But even worse is this: while waiting on the hoi polloi line, I started watching the TSA video that was running on the monitors overhead, and I was struck when the narrator said: “Once you enter the screening area, you will not be permitted to leave without TSA permission.” Really?! Actually, I am permitted to leave without TSA permission, whether they like it or not, because the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on “unreasonable . . . seizures” gives me that permission. We have a word for this, too, in the law, when government agents don’t allow us to leave freely: “being in custody.” And the government cannot put me in custody when they have absolutely no reason to believe that I have broken the law – the 4th Amendment prohibits that. Nor can they say “you’ve consented to being in custody when you go to the airport,” any more than they can say “you’ve consented to being in custody whenever you leave your home, so we can grab you and hold you whenever we damn please.” [I made this point to the TSA agents on duty, who emphatically and vigorously denied that I was “in custody.” So I asked: Could I just leave the scene? No, not once I had passed the designated checkpoint. So I’m in custody? No? Why not? Because it’s not custody. But I can’t leave? Correct. . . . You get the idea. I think they’re wrong, and it’s another bit of creeping state power over our actions and our movements and our privacy that’s pretty disturbing.