Betcha can't though.

Unless you mean walking into the secure area. They'll never find you there based on past performance.

Then let's take a hypothetical here and produce the totality of the situation. A TSO notifies you that somebody has what's obviously a very large amount of money in their bag (say, $20k). The original reason that the TSO went into the person's bag turned out to be nothing (an odd-looking shadow that looked suspicious on x-ray). There's nothing else suspicous about this person.

The person showed the TSO a boarding pass for a domestic flight to a city that could be an international gateway (e.g., JFK, MIA, LAX), but could also be the termination of his travel.

He's polite and answers all questions you ask about his identity. However, when you ask "where did you get the cash?", "are you traveling internationally", and "did you file the form to declare that cash", he politely refuses to answer any of those questions.

Where are you now? What can you do?

You can't hold his refusal to answer the questions against him, nor can you use it to create probably cause or even reasonable suspicion.

You know he hasn't commited the crime of taking money out of the country without filing the required papers because he hasn't left the country yet.

Could you even find out from the airline if he was connecting internationally without a warrant?

Does carrying that amount of money constitute probably cause to suspect he might be a drug dealer? If so, what would be the next step of the "investigation" if he refused to answer any question that would either admit or deny that fact (and he should not answer any such question for reasons that have been discussed numerous times)?

How can they stop me?

Okay, let me try again:

AFAIK, it's not yet illegal to take a Tom Clancy novel on an aircraft. ... Carrying cash on a domestic flight is no more less illegal/ suspicious/immoral than carrying a TC novel.

Better? :D

It is interesting that I have seen in a few posts about the TSA calling an LEO when "a large amount of cash" is present and that it is in their mandate. 100% of the time I travel I have over $10k in cash and 0 times TSA involved an LEO. Not that it would worry me 1 bit, just an observation. :cool:

How many times does the TSO play junior G-man to ascertain the amount and reason for you engaging in a lawful activity?

*****

I have to disagree.

My concern is that TSA is obviously engaged in mission creep, seeking to involve itself in areas that have absolutely nothing to do with its rationale for existence - keeping weapons, explosives and incendiaries off of airplanes.

The forced ID requirement and the inclusion of cash as a "contraband" item are two of the more egregious examples of an agency that has no qualms about infringing on the rights of citizens. Additionally, any resource, time or concentration spent on these and other extraneous concerns takes away from the the basic screening function TSA is charged to perform. TSA management either can't grasp this simple concept or doesn't care. I would think that TSA would want to have a higher pass rate on the Red Team tests of its basic responsibility before branching out to add other, non-essential tasks to its screeners' task list. However; that would require TSA management to actually care about the safety and security of air travel, instead of caring about building a bureaucratic enterprise.

*****

Yes, I think such incidents and items should be ignored.

Does the TSA employee handbook require that TSA employees be little tattle-tale, rat snitches regarding non-proscribed items? :confused:

Performing ID checks and touting fraudulent ID and drug catches are indications of mission creep. For the most part, I would want TSO's to ignore items that are not prohibited airside.

*****

Uh, no it hasn't.

Perhaps one can argue that it's been around since Comrade TSA infected the checkpoint, but it definitely has not always been a part of checkpoint screening.

An Operational Directive published by your agency specifically makes United States currency an item of contraband.

Do you agree with that?

Question for LEOs:

If a TSO "refers" something to a LEO, such as the pax who had a perfectly legal scanning radio, or the pax with $4,000 traveling domestically, does that constitute filing a false police report? In other words, if a TSO calls over a LEO to investigate something "illegal" that proves to be innocuous (and obviously so), is there any basis in criminal law for going after the TSO?

There is, by the way, a basis in civil law -- TSA can be sued on the Federal Tort Claims Act (someone had previously raised the question of sovereign immunity -- the FTCA is the answer). A TSO who says, "Tell me about this $4,000 or I'm going to call over a LEO and you can explain to him," is arguably liable, at minimum, for abuse of process.