Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
Ok. So, let me try and rephrase to see if I understand you correctly.
You have a list of items which, if you happen to discover them in the context of a legal administrative search for WEI, you are required to report to a supervisor. This list includes drugs and child pornography, but does not include possible violations of copyright law. Is this correct?
Correct.
Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
If so ... somewhere along the way, someone has made the determination that some potential violations of federal law are worth pursuing at a checkpoint, while others are not. Clearly it's not your decision to make. But the fact that you're not seeking any violation of any federal law in the context of your search creates an interesting question: how did the powers that be decide what to look for and what not to look for? That decision is what, in my completely uninformed and probably idiotic opinion, makes it look like TSA is searching for drugs and such.
Wish I could answer that, and not just for you.
Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
(And I'm not sure I buy the "we can't determine the legality of a DVD in a bag search environment" argument. Unless you've got a chemical laboratory hanging out at the checkpoint, there's no way for a LEO to determine whether a large bag of white powder is, or isn't, a legal substance. Heck, if you find suspected child pornography, there's no way for a LEO on the spot to determine whether or not the individuals depicted were of legal age.)
Field Test Kits are reasonably cheap to purchase and also quite accurate. Law Enforcement has been using them for years. Stick a small sample into a plastic vial, break the ampule in there, and watch the pretty colors. Its not 100% but it is more than enough for “reasonable belief”.
Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
Practical question. If I present a random bag to you as the X-ray operator, how hard is it for you find an arbitrary yet legal reason to call for a hand search? I'm thinking of the parallel situation in law enforcement where a patrol officer who suspects greater wrongdoing can pull over a driver for a relatively minor offense (broken taillight, rolling stop at a stop sign, etc.), and use that as a pretense to conduct the "real" search. In short: how easy would it be for a TSO to find a perfectly legal reason to call for a secondary search, if they suspected that there was a secondary item (e.g. drugs) that could be found?
As an XRay operator I am usually not paying any attention to the passengers at all. My focus is on the screen in front of me. So, while I suppose I could use just about any pretense to direct a bag check, doing so for a particular individual would be difficult. It would have to be really slow on the checkpoint for me to actually connect a particular bag with a certain passenger.
Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
I seem to recall that the directive to refer large quantities of cash was supposedly changed recently ... at least, I read it here, so it must be true, right?
Have your instructions changed in this regard?
Mine have not. We continue to refer large amounts of cash to the checkpoint supervisor. The directives for supervisors and managers may have changed, but not where I would notice.