Originally Posted by
PTravel
Nasty. One obvious point, however: upon arrest, you are allowed to search the suspect and his immediate possessions to ensure officer safety, which would include going through the papers in his briefcase. Airline passengers are not suspects, nor are they under arrest when the administrative search takes place. TSO are not LEOs and have no power to detain or conduct a search that is anything more than minimally-intrusive and designed solely to determine whether the passenger has anything that threatens air safety. Moreover, there is a hierarchy of escalation: a search of a wallet, for example, is not justified if the metal detector didn't sound, though swabbing it might be.
I didn't make the example to equate the search to that of an admin search, but to demonstrate that dangerous things can be hidden in unobtrusive areas.
They can call over LEOs, but they may not detain the cash. They have no powers of seizure.
Correct. I wasn't clear, so thanks for making my point for me better than I did.
