Object while you can, before it's mandatory to surrender all civil rights in order to fly.
Airport security is probably a bad joke. But acting and talking as if that's a foregone conclusion --- or worse, that it's part of some malignant scheme --- is counterproductive. It marginalizes everyone with a more reasonable or nuanced perspective about this issue.
Take off the "Buck Fush" t-shirt and be civil to the TSA guy. Say "I'm going to opt out of the body scanner". If enough people do, it'll get easier for everyone to avoid the electronic strip search machine.
Not in the US, anyway.
Thankfully, there's Europe, which has progressed considerably further than the U.S. in terms of actually protecting people's rights.
You realize that (contrary to popular opinion) Americans don't even need to carry ID, right?
Land border crossings are even more of a non-event, you have to pay attention or you might miss them. In some countries you can indeed be IDd on the spot though. Not that it's ever happened to me (except by traffic police checking my license).
Entering or leaving the Schengen area is a slightly different story - you pass through emigration/immigration, plus some countries like the UK are slightly more draconian about air travel "security" and have body scanners. I assume your trip was before Switzerland's entry to the Schengen zone in December 2008?
Civil liberties are apparently in decline everywhere, but I would argue that the EU is somewhat better than the US in that regard and that the actual abuse of laws is better in the EU.
I think you are slightly overacting. It could be that you as a non-EU-citizen were subjected to harsher standards. May I remind you that the US isn't that nice to non-citizens?
* Can the state police demand that you open a bag for inspection on a train?
* Can you be detained at length (for instance, removed to a police station) if you're asked to identify yourself and don't have documentation?
* Are the police under any circumstances permitted to randomly stop and search cars?
* Can the police check your pockets during a pat-down search for weapons?
Each of these is something for which US jurisprudence has issued decisive and binding decisions (no, absent probable cause they can document and justify on the stand, they can't open your bag; no, unless they arrest you for an actual crime, they can't take you to a police station; no, under most circumstances the police can't even pull you over unless you've committed a "primary" offense, and cannot absent probable cause of an actual crime search your car; no, the police in the US can't demand to see the contents of your pockets).
Incidentally, you have the same protection under the 4th Amendment as a German citizen in the US as I do as someone born in Chicago. I assume that's true vice-versa in Germany as well.
The bag issue is what got me; Swiss police rifled through my bag. I was not the only person in the train car that happened to, so I'm doubting I was simply selected for it as a noncitizen --- not that that should matter.
Searches, in Germany, generally demand cause. I have no idea what laws govern searches in Switzerland.
The part with citizens vs non-citizens was mainly about borders. The US is known to be incredibly mean to non-citizens, going so far as to require a visum for transit, whereas Schengen only requires a transit visum for citizens of a small number of states.
It seems strange that Swiss police did a random search. Anyway, it seems that the US police also does random searches—at train stations for example.
Schengen requires a transit visa for citizens of 140 countries. There's only about 40 countries that don't need transit visas. The USA has visa waiver programs with more than 36 countries, and other similar arrangements with Canada, Mexico and states in the Caribbean.
Recent extra-legal actions notwithstanding, the US Constitution applies to everyone in the US equally. Citizen or not.
There likely is no plot to eliminate civil rights, however, devices like these erode privacy, increase distrust in government, and, worse, increase the time and comfort it takes to get from point A to point B.
From the late 80s to today we've gone from a time when only metal detectors were required to get back to a gate, to requiring tickets (making it more inconvenient and less safe for small children to fly alone), removing clothing in public view (shoes, belts, outer garments), unpacking/packing luggage in public view, potentially being patted down, heavily paramilitary patrolling gateways, detainment for arbitrary reasons, etc.
I worry more about running into a TSA agent in a bad mood (potentially ruining my day) than just about anything else when traveling.
officer: Don't go anywhere
friend: Am I under arrest?
officer: No, but don't go anywhere.
friend: If I'm not under arrest, then I'm leaving.
officer: If you leave, I *will* arrest you with impeding an investigation / obstruction of justice
Also, in a number of jurisdictions, you can be arrested for being 'drunk and disorderly' with only the officer's word that you were actually drunk and/or causing a scene.
Keep in mind, that it doesn't matter much whether or not the charges stick. The police have successfully harassed you if you have to spend the night (or weekend) in prison before you are able to get out (and/or get the charges dismissed).
{update} Some corrections. Also, the 'investigation' that was being impeded was a $400 fine for littering a candy wrapper (ignoring whether or not the candy wrapper was actually littered).
That there are subjective offenses you can be arrested for and that the police could abuse strikes me as a simple fact of life. You can also file complaints, (in most jurisdictions) record the abuse with your camera phone, and (in crazy cases) sue.
Probably don't overreact if you hear a cop say "stop, get back over here!" or "no, you may not leave until I get to the bottom of this!"; they're legally authorized to do that pretty much on a whim.
If you've been handcuffed or transported or confined in a police station, you're under arrest, and yes, demand a lawyer.
No, they're being installed for profit. They have nothing to do with civil rights and even less to do with security -- I highly doubt that anyone involved actually cares about either.
What they do care about is milking money from the government by taking advantage of the asinine government contracting and acquisitions processes -- and most likely also the fact that fattening the right wallets greases the right wheels to make things very profitable for them.
Can't seem to find the article from some months ago to back this up, unfortunately.
Once a power is taken by the government, it is not likely to let it go. I hope you have better luck than we did.
Consequently, I'm not sure elections in the US really mean very much at the moment. In the grand scheme of things, the two big political parties are closely aligned on most issues. Those distinctions that do exist between them are minor disagreements, which get dramatically exaggerated in election propaganda, rather than differences of any real substance.
I hope that here in the UK, where we have never quite fallen into the trap of having only two big political parties, we have more chance of seeing real improvement. It helps that we didn't give government to any single party at the last general election, for the first time in many years. That must have been a nasty wake-up call for those old-school Conservatives who had arrogantly assumed that they were somehow entitled to form the next government just because Labour were not going to. (Labour, does anybody remember them? No? Good. :-))
Fortunately, the principles of restoring civil liberties and rolling back the nanny/surveillance state are among the major issues on which the two coalition partners now in government strongly agreed anyway, and where there are politicians from both parties in the coalition with a long track record of criticising the sorts of measures we are talking about in this discussion. They need this sort of issue of common interest in order to build a successful and lasting coalition, and it's also a politically popular stance: FUD about terrorism threats doesn't really cut it with the average voter here any more, partly because people's minds are more focussed on basics like getting/keeping a job and paying the rent/mortgage, and partly just because you can only keep a population accepting of draconian laws for so long when there is no serious bad stuff happening to convince them to Be Afraid.
In short, I like to think that we are in with a chance, because while the political system in the US seems to have other systemic concerns and little incentive to put right the abuses of the past, here in the UK it is politically expedient to do so both for the popularity of the changes themselves and as a means of strengthening the governing coalition. Time will tell...