Rights Violation or a Complete Jerk?

[Roland]

The best you can do is get the message out that these measures don't really prevent theft, and perhaps some store will see it and have better sense.

Such deterrents are there for penny-pinchers and corporate entities, nothing more. They put such measures in place to say they have something, and again for the psychological effect (both on the customer AND the company's employees). I highly doubt anyone who actually has any REAL experience in retail believes in the effectiveness of such measures, therefore it's highly unlikely such policies will change unless they are challenged in the very way this gentleman is doing. I'm not going to go out of my way to say he's completely right, as I'm not sure he has a legal foothold in regards to the search (I'm not a lawyer). However, I will defend the purpose of his actions, and his right to execute them within the confines of the law. He may very well be a jerk for not just sucking it up and dealing with it, but then again, one could say the same about a certain ethnic group and their choice on where to sit on a bus.

Think about it for a minute, and tell me if there's really a difference between the two. Not the whole grand picture of civil rights, just the events that sparked such movement and change. Personally, I don't see much of a difference, even if one has a far greater-reaching effect than the other.