Behold history in the making: in AD 2011, a mere 796 years after England's Magna Carta established that even kings must follow the law, American state legislators are starting to think mandates like "sexual assault is verboten" should apply to agents of the government, too.

Of course, that was always the case until the TSA (actual motivational motto: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control.") decided "ritualised humiliation of travelers" made an acceptable substitute for "transportation security." Last year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) started pushing nude scanners on the American flying public. These require travellers to adopt surrender-criminal body positions – feet apart, hands in the air, don't move – while potentially carcenogenic radiation generates nude images graphic enough to permit TSA agents to see travellers' genitalia (though not, apparently, clear enough to show guns smuggled in travellers' undies).

If you refuse to be scanned – or if the scan shows a medical prosthetic, sanitary napkin or anything else that catches a TSA agent's eye – you must endure a groping that would land you on the sex offenders' register if you did it to anyone else. Last month, when Alaska state representative Sharon Cissna submitted to the scan, a TSA agent noticed her mastectomy scars and singled her out for a patdown. Cissna chose to miss her flight and take a ferry home rather than allow the "invasive, probing hands of a stranger" to invade her privacy.

Last week, however, state legislators in Texas and New Hampshire introduced legislation identifying TSA behaviour as the criminal activity it is. (Similar bills have already been proposed in New Jersey, but are currently stalled in committee.) The Texas bill, co-written by a Republican and a Democrat with support from 20 other legislators spanning the political spectrum, would ban the scanners in state airports, and add TSA-style grope-downs to the list of "sexual assault" offences in the penal code. The New Hampshire bill would make "the touching or viewing with a technological device of a person's breasts or genitals by a government security agent without probable cause a sexual assault." The TSA has completely ignored those two words – probable cause – since its inception.

One of the New Hampshire bill's co-sponsors, Representative Andrew Manuse, wrote an op-ed explaining why he supports it:

"We have seen horror stories and personally listened to stories from people we know that tell of TSA agents putting their hands underneath people's underwear – or worse; we have heard about body cavity searches conducted without any cause. […] In the name of fighting terrorism, we have forgotten about our liberties and basic human decency."

The TSA has also forgotten basic common sense, even while the agency metastasises out of airports and encroaches on land-based transportation, just as homeland security director Janet Napolitano threatened some months ago. Last month, agents went to an Amtrak station in Savannah, corralled travellers in a roped-off area and subjected all of them to grope-downs – after they'd completed their journeys and disembarked from the train. Amtrak's police chief, John O'Connor, said, "When I saw [reports of the incident], I didn't believe it was real." When he learned it was true, "I hit the ceiling" and banned the TSA from Amtrak stations.

So, state lawmakers and even law enforcement officials are finally realising that the TSA has gone too far. But is even that enough to stop them?

Since the scan-or-be-groped policy was implemented, Napolitano and her underlings have completely ignored classical American notions like "consent of the governed" or "public accountability". And the more outrageously TSA agents behave, the more vehemently its agents insist they're the victims whenever Americans complain about their behaviour.

What happens in an ostensibly free, representative democracy, when unelected, unaccountable "public servants" completely disregard the wishes of the public they presumably serve? The consequences terrify me, if America has to find out.