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?
Originally Posted by
TSORon
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.
That isn't quite what I was trying to ask; the identity of the owner of the bag isn't where I'm heading with this. Let me rephrase.
Suppose you're on the X-ray and you see what appears to be a stash of drugs in a bag. As I understand your procedures, you're not allowed to call for a bag check just because you suspect there are drugs in the bag. How hard would it be for you to find another, defensible reason to call for a bag check on that bag? Something along the lines of "gee, that looks like a screwdriver that's under seven inches, but maybe we should pull the bag anyways to check how long it really is" ... and now you've created an excuse to find the drugs.
Basically, I'm wondering if an overzealous TSA could find a way to conduct primary searches for things outside of TSA's official scope, yet justify them on the basis of permitted actions.