I suppose a TSO can deny you access to airside if they suspect cocaine. However, their only recourse is calling a LEO.

And how does one package something to make it look like you are smuggling drugs? Wouldn't the smart trafficker place it in a flour bag to avoid suspicion?

The average person does not know (and is not required to know) how drugs are packaged for smuggling. As such, you cannot hold her responsible for packaging an innocent product inside another. Much the same way that you can't hold a TSO responsible for letting drugs through a checkpoint since the TSA does not provide its TSO's with any drug identification training.

1. It's questionable whether seeing the powder would = reasonable suspicion. A TSO (or a LEO for that matter) has no training on what drugs "look like". To the trained eye, flour, for example, would never look like drugs.

2. Even if you got past #1, and you wanted to question, it should be a matter of testing the flour, seeing that it's not drugs, and then sending the individual on their way with an apology. Unfortunately field tests are very, very poor (and they more or less will show any substance as testing positive as being anything you want it to test positive for).

Full Disclosure: I'm an advocate for drug legalization. But in the meantime I'm an advocate for federal and local and state agents to follow the Constitution.

maybe so but you can at least question her. flour packed into condoms is out of the ordinary. what if another passenger noticed and maybe thought anthrax or something. might cause a panic.

Why question her? ETD it and when it comes back negative (for explosives and anthrax), then send her on her way.

Do you believe that a drug smuggler or an anthrax carrier is going to tell a TSO the truth?

That...would be awesome. Especially if "escorted" by stormtroopers.

"Don't be so proud of this checkpoint terror you've constructed. The ability to x-ray a baggie is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

Then he chokes all the TSOs for their insolence.

Then I'd say it was that other idiot passenger's problem. We can't go around worrying about what everyone else might think and might do.

"You don't need to see his ID. Move along."

Wait -- let's not confuse people. Everyone has the right to question anyone else, just not the authority to compel that person to answer, correct?

agree but that is exactly what we do. that is why hysteria created a tsa. 9-11 has broken our backs and spirit. no one looking to bring down an aircraft is going to walk through the front gate with a bomb. the guys that took control of the planes that day with boxcutters could have done the same damn thing with knives and hot coffee taken from first class. unfortunately not much can be done if someone is intent on bringing down a plane. that is why i always say the whole tsa thing is a smoke job.

first off, thanks for all of your input here and elsewhere but now for the "you know me".....

you reference that if "we find a large amount of cash money to report it to the STSO" so "me being me"....what defines a large amount as that is totally subjective. $1,000 to someone who is poor is a large amount yet $15,000 to someone traveling to las may not be (and back in the day when i was working and flush, that was me) so who makes the call as to what is large and what is not?

That would've been a lot better, but sadly, no. I'm not... really... too sure what the dude was doing, or where he was going, but for some reason unbeknownst to me he wanted to fly in a Darth Vader costume. Probably just to see what we'd do.

Darth Vader, apparently, prefers TravelPro luggage�

He came, his suitcase was x-rayed, he left. That's about the whole of it. He got a lot of stares from other passengers, and a couple of the real geeks in the workforce thought it was pegging out the awesome-o-meter like Chuck Norris and Mr. T walking into a bar together, but there wasn't any kind of excitement around it.

At least when Elvis came through, he had to be hand-wanded.

Dunno. Couldn't tell ya'. And since you pointed out that I didn't address it, there's nothing in the procedures about that one, either.

TSA defines that category. Our procedures have fairly clear-cut scenarios in which law enforcement authorities are notified and/or summoned. For example, on our prohibited items list (I think LoganTSO actually mentioned this once in a previous post) there's another category to the right of the specific item, and a checkbox in it denotes whether or not LEOs are notified.

TSA makes it pretty plain what gets an LEO call and what does not. They want LEOs to be called for large sums of cash (I suppose on the off-chance that it's more than 10K and they're flying out of the country, to ensure that it's been properly declared) and suspected narcotics, and not for, say, unvaccinated pets.

You probably also haven't seen me on the EoS Blog much at all lately, to be honest I think the thing I said to Irish about the gloves in the Scabies thread is the first thing in a while.

Remember, Phil, a lot of people like to speak all folksy-like. I do, too. Every single word isn't weighed against the legal balance before it's thrown out there. Obviously they don't know that it's an illegal drug, and that it's just suspected, but that's beside the point for the scope of the comment in the thread. I, personally, really despise legalese. I had to ask one of my managers that I was talking to the other day to cut it out and just speak plainly, because everything he said to me was being weighed against a legal balance, and that gets under my skin when someone does it to me.

I just have a more laid-back way of doing things. Even at the checkpoint, I'm far more likely to say "Come on in, man" at the WTMD than I am to say "Please step forward, sir."

Call me folksy.

Kind of.

That is correct. Unless you want to get legally technical and demand she should have said "...we find things such as items we suspect of being drugs..."

Bag checks don't get called on something we see in the x-ray and say "Hm. Y'know, I think that's a bag a pot. Go check it out." It'd be called on the bottle of water next to it, and then, going into the bag, you see the bag of pot beside the bottle of water. At that point, the hands are tied. Procedurally, we must notify the STSO who must notify the LEOs.

That's kind of contextual, and, it seems to me, kind of naive. I think she's speaking specifically about how 'big or small' the drugs are, but it's quite plainly evident that "illegal is illegal and we can't just overlook it, sorry," is not the universal policy of everything that we might find when it comes to the TSA. If that were the case, then there would be procedures for reporting suspected pirated DVDs and suspected unvaccinated pets and suspected illegal aliens and the like. Since there's not, it seems to me to pretty much invalidate her statement if taken from an absolutely literal point of view.

Look at it this way:

A WTMD alarm indicates that 'something that might indicate wrongdoing.' The person is then sent to secondary screening for an HHMD, in effect, 'questioned.' Then, 'if all is kosher' and the alarm is resolved, the person is let go to head off on their way.

That's why I eat the peppers.

Condoms filled with anthrax or are possible, but are they probable?

Or could they really be... weisswurst?

Dean, when we tell TSA staff that when you're performing your warrantless search of our possessions for dangerous items, you shouldn't bother to investigate things you see that might indicate wrongdoing, we're told that you simply can't ignore those things. But this isn't the case. You overlook lots of things that might indicate wrongdoing. Why do you suppose your employer feels the need to have you stop looking for dangerous items and investigate the possibility of illegal drugs in someone's bag? Clearly, it's not because you're unable to overlook things like that which might indicate wrongdoing.

My personal opinion could get me in trouble.