I'm not sure I agree with you, @DISCO Rox No More
If I know you're playing
Thine Own Self, or
Barclay Transporter Phobia, or
Brain Drain, etc. Then I'm going to play things differently because there's now an in-game reason to do so.
If I'm being honest, you'll probably hit me with the first one, because I don't
enjoy that type of game (I'm sure buried somewhere deep in this forum is at least one rant I made on
Loss of Orbital Stability after I got cheeseballed with it at Worlds awhile back), but once you've hit me with it, I'm going to alter my strategy to adapt as much as possible. Fool me once, etc.
But that aside, some of your examples don't make sense in game terms. Pfti is correct that your opponent only needs to show things when they have to. So if you want to play Thine Own Self, then you have to select a valid target - a one or two person away team at a planet mission - and you don't get to know which people are in that one or two person away team before you play it. You have to decide if playing it is a good choice based on limited information. That's not rules lawyering or being a dick, that's part of the strategic complexity of the game.
As far as an opponent's choice dilemma goes, it's been stated that when your opponent encounters such a dilemma, you get to see the entire crew or away team, even if not all of them are valid targets for the choice involved. So if you're trying to set up the next dilemma in the stack, then you already get access to that information by rule - no skeezy rules lawyering required.
But you paid for that information by seeding that opponent's choice dilemma. Why do you think you should get it "for free" just by asking? I'm not sure that's a reasonable assumption.
As far as verifying staffing goes, you're always free to ask that, but it's only relevant if there's a game action associated with it (obviously ship movement, but also cards that require a staffed ship), and I personally think it's fine to ask when it's gameplay relevant, but asking just to ask doesn't mean your opponent has to tell you. To the contrary, asking when it's *Not* gameplay-relevant could be construed as skeezy rules lawyering because odds are you're asking it while your opponent is trying to do something else in-game and it's a distraction at that point. Done enough at a tournament, it could be considered grounds for stalling. And if and when you do ask your opponent to verify staffing, don't be surprised if they only show you the minimum - that's all they're required to show you.
As far as the house arrest thing, again, context is for kings. If I'm playing mono-Fed or mono-whatever+Non-aligned and there's no way to even *have* a house arrest situation, then when asked to show my crew just because you wanna see them, I'm going to politely decline. Keep it up and it won't be so polite.
On the other hand, if I'm playing a Treaty deck, and you nuke my treaty, then you're very much in-bounds to cross-check me when I'm forming an away team or attempting a space mission to ensure I didn't mix incompatible people together on accident.
I had a tournament game years ago where my opponent played a whole bunch of different affiliation people to a
Ferengi Trading Post. Which was fine, until he tried to put them all on the same ship, at which point I pointed out to him that he couldn't intentionally create a house arrest situation.
Bottom line, there's what the rules say you have to show and when, and you're free to ask (and probably *should* ask) to verify when it's gameplay-relevant. But there's a practical limitation to that . It's one thing to say you shouldn't be expected to remember every person I played, but it's another to say you shouldn't be expected to remember if I played different colors of people at any point to necessitate a house arrest check. Asking just to ask when there's no gameplay relevance to the question is skeezy rules lawyering. Not volunteering information not required to be shown isn't. At least in my book.