TSA: "You have your law, I have mine."

It is indeed unfortunate the rights and personal freedoms that law-abiding citizen are forced to give up in the name of national security and political correctness. What is even more unfortunate is the sad truth that you can't object to the ever increasing "security" without being labeled a "terrorist."

The question is: how much will American's take? At what point will the majority stand up and say "no more"? Let's hope that at that point, it won't be too late...
 
We are American citizens and as such, we have RIGHTS

I see a disturbing school of thought at work here. Alot of posts say that if our rights are going to be trampled, government TSA agents are in the wrong if they do the trampling, but if employees of a private security firm do the trampling, then it's just fine and dandy.

Guess what, folks: LAST TIME I CHECKED, THIS IS STILL AMERICA.
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, gets a free pass to violate our RIGHTS - RIGHTS, not priveliges, guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. That INCLUDES the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.

Private security personnel - whether at the airport, the shopping mall or the housing project, have NO POLICE POWERS and cannot compel you or anyone else to do ANYTHING.

I had an encounter with a non TSA airport security schmuck once who was drunk on his imaginary power, trying to "make" me do his bidding. I immediately said "get your boss over here now." Boss arrived and I told them both, "You people have NO POLICE POWERS; I know it, and you know it. I'm telling you to get out of my personal space and leave me alone - now."
Thet sure as h*ll didn't like it, but they did shut up and did leave me alone. If I were violating a law, they could have called for a real police officer to arrest me. I wasn't, and thet didn't.

Saying that it's okay for private security personnel to violate our rights is like saying that it's okay for a private individual who is renting an apartment they own to say, "we don't cotton to no ragheads/darkies/queers/wetbacks/split-tails/(fill in the blank) living around these parts."

Regardless of race, gender or any other qualifier, we are American citizens and as such we have RIGHTS guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.

Don't EVER forget that!!
 
Guess what, folks: LAST TIME I CHECKED, THIS IS STILL AMERICA.
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, gets a free pass to violate our RIGHTS - RIGHTS, not priveliges, guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. That INCLUDES the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.

Private security personnel - whether at the airport, the shopping mall or the housing project, have NO POLICE POWERS and cannot compel you or anyone else to do ANYTHING.
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The constitution doesn't protect you from an unwanted search by a private entity. Other laws do that. The constitution protects you from unreasonable government intrusion. As far as constitutional law goes, "search" is not a verb, it's a noun. In order to have a search, the person doing it must either work for the government or be acting as an agent of the government. The guy going through your things is not doing a "search" with regard to the 4th. amendment if he's employed by a private agency working for a non-government company. Don't like it? Don't go to places where you can't get in unless you consent to be "searched" in the common sense.
 
Frank, the airlines are required by the TSA, a government entity, to do the searches. The 4th amendment is very relevant.

Suppose the Government created a Ministry of Information, which contacted TFL and required it to disclose all information about any users who mention glocks. Suppose also that the MoI required TFL to censor anyone talking about 1911s. Would you claim that the 1st and 4th amendments don't apply because TFL is a private entity?

Or would those be unacceptable because they're "unreasonable", while TSA-mandated searches are "reasonable" (according to you)?
 
Frank, the airlines are required by the TSA, a government entity, to do the searches. The 4th amendment is very relevant.

Suppose the Government created a Ministry of Information, which contacted TFL and required it to disclose all information about any users who mention glocks. Suppose also that the MoI required TFL to censor anyone talking about 1911s. Would you claim that the 1st and 4th amendments don't apply because TFL is a private entity?

Or would those be unacceptable because they're "unreasonable", while TSA-mandated searches are "reasonable" (according to you)?
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The latter. I'm glad someone read what I posted before disagreeing.....

The government also often requires an inspection of houses before they're sold or issued a certificate of occupancy. Unreasonable search?
 
An inspection of a house is only when it is to be put on the publicly taxed market. There is a !huge! difference. If it was to be an untaxed (by state and federal) transaction between family members (such as a gift) and it was to be subject to inspection by that state, then I will assure you it would, at the very least, go all the way to the Supreme Court if it was challenged. (I am not a person familiar with the intricacies of law, but even I know that that does not sound like a good argument for the right of the government to "search" us anytime they feel like it is necessary)
 
Explain under current caselaw how random and, worse, universal searches of airline passengers is "reasonable." Case law suggests that such searches are not constitutional unless they
1) do not unreasonably delay the searchee, and
2) only have the capacity to disclose contraband

Since airport security searches meet neither of those criteria, there isn't much support for their being constitutional.
 
