Isn't there a simpler lesson to be learned from this Circuit City business?

[jpgray]

First, pick your battles. If all this was about was a douchebag refusing to comply with a bag-receipt check, I hope I am right in thinking this wouldn't even cause a ripple on DU (meaning we'd have just -one- one contentious flamewar thread on the subject instead of two dozen :P). I'm not at all convinced receipt checks are a case of corporate power destroying our civil liberties. Reasonable searches on private property are rather customary to prevent the commission of a crime (showing ID to buy alcohol is one example), and checking to ensure the contents of a bag match the receipt by any standard of "offensive" searches is hardly invasive or degrading.

The police officer's demand to see ID, however, is -not- defensible. It is however understandable when you consider how most cops think. Cops don't see a lot of people defiantly opposing a reasonable corporate invasion based on a noble defense of civil liberties. They -do- see a lot of people resisting such policies to aid the commission of a crime. A good example of how this police "common sense" can go wrong (as it did in this case) is the VT massacre--the early murder was not seen as a prelude to mass murder because such killings almost always aren't. The cops had a hunch that the boyfriend did it because 99% of the time they turn out to be exactly right. In that case, they threw out all other options to pursue that theory, and were very wrong. Now take our Circuit City example--this guy behaved very suspiciously, in the manner of a shoplifter, by refusing a search and behaving with a lot of belligerence. He had every right to do so, but being uncooperative to a cop usually means you are trying to commit a crime. This assumption was wrong and the request for ID was wrong, but it's fairly easy to understand that when the cop saw this sort of situation before, it probably indicated criminal behavior nine times out of ten.

In my view this case would be similar to resisting a far more invasive and arguably unreasonable search that goes on every day--the search of luggage and sometimes one's person at the airport. There's not necessarily any probable cause, nor any warrant, etc., but I imagine resisting such a search and arguing (validly in my view) it violates your civil liberties would cost you:

1. Your seat on the plane.

2. A lot of hours of suspicious security/police people asking for ID, wanting to check your luggage, etc.

Because avoiding such a search is consistent with the attempt to commit a crime, no one is likely to assume you're just making a statement about unreasonable corporate practices. They will view you with suspicion based on their past experiences.

Now, the airport checks and the receipt checks are very different, and so they aren't directly comparable, but they do have a few similarities. The comparisons to Rosa Parks, however, or fascist "papers, please" moments I find offensive, as the scope of this intrusion on civil liberties seems infinitely more benign and far less invasive or tragic. Thus comparing our Circuit City incident to them degrades their meaning while artificially inflating the importance of this relatively minor infraction.

What do you think?