Here we have a situation where someone is being detained and effectively punished (denied food and drink, for example, forced to miss their flight) without any benefit of the legal system. Preventing such things is the entire reason we have a criminal justice system. Within the legal system we have all of these procedures and rights and so forth that have been carefully honed over centuries to ensure that the system is fair and not abusive. Except here we have this bizarre little bubble that is effectively outside the criminal justice system for most intents and purposes which has about the effect one would imagine in such situations.

The detained here has no benefit of counsel, no ability to see the evidence put against them, no presumption of innocence, and so forth. And we can see within this one little example a microcosm of why all of those things are necessary and what happens when they are absent.

No matter how you cut it this individual was effectively punished, the fact that there are almost no safeguards to prevent such abuses of power today should be chilling to everyone.

"Setting off an explosion detector" is not the most important part of this. Imagine the detector as a human being instead (explosives detectors are just as fallible) making an accusation against someone. An accusation is not a conviction. Just because someone cries murder, or rape, or terrorist, even if it's a piece of equipment doing that, we shouldn't jump to conclusions and rip away every right and protection that people have in this country. Except it seems that we are doing just that and to some degree a lot of people are OK with it.