Here’s your cocaine, your counterfeit $100 bills, and your child pornography. Have a nice flight sir.
If the flying public refused to take any flights for one week these pinheads could be brought to heel. I’m doing my part. When they took a half tube of toothpaste from me I made my last flight.
TSA: Thousands Standing Around.
This is long overdue. An unusually invasive search that is specifically directed toward terrorist threats can be considered “reasonable” given the potential risk to the general public; however, a search of this type that is not so narrowly directed ceases to be “reasonable”.
The fake passports/cash should put up red flags, especially at an airport. They should've waterboarded that sucker on the spot, to make sure there were no terrorists at his destination waiting for 'em.
The Ron Paul campaigner should have been released immediately....and after he accounts for and pulls down all the signs he's put up, they should give him back his lockbox.
Why, the Hussein Justice Dept has already redefined terrorism. A terrorist is anybody who didn’t vote for Hussein!
NO. TSA is neither authorized nor trained to act on criminal matters pertaining to anything outside a strict formal definition of airport security. Law is far too complex for someone untrained in enforcement thereof to act contrary to one's rights based largely on outright ignorance.
In the case of the Ron Paul activist, there was NOTHING wrong with what he was doing. Travelling with $4700 is NOT ILLEGAL, and the TSA agents had absolutely no grounds for detaining & interrogating him. That they suspected wrongdoing was purely a matter of ignorance, not informed & authorized discretion.
That which legitimately may be suspect, but outside TSA's purview, may not be acted on precisely because if not for the coincidental search AND their deliberate action thereupon nobody would have known nuttin'. There are plenty of cases upholding the 4th Amendment when plain evidence of criminal wrongdoing was suppressed precisely because save for the vaguest suspicion of an unrelated issue the search would never have happened in the first place - and that's exactly what we have here: based solely on the totally lawful activity of taking a commercial flight, the search occurs and turns up something questionable that has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of the search.
Unless TSA agents are suitably trained in matters which are the jurisiction of FBI, DEA, ATF, IRS, etc. then said agents have no business acting on ignorance-driven suspicions. (Commonly understood evidence of violent felonies may be acted on, but that's because ANYONE can reasonably & legally act on them.)
Police officers are experts at bending rules, particularly in the “war on drugs.” As a police officer, I was taught to push the rules of the “Terry search,” which meant that if I articulated fear that a suspect might harm me, I could legally frisk suspects for weapons without probable cause. I know officers who towed cars, again legally, simply so they could “inventory” the contents (technically for safekeeping). In both cases, the real goal was to find illegal drugs and make an arrest.
One must expect law enforcement to use all its available tools. As a law enforcement officer, why deal with the tedious process of probable cause, judicial approval and paperwork?
In order to stop and search any suspect, not just a terrorism suspect, law enforcement need only wait for a person to enter an implied consent area such as a subway or a shopping mall. Their action justified by the “war on terror,” police may then conduct a full search. The true object of the search — most likely drug possession, but any contraband will do — is unrelated to terrorism.
Kudos to an honest cop!
parsy, who has met far too many of the other kind.
Bierfeldt v. Napolitano audio evidence
Perhaps the guy would have made his life easier by just answering the questions at the onset, but after recently seeing the "Never Talk to the Police" Youtube videos, I would probably do the same thing to protect myself. The only thing different I would do is not cave and answer at the end.
Waste of time? Maybe, but this is our only recourse in the police state we have come to live in.
I'll give the guy credit, and say I'm really glad this wasn't me.
We do? I hadn't noticed. I was too distracted by the giant sucking sound generated as SCOTUS snatches from me anything vaguely resembling a civil right.