The layout's okay but you switching sides is really messing with my head (at the end of a very long day!).

Okay, I'll play anyway. TSA screeners, although Federal employees, are not detectives or general purpose crime-stoppers. They have no basis to decide when a sum of money becomes "suspicious." They are charged only with keeping dangerous things off aircraft, and only because aircraft are considered vulnerable in ways that other infrastructure isn't.

Giving government employees permission to involve police based on a vague suspicion (unless directly related to their job of keeping dangerous things off aircraft) becomes absurd if you apply this to any other scenario. Say a TSA screener named Fred lives next door to Barney. Barney comes home in a new sports car one day. Fred might "suspect" that Barney can't afford the car and might therefore be involved in some illegal business. Should Fred call the police in his official position as a gov't employee and report Barney?

I hope you'd say no. And note that in this case, Fred probably knows a lot more about Barney - what kind of job he has, what kind of purchases he usually makes, whether his kids are in college, etc - than Fred would know about a passenger who comes through the checkpoint. If anything, Fred is in a better position to be suspicious of Barney's sports car than of some person's cash. Still, the answer is no.

Carrying cash through an airport and buying a new car are both indications of unusual financial dealings that might - or might not - be linked to something illegal. Neither threatens the safety of an aircraft. Neither should be any of Fred's business.

Let's go further. Fred quits the TSA and gets an gov't office job. He's still a federal employee. Should any employee of the US gov't be able to call the police in their official capacity and report anything they think is unusual? Is that the society you want to live in?

As it turns out, Barney's rich uncle died and left him some money on the condition that he buy a car with it. Why should Barney have to explain that to the police (or provide proof) just because Fred is a busy-body?

What if it's not money? Fred, now a senior gov't consultant, works from home a lot these days. He notices that Barney's wife Betty usually leaves the house at 8:30 and returns at 4. (Fred spends a lot of time looking out the window. And Betty is hot. ) On Thursday, he doesn't see Betty at all. Or again on Friday. Should Fred call the police in his official gov't capacity because he suspects that Barney has killed Betty and buried her in the backyard? (TK - I'm sticking to your ground rules. Fred has only observed someone coming and going; the "obviously illegal" part is only in Fred's mind.)

With a fertile imagination (read, paranoia), almost anything can be suspicious. It's natural to think "I wonder what that's all about?" But TSA screeners using their position to satisfy their curiosity, in the guise of "helping out law enforcement," leads to some very ugly intrusions into people's lives and privacy.