Your heart is in the right place, but it seems you fell for a fallacy here, and don't seem to have a good understanding of what the laws, rights, and powers are that are relevant to your arguments. Namely, the Constitution. The federal government has no right to privacy. Why? It's not in the constitution. The federal government only has the powers enumerated in the Constitution. And whatever federal powers are not enumerated in the Constitution are given back to the states and to the people (see 10th amendment). So, if you publish wiretaps on my phone conversations you'll be subject to whatever laws protect me and my communications from wiretapping, which likely even vary from state to state. No connection to what happened with the leaked wires, since the federal government is not a person, it is an entity specifically defined in the Constitution, and which has certain powers. Now, if you are a federal employee and release classified info, you are liable to whatever consequences stem from the fact that you applied for a clearance by, under an oath, stating you'd protect that info. You betrayed that oath. Finally, if you release this secret info to me, and I am not a federal employee with a clearance (therefore have not signed a contract/sworn an oath with the federal government to keep this info secret), and I release this to the world, then I am protected by the 1st amendment. It doesn't matter if it's gossip or not. It doesn't matter if anyone dies or not. It's really that simple. Or should be.

This is a it should be. The moment you place a "usefulness" test to our exercise of our first amendment (was it "legitmate"? who gets to decide that?) is the moment you are giving your rights away.

Those are good questions, and I really don't have the answers. From TSA's website (http://www.tsa.gov/who_we_are/what_is_tsa.shtm):

"We are the Transportation Security Administration, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11. Our agency is a component of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems.

"With our state, local and regional partners, we oversee security for the highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, ports and the 450 U.S. airports. We employ approximately 50,000 people from Alaska to Puerto Rico to ensure your travels - by plane, train, automobile or ferry â" are safe and secure."

They are definitely acting on behalf of the federal government (as part of the DHS). I am not sure what recourse you'd have if they'd denied you access to air travel.

Whether they are trained or not in constitutional issues, that is irrelevant. It's up to you to be, as a free citizen, as you put it.

Walking out of any security related situation without permission is generally a bad idea (IMHO). Always ask permission ("Am I free to go?"). You can always sue later to attempt to redress an illegal detention.

Finally, you may want to look at some of these videos, and start your search from there:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646&hl=en
http://www.youtube.com/user/CheckpointUSA

That would be a scary world. Fortunately, your constitutional rights do protect you from the government in general or from any of its agents.

Being detained without a well-articulated reasonable suspicion (and frankly, suspicion of the crimes you listed simply because you're carrying some sort of manuscript is unlikely to be recognized reasonable) would make TSA liable to a lawsuit.

A case being brought to court on any of this would only serve to try to eliminate whatever laws are in the federal books that allows the TSA agents to even consider acting in the manner they did. Which would be a net positive.

The main point here is, a law may be passed that allows a government agency to act in a way that blatantly disregards the US Constitution, but the only ways that I am aware of to correct such laws are to either challenge them in court (by being prosecuted for breaking it) or to get the legislature to eliminate such laws from the books. The latter is not very common, the prior is not very convenient for the brave bastard that actually does the challenging. Luckily, there are still some brave bastards around.

His 1st A. rights would have come into play if he had been prosecuted (essentially for having written a script and tried to travel with it). His 5th A. rights is what he should have made use of, and refuse an explanation to the TSA agents. That would have forced them to either let him go (the appropriate thing to do here) or to put him under arrest under some sort of charges, which brings be to my original point, that bringing such a case to court could actually have had some impact.

Negatory. If I come to your property I don't have to agree with anything. On the other hand, you are free to ask me to leave. If I refused, I'd be trespassing, and proper action could be taken by you.

Regarding air plane traveling, you give up your 4th amendment rights ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, etc."). He went out of his way to give up his 5th amendment rights, which no one is expected to do.

That should have been "...manner WITHOUT repercussions."

I believe you're right, which is why I didn't mention the 4th amendment, only the 5th (and 1st).

"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation." Mr. Sable's ignorance or willful abdication of his 5th amendment rights caused him to perhaps waste a great opportunity to challenge TSA policies on search of personal belongings. Next time, maybe a better approach would be (disclaimer, IANAL): "Am I being detained?" followed by "I'd like you to tell me what laws you are accusing me of breaking," or "I won't make any statements until I have spoken to a lawyer," as the case may be. If Mr. Sable had actually been prosecuted simply for having exercised his 1st amendment rights, his case would have had a much more significant impact in our fear-prone society, causing perhaps some much needed "clarification" of what the federal government can/cannot do "for our own good" to "protect us from the evil terrorists." Perhaps even a re-evaluation of TSA policies, or at least application of punishment to over-zealous agents.

"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble." You're not in trouble just because a government employee says so (or looks at you funny). We do have a bill of rights, you know.

From TFA: "In the end, I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium." No one of any importance was "educated." No policy is likely to be changed as a result of this incident; law-abiding citizens are still going to be stopped in airports for carrying 'strange' books, scripts, magazines, etc. All this shows is that TSA agents can act in an arbitrary manner with repercussions.