Below The Beltway

As I noted last week, a staffer for Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty was detained by TSA officials at the St. Louis airport after he was found carrying cash and Ron Paul literature.

The TSA has now responded to the charges that it’s officers over-reacted:

At approximately 6:50 p.m. on March 29, 2009, a metal box alarmed the X-ray machine at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, triggering the need for additional screening. Because the box contained a number of items including a large amount of cash, all of which needed to be removed to be properly screened, it was deemed more appropriate to continue the screening process in a private area. A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employee and members of the St. Louis Airport Police Department can be heard on the audio recording. The tone and language used by the TSA employee was inappropriate. TSA holds its employees to the highest professional standards. TSA will continue to investigate this matter and take appropriate action.

Movements of large amounts of cash through the checkpoint may be investigated by law enforcement authorities if criminal activity is suspected. As a general rule, passengers are required to cooperate with the screening process. Cooperation may involve answering questions about their property, including why they are carrying a large sum of cash. A passenger who refuses to answer questions may be referred to appropriate authorities for further inquiry.

As I suspected, it was the cash, rather than the literature, that raised the TSA’s suspicions.

As Radley Balko notes, though, this response raises more questions than it answers.

First of all, the TSA’s primary task is supposed to be the screening of passengers and luggage for materials that could compromise the safety of the airplane. How, exactly, does carrying a “large amount of cash” constitute a threat to the safety of the airplane of it’s passengers ? And who, exactly, defines what a “large amount” is ? It sounds like that’s left to the discretion of the screeners, which is only part of the problem.

Second, what, exactly, was it about the incident in question that made the existence of a “large amount of cash” sufficient to cause a reasonable officer to suspect that criminal activity is involved ? Again, it seems like that’s an issue that’s being left to the discretion of individual screeners.

As Balko notes, merely carrying large amounts of cash is not sufficient to detain someone. The TSA seems to admit this when it says that such activity can only be the subject of investigation if criminal activity is suspected. In this case, there’s no evidence, and no reason to believe, that the person in question was involved in criminal activity, which just makes the detention even more outrageous.