Originally Posted by
txrus
Maybe I'm missing something (I'm not a lawyer), but wasn't that the essence of the Fofana case-once the screener determined the papers/whatever bore no threat to aviation security, i.e., weapons or explosives, there is no grounds to search further?
I would not want to take this one on since the cartoons were terror-related. Since airport security in a "post-9/11 world" is a touchy topic, I'd want a case that was non-terror-related protected speech. Something like that could tip a judge on the side of 09/11/2001 instead of the side of 12/15/1791. The better case would have been the KHIAI bag.
As far a
Fofana is concerned, the TSO admitted that going through the envelopes was a pure fishing expidition for non-travel-related contraband and that the bag had been cleared before s/he continued to snoop.
In this case, the TSO's were not on a fishing expedition for non-travel-related contraband, but they were doing an "investigation" into something that could,
possibly implicate airport security. I'm not saying that I agree that going through papers one considers "suspicious" is part of a proper WEI search, but a good test case, this is not.