[lambda]

In some cases it could be as flimsy as they were pacing nervously while black: https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/deas-cold-cons...

Because they claim that these are "consensual", they claim that they don't need any particular criteria for an encounter, but of course the "consent" was not ever really freely given here, they would either trick or bully people into giving consent.

[Terr_]

Feels like a general police stop abuse in a new context: You're free to go as long as you don't actually try to go, because exercising your rights makes you "suspicious."

[whaaaaat]

"You can decline to consent, but you'll miss your flight because we'll detain you for an hour". It's so clear that no one can meaningfully "consent" in a situation where one person has the power to deeply fuck you over like that.

[more_corn]

It’s not consent if you’re not allowed to say no.

[like_any_other]

> it could be as flimsy as they were pacing nervously while black

Judging by the picture on the poster's website, I doubt being black had much to do with it: https://josephscott.org/

[lambda]

That was an example to illustrate how little basis they needed for these searches in previous cases, not intended to be a guess for what the reason the person at the start of this thread was stopped.

The point is, this whole "cold consensual search" policy was based on nothing other than the officer's personal opinion for who should be approached and searched; because it was theoretically "consensual", they didn't need any kind of basis for making the determination.