An inspection of a house is only when it is to be put on the publicly taxed market.
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So why is it reasonable for the government to require you to grant the government access to your house before you can sell it? You can sell a car on the publicly taxed market without letting the government look inside it, can't you?
 
Explain under current caselaw how random and, worse, universal searches of airline passengers is "reasonable." Case law suggests that such searches are not constitutional unless they
1) do not unreasonably delay the searchee, and
2) only have the capacity to disclose contraband
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As far as #1, any of the times I flew, I didn't see any any unreasonable delay. How long a delay are you talking about, and what was the government doing during that time that you thought was unreasonable?

I don't know what you're talking about in #2. Cite some cases. Could it be that you're talking about the idea that you can only search a place that could reasonably hide the item that you're looking for? It's my position that airport searches fall under the administrative exception to the search warrant rule as well as implied consent, and the border searches exceptions. They're similar to implied consent for driver license suspensions when you refuse to take a breath, blood or urine test. They tell you when you get your license that if you refuse the test, you lose your license, just like they tell you at the airport that if you refuse the search, you don't fly.

Read United States v. Skipwith and also Moreno.
 
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In roughly February '02, the line at the SFO and Detroit airport security checkpoints alone was perhaps 30 minutes long. Are you claiming that airlines tell passengers to get to the airport an extra hour early just for fun? Not everybody gets delayed unreasonably, particularly on off-hours when there are not as many flights. That doesn't mean nobody is unreasonably delayed.

2. Try Illinois v. Caballes, which Antipitas mentioned a week ago.
 
The time it takes for them to search someone else doesn't count toward your personal "unreasonable" search.

And I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but in IL V.Caballes, 03-923, the court held that police don't need reasonable suspicion to walk a dope dog around a car on a traffic stop, and if the dog hits on the car, and a search based on that probable cause discloses contraband, the siezure is legal as long as the business of the original traffic stop wasn't unnecessarily delayed to get the dog there. What exactly were you reading into it that I'm not, and what has that to do with the type of searches we're talking about here? Are the TSA's calling for drug dogs now on everyone once they get to the front of the line?
 
So why is it reasonable for the government to require you to grant the government access to your house before you can sell it? You can sell a car on the publicly taxed market without letting the government look inside it, can't you?
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You are putting the house on an open market just like you put a car on the open market. I don't know if it is like this in every state but I know of a few states that !do! make you get the car inspected before you sell it. The exception is if you are selling it to a family member then you do not have to. The idea is that once you offer it for sale you are showing intend to end ownership of the property and, although I disagree with this thinking, this is probably considered a loss of privacy because it is on the open market, which, regulated by taxes, has to be valued or inspected for quality.
While you are in ownership of the house and you have shown no intent to sell a house, the government worker who evaluates your house for tax purposes cannot enter and search your house (at least in my state).


As far as the drunken driving goes, the Supreme Court case concerning road block DWI checks was because someone challenged Md's police the right to do this. So I am somewhat familiar with this ruling. The police have to have a reasonable cause to pull you out of a car to test you, they do not have to have reasonable cause to TALK to you. They were allowed to have roadblocks and talk to drivers one at a time, but if you did not want to roll down your window, then you did not have to. If you were not sloshing your words, had a beer foam mustache, nodding off, or something obvious, then the officer has absolutely no right whatsoever to subject you to a search. He just had a right to create a roadblock, approach the vehicles one at a time, and talk TO you. And since my state does not allow dark tint on driverside windows, they usually can see who is trashed.

If you recall the story earlier in this thread, there was that lady who was strip searched that they found nothing on. She was delayed beyond reason.
 
this is probably considered a loss of privacy because it is on the open market, which, regulated by taxes, has to be valued or inspected for quality.
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So it's reasonable for me to have to endure a loss of privacy in order to ensure that my house is up to stuff when I sell it, but unreasonable to subject you to a loss of privacy to ensure that I don't have to sit next to a shoe bomber on my flight to Hawaii?


