(This may more properly belong in Newstand?)
This is an article about a woman who was busted for pot after an intrepid screener found a pipe during a carry-on search.
Perhaps some of our legal beagles can weigh in on the significance or non-significance of this as it relates to detention/confiscation/arrest of people for stuff found during screening that has nothing at all to do with civil aviation security.
While I'm not ready to break out a bottle of bubbly and celebrate the restoration of the Constitution at our nation's airports over this single (and probably narrow) ruling, I did find one thing of note:
[Metro Court Judge Cristina ] Jaramillo's ruling, filed last month, explained that she believed Baca's questioning went from investigatory to custodial and thus required officers to read her her Miranda rights when officers seized her driver's license and moved her to a more confined side room at the airport.
Granted, this ruling appears to have been directed at the cops and not the TSA, but this one quote seems to imply that the taking of a driver's license -- as is often done by TSA screeners at checkpoints (and well-documented on FT) -- seems to raise the ante. In my wildest dreams this ruling might help put the clamps on the TSA's practice of requiring (demanding?) information from a DL from time to time.
I also found the comment about "moving her to a confined side room" to be interesting. Isn't this what happens during a "private screening?"
I would expect the DHS and TSA lawyers to be pouring all over this ruling -- but I doubt it.
Let the FT debate begin!
Entire Article: