The real social - not legal - problem is not "asserting your rights" - it is asserting them in such a way and in a place as to cause the cops to think that you're a fruitcake.

Have you ever seen the yearly FIA sideshow where they send in clean cut kids to ask for public arrest records? My impression is that 60% of them get refused and, each year, some get locked up. But they're trained to diffuse the situation, go in while things aren't busy, etc, etc. Which makes what they're doing very very effective.

Dude, if you show up at an airport and demand your rights (if they exist, I'm not a lawyer but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) and they decide you're a fruitcake and hassle you, well, you ain't nothing but someone making my travel day difficult by being in the wrong place and the wrong time and behaving foolishly.

Showing ID at IAD isn't exactly the same thing as refusing to sit in the back of the bus in Selma.