US-Court: Airline passengers can’t back out of searches

Citing concerns about terrorism, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that airline passengers lose their right to object to a search after they go through initial security screenings. Judge Carlos Bea wrote that requiring authorization from passengers during ongoing searches “makes little sense in a post 9/11 world.”The San Francisco-based court, ruling in a case involving a Hawaii man, said airline passengers couldn’t refuse searches once they place their belongings on an X-ray tray or walk through a metal detector. It was the appeals court’s second decision in the case of Daniel Kuualoha Aukai because it wanted to clarify an earlier decision on the issue of consent. Last year, the court ruled Aukai couldn’t back out of additional searches even after he no longer wanted to board a flight.Source: mercurynews.com; read full article here.

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