TSA screeners are not authorized to make arrests or use force in the course of their duties. They will, however, call airport police, who are law enforcement officers, to do those things.
Would this be the same airport police that drags bloodied fliers from planes?
I’m a magnet for random checks in the EU - getting my laptop swabbed for bomb-making material because oooh scary stickers or something. It may very well just be my luck, but regardless I’m staying the hell away from the US just on the basis of these TSA horror stories.
You can keep your legal weed and I can keep my teeth.
I think that's wise. It is far from clear that, as a practical matter, the U.S. is still governed by the rule of law.
(I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, but even that doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence that the government won't fuck with me. I am having to think long and hard nowadays before saying anything critical of the U.S. government on line.)
Only come to the US if you really have to do so. I also think conferences should move elsewhere in more neutral and accepting places.
US under the name of nationalism has become quite a racist country. I have a common surname and I always get stopped and questioned because I have a certain surname. Half an hour extra for every international flight even though I am a permanent resident here.
It’s just stupid. Traveling to/from US is a menace.
I'm in roughly the same boat (I also got dogs brought out to sniff my luggage, the whole package). When I went through the US, it was surprisingly not much worse. Of course, at the time I did not really go into the states, I just made a stopover. I did have to grab my luggage in one place and take it somewhere else, going through the security everyone else had to go through (again). I got bomb swabbed, dogs were brought out, they asked me some hairy questions and I had to power all my electronics and explain what every cable in my bag did. It was terrible, but I wasn't physically harassed. I never flew through the states again.
Nobody has tried because nobody has ever been arrested by the TSA. The TSA calls the airport police or local police and they arrest you. It's hard to imagine a scenario where airport police will not take the TSA's word for it.
"Nobody has tried because nobody has ever been arrested by the TSA. The TSA calls the airport police or local police and they arrest you. It's hard to imagine a scenario where airport police will not take the TSA's word for it."
I was in a situation very shortly after (as in, Oct/Nov 2001) 9/11 wherein the TSA (or whatever they were at that disorganized point) called the police over and the police officer openly derided and made fun of them for both not being actual law enforcement and having no idea what to do with the situation at hand.
Also, the police are probably monitoring the checkpoint from somewhere in the back anyway. So they likely have you on camera before they even get to the scene.
I've never seen it, but I wonder if that's because the guys who actually knock your head are not ever really seen at an airport security checkpoint until something happens. And then they are everywhere. I have to believe that DHS has already thought of what's being proposed here.
