[Infowarrior] - Court Says Travelers Can't Avoid Airport Searches

[Richard Forno]

Court Says Travelers Can't Avoid Airport Searches
By David Kravets EmailAugust 10, 2007 | 5:42:37 PMCategories: Privacy

Tsa_logoU.S. airline passengers near the security checkpoint can be searched
any time and no longer can refuse consent by leaving the airport, the
nation's largest federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The decision (.pdf) by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the
circuit's 34-year-old precedent that over time was evolving toward limiting
when passengers could refuse a search and leave the airport after they had
checked their bags or placed items on the security screening X-ray machine.
Citing threats of terrorism, the court ruled passengers give up all rights
to be free of warrantless searches once a "passenger places hand luggage on
a conveyor belt for inspection" or "passes though a magnetometer."

"ŠRequiring that a potential passenger be allowed to revoke consent to an
ongoing airport security search makes little sense in a post-9/11 world,"
Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the unanimous 15-judge panel. "Such a rule would
afford terrorists multiple opportunities to attempt to penetrate airport
security by 'electing not to fly' on the cusp of detection until a
vulnerable portal is found."

The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the limits of the Fourth
Amendment in the context of airport searches. The attorney representing a
man imprisoned for drug possession who tried to leave the airport rather
than be searched is weighing whether to petition the justices to review the
decision.


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http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/court-says-trav.html