Exactly. For many years, I passed thru checkpoints without showing anyone an ID or a boarding pass.

In foreign countries, the checkpoint employees merely glance at my passport and boarding pass. They aren't as obsessed with making the big catch as are the TSA screeners and their dimwit bosses.

Even CBP officers here don't scrutinize my passport as thoroughly as the TSA drone. They merely swipe it and stamp it. No blacklight. No loupe. No looking at my passport like they're trying to grade a diamond. Just swipe and stamp.

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Not according to this thread - which has the text of OD-400-54-2. Also discussed in detail in other threads on this board and over in PV.

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Blogdad Bob's comment on PV.

Discussed also on Pilots of America discussion forums.

Much of the "prohibited items list" is mission creep. Many of the items are neither dangerous nor illegal; TSA just puts them on the list to make its job of screening easier. Because it is too hard to tell a snow-globe from a grenade on the x-ray, snow-globes are prohibited. Water is subject to "voluntary surrender" as a prohibited item. Pushing legal, non-explosive, non-weapons onto the prohibited items list makes cheese, dirt, and the artful concealment thereof into "probable cause" for some fuzzy grey-area crime that only the TSA has the SSI to adjudicate, with their airport LEOs as enforcement. To me, that opaque lack of due process what seems so unamerican about TSA.

Catching "prohibited items" is an important performance metric for TSA self promotion, and expanding the list with things like realistic replicas of IED components doesn't do a darn thing towards the weapons, explosives, and incendiaries that are supposed to be TSA's mission. With much of the prohibited items list, TSA has expanded its mission to cover lots of non-dangerous things much more likely to be discovered, which probably makes the screening job much less boring and makes the budget justification process much easier.

In other words, if, out of an abundance of caution, you can put bushes and pointy rocks as suspiciously wolf-like objects on your prohibited items list, you cannot be held accountable for crying "wolf" every week-at-a-glance.

Hmmm, liar (your words), in denial, covering for TSA, etc? So is the document quoted just a fantasy? Is it no longer operative? Why did Blogger Bob at PV quote that document?

Bart,

You stated, definitively, that there is no TSA operational directive proclaiming US currency to be contraband. I was showing you that, in multiple places, including an actual Operational Directive whose source information was posted on the PV by one of the TSA Bloggers, it is defined as "contraband."

Why you are pulling GUWonder into this particular context, I don't know, since I was addressing your definitively worded reply to Boggie Dog and, quite frankly, how you think you look in GUWonder's eyes is not germane to the issue about which I was posting.

A government agency taking over a function that was performed by a private entity is mission creep.

How is that a product of an administrative search? It's not even an illegal item. :confused:

It is contraband according to the TSA Directive. Since I am not aware of any contraband that is legal, "I can't make it any plainer than that."

You ask a valid question and I'll try to give a serious response.

Yes. I do want TSOs to ignore suspicious incidents.

My focus on this is not on the word "ignore" but on the word "suspicious". "Suspicion" used in the context of this thread does not mean some vague, undefined uncertainty. If a LEO is going to be involved, and if TSOs are acting under the color of law, suspicion (or at least the term "reasonable suspicion") has a legal definition. We have plentiful accounts in the news of TSOs demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of what constitutes "reasonable suspicion". There is, I suspect, a good reason for this. I would bet that TSA has provided no practical training to its screener force on what "reasonable suspicion" is and how to apply that standard in their work.

Listing cash as "contraband" and requiring referral to a LEO when a screener encounters a wad-o-cash is a clear example of creating "suspicion" where none exists. Screeners should ignore non-prohibited "suspicious" items not because its gives would-be malefactors a free pass, but because screeners have no concept of which non-prohibited items are, in fact, "suspicious".

TSA's radical blogging skilz make broken links -- remove the ?showComment=..... junk as in the above and they sometimes work.

Absolutely. I'm not questioning the discretion of a police officer, but the liability of a TSO in "reporting" a non-crime to a police officer. My understanding is that a TSO who makes such a report is no different than any other non-LEO citizen. If I approach a LEO and say, "I suspect that man of a crime because he has an illegal radio," I could be liable for doing so. I see no reason why a TSO would not be similarly liable, e.g. "I suspect this man to be a drug dealer because he has $4,300 in a metal box. I'm reporting it to a LEO."

You misunderstand my question, which was: is a TSO subject to liability for making a false police report if, in fact, he does. Example: I carry syringes for which I have a prescription (I need them to inject Imitrex, a migraine medication, for which I also have a prescription). If a TSO calls over a LEO and says, "I've found drug paraphernalia," I believe he should be liable for filing a false police report. Similarly, I carry oxycodone with me all the time, for which I have a prescription (also needed for migraines). If a TSO reports me to a LEO because, "I'm carrying narcotics," I believe the TSO should be liable for making a false police report.

A supervisor is not a LEO. I don't really care to whom a TSO reports, as long as he doesn't attempt to detain me or unlawfully seize my possessions.

Again, this misses the point of my question. A supervisor is not a LEO. I don't care if the employment policies of TSA are such that, as a condition of employment, a TSO or his supervisor is required to report things to a LEO. That is not a defense to making a false police report, nor is it a defense to such other torts as false imprisonment, theft, conversion or abuse of legal process.

A LEO who abuses his discretion can be liable for, among other things, false arrest.

Sorry, but as we lawyers say: move to strike the answer as non-responsive.

My question goes solely to the ability to hold individual TSOs and supervisors liable as a matter of law for their mistakes.

What makes you think I would sue TSA? My question goes to personal liability of the TSO involved, not TSA. It makes not the slightest difference to me what TSA's internal policies are in this regard. Do you think when a mafia hitman says, "I was required by my organization to knock-off that rat," that's a legally-cognizable defense to murder?

I recommend inventory searches as a way to protect the LEO so the arrestee doesn't come back later complaining of their missing $10,000 power tool. :)

Correct.

Yes.

Really probable cause is established by so many things it's hard to describe. There is a whole world of non-verbals missing here. Demeanor, evasiveness, etc.

Based just what on you wrote, I'd refer it to CBP and let them make the call. It's their purview anyway. :D