Originally Posted by
SATTSO
I don't think anyone really listens to what they do not want to hear...sigh.
You really need to let the victim card go. Seriously.
I've been reading this thread and think you're as guilty of this as you claim others are.
I agree - and I have already stated this - that individuals will screw up and do the wrong thing. It will happen, at TSA, other government organization, corporations. No argument there.
However, all - and I mean ALL - I said was we could report anything we believer to be illegal to LEOs that we happened to find while conducting a search for WEI. He said such things would be suppressed because those items are not defined in our scope. And he is correct to realize that we are not tasked to look for drugs, counterfit IDs, etc.
No, you're not reading what he's saying. He's saying that it should be supressed. Not that it has been supressed. Big difference. You guys are talking past each other.
I have provided multiple cases where TSA has found these items while looking for WEI 1 and the courts do not seem to have a problem with it. Not in one of these cases I cite were the contraband automatically suppressed, as he states they would.
He never stated that it would. He said that it should. Again, big difference.
You're talking about something that is found when looking for something else, such as kiddie porn falling open while looking for a knife. No one's arguing that that evidence isn't accepted. I see disagreement on whether it should be or not, but I haven't seen where it was said that it wouldn't.
And if you read the thread, what I am actually asking for is proof TSA has violated constitutional rights by policy. So far, no one has been able to offer anything other than personal opinion, such as trollkiller and halls.
And when cited with Fofana and Bierfeldt, you repeatedly toss those out. You say it's a one off. Many say that's what TSA always says. "This is an isolated incident" or "There are always a few bad apples. It's not representative of TSA as a whole" blah blah.
TK linked over at PV and on here multiple occasions that TSA directed screeners to look for contraband. Large amounts of cash were one thing that were specifically cited for additional scrutiny. Giving such scrutiny is a violation of the 4th amendment. Why do you think the ACLU sued TSA and TSA was forced to back off of that and change policy? Do you think that if they were in the right that they would back off?
Now one could argue in Bierfeldt that the screener's questioning and so forth was way over the top and wasn't mandated per policy, and I think most would agree with that. However, it was the policy in place at the time that tripped off the whole incident.
Now in the Fofana incident, I see TSA folks arguing that if she just would have "spoken" right, the evidence wouldn't have been tossed. The funny thing is I don't see where in the ruling looking for multiple IDs falls within the scope of the search. If it does, then the opening of the envelopes to find the IDs wouldn't have been a problem. However, in Fofana, we see that looking for multiple IDs doesn't count as part of the search - that when an item is determined to be clean of WEI that the search of said item stops, with the exception of "plain sight" while searching for the prohibited item. The judge didn't make that exception because she had to open an envelope that didn't have WEI in them to find the IDs.
I also think that given the directive that was published that shows that TSA is looking for "other contraband" (again, I'll defer to TK for the link as he has it), I think it's entirely reasonable to take the screener at her word that she was following SOP. At the very least, the airports interpretation of the SOP - as well all know, each airport is different in how it implements it.
And this is where the "consistent inconsistency" thing roars its ugly head. With many interpretations of the SOP, it makes it easy for TSA management to throw the screener under the bus as a rogue screener when something like this goes wrong. And it also allows TSA to take credit if it goes "right."
At the very least, we see an organization that provides little, if any training, on citizens' rights under the constitution, and that there isn't much ongoing training in this area either. SOP or not, this still allows abuses like this to happen. It's an institutional failing that TSA has little interest in fixing. Regardless of whether or not that's official policy, it's looking like it's de facto policy.