Originally Posted by
Section 107
I appreciate and enjoy the tenacity, but questions about me are simply not germane to the issue of whether TSA has authority to search and inspect persons inside the sterile/secure areas.
They became germane when you opened the door asserting your personal knowledge about the TSA and its workings without any back-up. You provided just your unsupported statements, which is why it became important to understand your ability to speak authoritatively as to those positions. Here are just some of the statements you have made in this thread:
- In practice, for areas other than screening checkpoints or access points to the secure, AOA or SIDA areas, through policy and procedure TSA chooses (generally) to only search persons in those areas upon reasonable suspicion.
- Again, in a sterile, secure, SIDA or AOA area, TSA as an agency (but not a TSO) has authority to inspect at any place and any time it desires although TSA chooses to use reasonable suspicion at areas other than screening checkpoints or access areas.
- I know that a TSO has no authority, with or without reasonable suspicion, to search anyone outside of his/her assigned checkpoint or access point area.
- Even though it may conduct such searches, for a variety of reasons, in practice the agency chooses by policy and procedure not to exercise its authority to search persons outside of the PSCs and secure/SIDA access point areas without reasonable suspicion.
- Yes, there have been multiple occasions on which arriving international passengers have had to be cleared upon arrival before being allowed into the rest of the sterile areas. No, I am not at liberty to specify those occasions.
- Theoretically, the sworn LE elements within TSA could have assisted the agency requesting the detainer instead of CBP but I am confident TSA would not do so except in the most unusual and exigent of circumstances.
- What is important here is what does TSA (and airport operators/law enforcement) believe the law says. I have stated what I know they* believe;
- I am sharing what I know, and believe, to be the understanding of persons responsible for executing airport security programs.
Originally Posted by
Section 107
As I have said before, I agree in general with you in regards to the 4th and the exemptions for administrative searches. But when it comes to airports, and in particular the areas under the security program, the government operates under a different understanding of the rules from the general rules of administrative searches.
Balderdash. The TSA does not have the authority to use the administrative search exception to conduct a search in the sterile area of a passenger except if that person is proceeding through the screening checkpoint to enter the sterile area or is boarding an aircraft. What
PTravel posted is on all fours with what I have been saying for over two months in this thread (and for years in other threads).