OP's story is pretty much par for the course when you are dealing with people that have checked powers

So wonderful to know that it's legal for two airport monkeys to follow someone around harassing them.

How are the BDOs innocent here? When they were (presumedly) on the phone with the police, they obviously knew that taking pictures in the airport wasn't illegal. What was the concern-- that someone didn't want to bow down to them and kiss their shoes, or stand at attention and raise their right arm up and forward toward them?

The OP was posing no threat to aviation security, transportation security, or the airport by taking pictures. But instead of acting rationally, the crack BDO squad decided to harass someone until someone with the authority to detain showed up. It's not at all unlikely that the airport monkeys decided to tell the pigs something untrue, just as a retaliatory action for not bowing down and immediately recognizing their authority.

At any rate, we'll find out if DCA is much better at this game of "harass the innocent public for no reason" soon... ;)

Do you mean unchecked or checked? :confused:

W O W !!

Who is innocent?

The TSOs/BDOs? I said nothing about punishing the TSOs/BDOs. I may not like what they did, but like I said, they have as much right to follow someone around in a public place as anyone else.

The LEOs? Give me a break. They detained, harassed, intimidated, humiliated, lied to about legal questions, intrusively searched, and confiscated property without cause from an innocent citizen. The LEOs families? Give me a break. The ill-conceived actions of a spouse can ruin the other's life up to and including causing the family to be put out on the street; just ask Ruth Madoff. I didn't propose any legal or government punishments for the families, just social shame. Social shame is an incredibly powerful tool that is grossly underutilized these days--if the wife and kids are ashamed that their dad was a bullying cop and were shunned by the community and forced to live incognito, it would give great pause to other cops who were considering bullying citizens.

The events of the OP provide yet more evidence that our once great country has descended to a level as worse or worse than East Germany and the USSR. While many citizens, either in those past places or here, may never encounter such abuse because they keep their heads down and never challenge authority, that doesn't make the abuse right. Call me a hypocrite if you want, but I want my country back.

The OP was not attempting to enter the secure area.

All that happened up to the point of TSA employees violating his civil rights was walking around and taking some pictures in a public place.

TSA instigated these problems without cause.

What in the world does that have to do with what I wrote?

In the late 70's I entered East Berlin through Check-point Charlie. At the time I was a camera buff and had lots of camera equipment with me (two camera bodies, zoom lenses, telephoto lenses, etc.). When I approached the American side of the check-point, I told them I had all this equipment and was fearful I would run into trouble on the other side of the wall. The US military agent said that I should not take pictures of the wall, as my only restriction. When I approached the East Berlin guard, he asked me to open my bag, he looked in and just waved me on (he didn't even pause for a second:)). I took photographs all over EB. At one point using my 400mm (about 18" long) telephone lens I was photographing a harbor and looked up and noticed that I was in front of a police station and a uniformed officer was looking down at me, I just continued to take photographs and wandered along.
PS: That same summer I was hassled in Amsterdam by the hippies in Dam square when I photographed the area and in La Defense shopping center when I tried photographing the interior.

You wrote this:

they and their families socially branded and ostracized so badly that decent people refuse to interact with them

Yeah, hide behind your claims that it's not governmen punishing them. What you suggest is far worse. And I makes you hypocritical in all that you say.

You not only want to punish the lives if innocent family members, you utterly wantto ruin their lives.

And notice, i am NOT talking about finical compensation, or putting them out on the street.

But if we take what you suggest and implement, I hope everyone in your family never violates a law, otherwise, your life may be ruined.

And i would argue the family members of the LEOs were no threat to the constitutional rights of the OP and to support the idea that thei lives should be entirely wrecked by association is more than just a breach of civil liberties.

The wife and kids . . . duh!

The TSOs/BDOs? I said nothing about punishing the TSOs/BDOs. I may not like what they did, but like I said, they have as much right to follow someone around in a public place as anyone else.

That makes them not innocent? Does the 1-year old know what daddy does for a living?

Unchecked. Thank you.

I'm sorry that the OP had to go through all that. :(

IIRC, airports are not really "public" areas, or are they? Some of the airports that I've been to are operated by airport authories that are considered private corporation. What if the airport authority puts up "No Photography Inside" signs at the entrances? (which my local supermarket has)

I remember watching FoxNews(don't judge me :) ) yesterda and they were talking about Texas or some other state where it is illegal to photograph law enforcement officers on duty. I only saw 30 seconds.... what was that all about?

I'm not so sure. Making a false police report is illegal. I don't know what they told the police that resulted in the OP's detention, but calling the police because they were made suspicious by the OP engaging in the clearly legal and constitutionally-protected act of photography clearly crosses a line. First, as has been pointed out time and time again, photography in an airport is legal, photography of a checkpoint is legal, and photography of TSOs is legal. Using someone's taking photographs and, particularly, outside the sterile area as grounds for interrogation and detention is, almost certainly, unconstitutional and illegal. Second, given the number of TSOs who have posted here about how they don't "want" to be photographed, it is at least reasonable to infer that, with respect to the IAH TSOs, the whole escalation was retaliatory. That, too, is illegal.

I'm particularly irked that they felt it necessary to take OP's equipment away. Pigs, in the extreme.

Social shame is a blunt instrument, like a sledgehammer, that harms people it would be better not to harm. It would be better to fix these problems by individually punishing the offenders and their departments, but it seems that we are well beyond the point where departments can police themselves or executives/legislatures can police them on our behalf. And courts are increasingly ineffective at reigning in this sort of behavior because the offenders just keep doing it and make half-hearted apologies in the few cases where someone goes to the effort to have them slapped down in court. So we're left to the people having to directly administer justice, which is inevitably a crude sledgehammer approach.

Social shame is probably the most civilized and palatable form of mob justice. But what else are we left with? Given the choice between deterring abuse by shaming a couple of families out of town (Houston in this case) or putting up with endless abuse by police, I'll take the lesser of the two evils. Particularly since I think it would work pretty quickly at making cops think twice before doing this sort of BS.