From Balko, the Transportation Safety Administration has posted a response to the airing of its employees handling of Steve Bierfeldt, the Campaign for Liberty staffer who tried to board a plane with $4700 in cash.  If there’s anything better than the surreptitious recording of the interactions between a citizen and a government employee, fresh out of his job at Dairy Queen and with a shiny set of handcuffs at his waist, it’s the government’s attempt to explain itself.

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.

Now I’m not exactly a stickler about personification, but I still can’t imagine how an X-ray machine can be alarmed.  Does it get scintillated when it sees racy underwear?  The possibilities are scary, and I’m now concern about what my possessions do to the machine, both because I expect X-ray machines to be fairly expensive and I wouldn’t want to break one, and because I fear that my things will bore the machine to tears.  Do machines cry too?  But I digress.

It’s always curious that a government agency, when confronted by indisputable evidence of its wrongdoing, responds that it will continue to “investigate”.  Investigate what?  Once you possess the information necessary to know that your people screwed up, it seems that the time to investigate has past.  I suspect there’s a rule in every Law Enforcement Union contract that requires all governmental agencies to use the word “investigate” at least once in every press release, and they have trademarked the word and get a royalty each and every time.  If so, it’s brilliant.

But the bigger question left hanging by the TSA’s statement is why, from the point of view of our government, is the mere possession of cash a reason to suspect criminal activity?  As a commenter at the TSA’s blog noted, is $4700 the new threshold for the amount of cash a person can carry before becoming a target?  Another questioned how carrying cash in any way implicated the TSA’s mission, as well as the presumption that just because some TSA employee asks doesn’t mean that citizens are obliged to answer.

But the focus on the TSA may push us off course a bit.  Just as our customs inspectors aren’t charged with general law enforcement duties, it hasn’t stopped them from checking laptops for porn.  What makes us think that our many and varied quasi-law enforcement personnel haven’t all suffered from mission creep, seeing themselves as the protectors of some vague governmental interest in ferreting out evils wherever they’re found?

As any merchant will tell you, cash is king.  As any governmental employee will tell you, cash means you’re presumptively a criminal.  This absurd response from the TSA, lacking even the slightest recognition that its role is not to excuse its staff from making up rules based upon the sensibilities of each and every former burger flipper in a blue shirt and enforce them against people who pose no threat to aviation.

Consider this line from the statement:

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.

As Steve Bierfeldt asked, in a polite tone, over and over, says who?  The question remains unanswered.