Former Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr comments:
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has become increasingly aggressive in expanding its responsibility from simply searching passengers to ensure no weapons or explosives are brought on board commercial aircraft. The agency, housed in the federal Department of Homeland Security, has moved in recent years to assume for itself the role of “behavioral cops,” by training and allowing its employees to spot “suspicious behavior” on the part of passengers and then subjecting those so tagged to additional scrutiny and questioning.
In some instances of such “behavioral searches,” in which the government then finds contraband on the persons thus singled out for searches, or outstanding warrants for matters completely unrelated to aircraft or airport security, people are arrested and prosecuted.
Now, as such cases are working their way through the court system, the TSA is running into difficulty in sustaining its self-appointed power to search people for anything it finds that is “suspicious.” In fact, the TSA should be having problems in continuing what it has been doing.
Read more on The Barr Code. Scott McCartney also covers the court cases on The Wall Street Journal in more detail and with quotes.