be searched: because the x-ray operator sees a prohibited item in your bag or because the x-ray operator is unable to get a clear view of your bag and cannot rule out the possibility of a prohibited item being present.
Whenever I train new operators, the first question I ask them is, "what's the threat?" I do this to prevent them from calling unnecessary bag checks simply because they couldn't identify an object. I tell them that the idea is not to identify objects on the x-ray; the object is to identify threat objects. If they don't know what an object is but it doesn't look like a gun, knife, IED or other prohibited item, then it is not a threat.