As far as the drunken driving goes, the Supreme Court case concerning road block DWI checks was because someone challenged Md's police the right to do this. So I am somewhat familiar with this ruling.
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The implied consent issue I brought up had nothing to do with alcohol checkpoints.

If you recall the story earlier in this thread, there was that lady who was strip searched that they found nothing on. She was delayed beyond reason.
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So what? The remedy for that is a civil suit, sanctions against the employee and the exclusionary rule, not scrapping the whole idea of searches prior to boarding because some dork allegedly felt some woman's boobs improperly. Cops are fired or charged with that kind of stuff all the time in this country. Should we scrap Terry searches for weapons because of it? Or should we fire and prosecute the officer and disallow unlawfully seized evidence from being admitted at trial?
 
Use of drug dogs was not deemed to be an unreasonable search because, the majority of the court said, drug dogs cannot disclose anything except contraband. That is clearly not the case with airport searches. They reveal all sorts of things, and only very rarely is true contraband revealed.

The time it takes for them to search someone else doesn't count toward your personal "unreasonable" search.
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I wasn't aware we were discussing whether I personally have been put through an "unreasonable" search. You admit, then, that other people have been, and are, being searched for an unreasonable length of time?

It doesn't really matter. Unless the searches cannot disclose anything except the presence of contraband, they're unconstitutional no matter how fast they are. [see Kyllo v U.S.]
 
You don't need probable cause to conduct the airport search. Probable cause was never an issue. That is not the case with the cases you're bringing up. The drug dog case is not relavent.

You admit, then, that other people have been, and are, being searched for an unreasonable length of time?
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I'm sure there are cases where, due to the length of the search, or actions taking during the airport search, that any contraband seized would be inadmissible due to improper search. So what? There are other mechanisms in place to address improper or illegal searches. The answer is not to eliminate searches. Would you have us eliminate the Terry stop and/or search because they are sometimes abused?
 
That FrankDrebin guy sure is persistent. Doesn't change the fact that he's wrong. Completely wrong.

The fourth amendment protects our pre-existing right to be free of searches by the government without a proper warrant, period. That means no searches at airports, for anything, ever. That means no Terry searches, ever. That means no drug-sniffing dogs around our cars. That the courts have ruled otherwise just means that the Constitution is a dead letter in Amerika.

This doesn't mean that private individuals and companies can't have security requirements for the use of their property. I'd love to see the market provide Strip Search Airlines and Armed Air. I'm sure both would have customers. I doubt either would have much trouble with terrorists. But universal gummint-mandated sekurity rules for all airports is an abomination.

Until we start to ignore the tyrants, and defend ourselves, with extreme prejudice, when they attempt to enforce their tyrannical garbage, it will get worse. My personal line in the sand is when they stop and search my car on the way to work. I hope it will take a few more years before that happens, at least until my kids are no longer my responsibility, because I don't expect to live long once it does.
 
That FrankDrebin guy sure is persistent. Doesn't change the fact that he's wrong. Completely wrong.
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Actually Frank is absolutely correct on the positive question of how things actually are. But if you're arguing the the normative question of how things should be you are probably right. In an ideal America we'd have a strict interpretation of the Constitution- but thats not how things are, nor how the law is interpreted or enforced.
 
So your answer to too-long airport searches is to litigate after the fact. I think that's a lousy solution, but okay.

Would you care to address the other point? Why are searches permissible at all, since they are not narrow enough to reveal only contraband? Caselaw (Kyllo, reiterated in Souter's dissent in Caballes) seems to be consistent in that there has to be articulable suspicion for any search that has the capacity to reveal presence of legal items.

I understand that the government has an interest in securing air transportation. The economy will suffer if terrorists hijack planes again.

So what? The economy would also suffer if Joe Jihad were to pack a suburban with ANFO and drive it into 1 Federal Plaza. Are random vehicle searches reasonable or unreasonable? The Federal government has a mandate to regulate interestate commerce, but not to protect interstate travel. I get the feeling we've been down this road before; I've forgotten your answer, though.
 
Tyme,

There are cases specifically stating that in areas where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, and where the government interest in a search is compelling, no warrant is necessary. Airports, entering Capitol Hill and the Whitehouse, etc, are all fair game for warrantless searches, especially since everyone is on notice that there will be a search at these places.

An often repeated maxim is appropriate here: "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
 
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