Please, you may not like them, but, they are the team that has to help us if we are to get it. The ones they beat will be gone.

If you think they are ignorant, inform them. But, we will need them on our side.

Incredible that you would say that TSA should get a warrant for every person that they search. It won't bother me to wait, but the pax well lets just say it would end airtravel. I can think of several instances that they have. Here is one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062300783.html


I never said that it was in the constitution. I just said that it was a basic function of government.

Not really. There are countless instances where intelligence has failed or come up empty.

I did not say TSA does not delay things. I said that if they start screening us again that it will cause more delays. TSA is not staffed to handle things in the manner in which you would like.

:rolleyes: Let's hear your explanation of how your link is an example of SCOTUS making law.

It will be interesting to see exactly how many do come down on our side. I fear that DHS/TSA will get to them first with a huge dose of Kool-Aid.

Go ahead - file for a warrant. I would love to see TSA use "purchasing a ticket for travel by air on a common carrier between the several United States" as reasonable PC that the crime of terrorism is about to occur...I think that would make for some highly amusing court proceedings.

Many ran as strict constitutionalists, claiming a need to return to founding principles. I plan to remind mine of those promises at every opportunity.

It is really interesting that this issue cuts so broadly. TSA has become a true equal-opportunity abuser. Privacy advocates, constructionists, anti-activist judge (aka original adminsitrative searches), objectors to amateur physicians, women's issues advocates including molestation, sexual harassment and breast cancer patients, any cancer survivor for that matter, people that do not want to get cancer, mothers with little children, advocates for the elderly, pilots, flight attendants, Sikhs, Muslims and Pentecostal women with long dresses and hair, prosthesis wearers, not an insignificant number of news people, folks who do not like to be yelled at, and pretty women in tight clothes that seem to get disproportionally chosen. Everyone is on board except the hopelessly compromised government employees and the "travel naive." (Known in less polite terms as "The Kettles.") And a holiday travel season full of them is now just a few days away.

Yes, but there is a means by which searches like "hot pursuit" are justifiable within the constitution: the amendment provides that the government may not perform or subject individuals to "unreasonable searches."

The precise text of the Amendment, which puts things into context is:
Note that the amendment is not restricted to where we live, but includes "papers and effects," which I would argue include the content of my briefcase, and the contents of my computers, which DHS claims it can inspect at any time I happen to be within 100 miles of a border, or when leaving or entering the country.

So, the question remains: when does a search become unreasonable? When one decides to fly in a commercial airplane? When one decide to travel by commercial airplane? When one decides to travel in interstate commerce? When one decides to travel to the local grocery store?

I think I know the answer, and it is very different from what DHS says it is.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm still trying to learn. I am not a lawyer. I have one at the ready, just because you never know. What is done at the airport exactly sounds like the text of the 4th Amendment. I do not feel secure in my person or papers at the airport.

Are we mixing detentions and searches?

If the LEO witnesses or hears something is entering a building in order to take the person into custody a search?

Yes, it's a search, at least if the building is that person's house. It's both a search, of the house, and a seizure, of the person. Normally an arrest warrant would be needed, but an LEO may still be able to enter the house to arrest without a warrant if there is probable cause and there are exigent circumstances, such as the urgent safety issue requiring quick action in Richard's example.

If the person in Richard's example entered a public building, then the detention, or the seizure of the person, would not require a warrant, but the officer would still need probable cause to arrest. It would not be a search under the Fourth Amendment, however, because it is a public place.

I don't believe it is a search. I don't think the officer would have authority to go searching though desk drawers just because somebody ran into the building. Anything in plain sight would of course be fair game, but I think that if the officer went hunting for something besides the suspect it would be tossed.

I understand the murderer and the screaming woman. But tell me what I have done when I present myself at the CP that TSA feels the need to search me?? A LEO would have NO probabale cause for ANY search.

Not just a search but a search that in either form, WBI or Enhanced Pat Down, is extremely invasive.

In Richard's example above about an LEO who entered a building to rescue a woman screaming "He's trying to kill me" while being chased by a murderer. The police would be entering the building to rescue the woman and arrest the man chasing her. It's a public place, so the man would have no expectation of privacy and the police's hunt for the murderer would not be a search. As to the man running, he has no expectation of privacy and it is not a search. If they expanded their goal from arresting the man, who had no expectation of privacy in the public location, to rummaging through employees' desks, and these employees did have an expectation of privacy in their papers, that would constitute a search as to the employees.

I see you are already planning on having an issue. Will you be having a local Newsteam with you? Have you thought about driving to avoid this insidious pre-planned assault on your persona?

I agree these are the questions. The 4th Amendment is not absolute: it doesn't prohibit all searches or require warrants for all searches. Every 4th Amendment case is basically balancing "legitimate government interests" against "legitimate privacy interests".

Correct, but the point is that anything "in plain sight" inside the building would not have been "fair game" is the officer went into the building without a warrant and without exigent circumstances.

And there's a major similarity to TSA searches here: if a TSO sees something illegal "in plain sight" during a bag check, the courts currently consider it "fair game" despite the fact that it wouldn't have been in plain sight but for the administrative search. So these cases are not as different as they may seem.