Originally Posted by PTravel

The job of a TSO is to prevent forbidden items from being brought on aircraft. Period. They are not law enforcement officers and have no specific training that qualifies them to identify items whose possession is illegal, e.g. child pornography, drugs, or other contraband. The fact that they have a uniform and a badge does not allow them to act like auxiliary police (and, in my city, auxiliary police, i.e. civilian volunteers who assist the police, actually attend the police academy before they are allowed to do so). They are, however, agents of the state and have very strict constitutional limits on the powers they may exercise. I have no patience with constitutional violations, regardless of the motive or intent. Others in this thread have characterized the actions of TSA as "police state." That's incorrect -- virtually all police in the U.S. are well aware of, and respect, the Constitutional limits on their power and, on those rare occasions when an individual officer transcends his police power, he's brought to justice. It's not the police in the U.S. that I fear (quite the contrary, I have tremendous respect for the police, who do a difficult, dangerous and very necessary job). It's government bureaucrats like TSA that don't recognize the constitutional limits of their mission and have no qualms at violating the Constitution if the whim suits them. I'm sure most TSOs don't do this but, unlike true LEOs, there is no mechanism in place to protect citizens against abuse of constitutionally-limited government powers by specific TSOs -- police departments have things like Internal Affairs, civilian police review boards, and specific mechanisms for handling civilian complaints. TSA has nothing of the sort -- "complaint forms," if they're even provided vanish into the abyss in the name of "national security." The only mechanism available is redress through the courts.