Originally Posted by
Trollkiller
Based on TSORon's original question on the "TSA and the law" thread I have decided to play Devil's Advocate in hopes of getting his questions answered.
Ground Rules:
- I am playing Devil's Advocate, I may or may not believe in the righteousness of the arguments I put forth.
- Stick to the topic, if this goes well I will create other threads for other topics. Example this first thread is about the legality and constitutionality of referring someone to a local LEO for having a "large" amount of cash or other legal "contraband", do not bring up obviously illegal items like dope, or kiddie porn.
Game on.
Large amounts of cash.
It is common knowledge that nefarious individuals tend to keep large amounts of cash on hand to prevent the tracking of income by law enforcement. When a TSO discovers a “large” amount of cash while performing a search the TSO has every right to question the PAX to the nature of the cash to determine if the PAX needs to be referred to a LEO. The TSO is acting in his capacity as a Federal Officer.
Your turn.
TK, that's strictly an American prejudice. Most other cultures don't find anything suspicious about using cash. That's one of the reasons that the Americans have become so hated in Iraq -- for the first few years, at their numerous checkpoints, they would regularly confiscate "large amounts" of cash (typically anything from 2 - 100K USD) because, in their view, such quantities of cash could "only" be for people funding the insurgency, forgetting in their narrow cultural prejudices, that the Iraqi banking system was barely functioning, so if you were buying a house or a car, you brought cash.
But of course that is true in many places where the banking is functioning well. I remember when I was living in Poland and I went to a travel agent and booked a package holiday. The agent asked how I would pay and I said "cash" and pulled out 4000 USD. The guy just looks at me and says, "An
American, paying in
cash! Unheard of!", because Americans have this propensity to use plastic money.
I notice this also on the internet. If you buy something on line and the only payment options you are given is credit card, it's almost always an American website. Non-US websites will usually have an option to pay by bank transfer as well. I've actually called up U.S. merchants and asked to pay able to submit payment by bank transfer and some of them just simply refused to accept cash.
Non-Americans travelling in the U.S.A. who are accustomed to using cash (I was just in the U.S.A. for 10 ten days and took 15 000 USD with me), run into problems from the TSA, because these guys, like the U.S. soldiers in Iraq, are so provincial that the idea of people who do things differently from them is simply inconceivable. They run around with their plastic money believing cash is something only criminals use.