Originally Posted by pmocek

I think they believe that carrying large amounts of money is suspicious. What they don't seem to understand is that whether or not it seems suspicious, in this country we have limits on what sort of suspicion warrants detaining and searching someone, and traveling within the country with a bunch of cash doesn't cut it. It's clear as day to me that even though we've made this exception and allow warrantless searches for weapons, explosives, and incendiaries, the scope of those searches should not be extended to include things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to stop and search people for.

Unfortunately, the discussion is being had by lots of people who don't understand the reasons for the protections against abuse of power that we've built into our legal system. I suppose that to someone who doesn't "get it", the idea of TSA bag checkers taking the opportunity to assume everyone is a criminal and search them for things well outside of TSA's areas of interest is a good one.

Those people seemingly cannot think abstractly, outside their own situation, and realize that in the long run, such a dragnet operation is bad news. They are probably concerned only with convenience and not with freedom. It's sad that we've developed such a culture, and it's going to take lots of effort to convince people that if we don't exercise our rights at times when we don't feel we need them, we are likely to find that we've lost them when the time comes that we really need them.