I shouldn't have included the razor blade in my example. I was just trying to emphasize the idea that you'd be seeing something that you were likely to suspect to be cocaine.

Okay, so when you're doing the search with an X-ray, you'll ignore anything that looks like drugs or drug paraphernalia, and stick to looking for weapons, explosives, and incendiaries. Great! That's what I and many other people think you should do. None of that other stuff is any of your business. Congress would not have authorized warrantless searches for arbitrary indications of possible wrongdoing; they authorized you to search for weapons, explosives, and incendiaries. Searching everyone who passes to look for any indication of wrongdoing is unamerican and unconstitutional, no matter how much crime it would allow you to detect. Your job is not to detect crime; it's to keep dangerous items off airplanes.

Wait a minute -- that directly contradicts what you just wrote. Now, you're saying that when you search a bag, if you see weapons, explosives, incendiaries, or drugs, you refer to a supervisor. Call it what you like; that's as much a search for drugs as it is a search for weapons, explosives, and incendiaries. Why do you suppose you've been trained to take the same action when you find something that looks like it might be and illegal drug as you've been trained to take when you find somethign that looks like it might be a weapon? Why do you suppose you've been indoctrinated with the idea that it's a search specifically for weopons, explosives, and incendiaries, when in reality, a number of other things are treated exactly the same in the course of your searches?

And what you don't seem to understand is that even if you call it a search for potatoes, and you really think you're looking for potatoes, if you have a list of other things that you're supposed to watch out for, then you're really searching for those other things. There's just no way around it. You look in a bag, and you ignore everything except for certain things. That's a search for those things.

Okay, so you do treat illegal drugs the same as weapons when searching people and their belongings. Again, call it a search for potatoes if you want, but it's clear that you're searching for weapons, explosives, incendiaries, drugs, and likely a few other things. There is a nearly-nearly infinite number of things you are not searching for, but according to you, Ron, and the TSA operational directive I quoted above, drugs are not on that list. They're on the same list as the dangerous items.

If you were hand-searching someone's bag and you saw three cameras along with photographs of that person smashing a store window, crawling through the hole, and leaving with a bag of cameras, you'd probably ignore it and move on, right? It would look like an indication of transporting stolen goods, but it's not on the list of things you're told to look out for, right? You could do the same thing when you see something that looks to you like illegal drugs, but you do not, because those are on the list of things you're told to look out for, right?

Look, I don't want to overemphasize the drug issue, here. Full disclosure: I whole-heartedly believe that our nation's prohibition of the drugs we prohibit now has been even more of a failure than our previous prohibition of another drug: alcohol. Same gang violence, same corruption, same making criminals out of good people, same lack of control, same lack of regulation. The difference, it seems, is that we have a better system of propaganda for convincing ourselves that this is working when it is not. 40 years of drug prohibition, and no improvement. I volunteer a good deal of time working toward improving our drug laws. It's something I feel very strongly about. But in this case, what I'm most concerned with is the fact that we've allowed TSA to conduct a fishing expedition under the guise of an attempt to keep dangerous items off of airplanes.

Even the TSA staff who perform the searches admit that they'll stop and take further action when they see, for instance, something that looks like it might be drugs that are illegal for some people to possess in some places, while they're searching our belongings. TSA proudly announces the fact that it finds evidence of identity theft, credit card fraud, passport fraud, immigrations violations, and possession of controlled substances, when "searching for weapons, explosives, and incendiaries".

Those are all worthy endeavors (with the exception of drugs, which would be better off legal and regulated, as we learned with the end of alcohol prohibition). We could surely find even more evidence of such wrongdoing if we allowed our government agents to stop everyone who passes other places -- highway entrance ramps, for instance -- and search them for evidence of wrongdoing. However, our courts have ruled that such fishing expeditions are unconstitutional. In this nation, we aren't supposed to stop all the good people just to look for the few bad people. TSA staff don't seem to get this. They seem to think that living in a police state is desirable.