transportation security administration's policy regarding secondary airport searches due to the government's refusal to provide the petitioner or even the district court with a copy of the t s a policies the district court was unable to judge the passengers must submit to an initial screening through the t s a security station and if they wish to fly out of sea tac airport you're on i think the record doesn't show why my client was selected for the secondary search well i guess that's my question if everybody has to be searched and this fully what difference does it make that your client was searched more intensively than the majority of the other people who were also searched prior to boarding the aircraft i think your honor that administrative searches of the official in the field in fact davis that the decision to search the carry on luggage of a particular passenger was not subject to the discretion of the official in the field the testimony of mr peterson was that he did think that that the government failed in its burden to show that and i think that the government failed to provide the policy because the the court didn't look at the written policy even though the district judge in the  we don't even know if mr march has was selected according to this policy because we don't know what the policy is we don't know if he was searched according to the policy because we don't know what it is and finally we don't know if the policy itself contains blatantly unconstitutional but i guess the question i was pursuing and i'm not sure you answered it was what difference does it make if everybody has served what you're really complaining about is that the search of your client was more intrusive more that everybody has to be searched but there is randomness in the sense that not everyone gets selected to do the secondary search and some of the case of the two terry versus davis when terr they want to get on the airport on the airplane at least to the extent of having to go through what i'll call the primary searches that's true that's true your honor but the it as recognized by this very court in the u s which is one hundred twenty four thousand five hundred people and then subject them to a more intrusive to carry sort of stop and they could be doing that on the basis of race or religion or or or any other reason and so i think we understand what you want to resign from or hire one question i didn't see in thank you good morning your honor today please the court my name is mike lang assisting united states attorney for the western district of washington this case is about balancing public stake against the rights of the individual in a reasonable manner this was a reasonable  was no more expensive than what millions of air travelers are subjected to every day around this country and i just don't happens that in the process of this search contraband evidence of a crime was found during a legitimate reasonable and ministry of search provide the t s a policies in fact we did not refuse to do that on the record it's clear on that of page eighty two where the court asked i mean one of the things would be that the court would look at the the t s a policies in camera i answered yes of course i understand your position and the cour this case what the court noted is that the entire select that mr marquez was in a lane in the tire lane of people who were selected at random who were going to be searched no matter what the screener who searched and mr peterson had no idea why they were selected didn't even know if they set off the magnetometer did not care because he was going to focus on the individual in front of him there was no need for individual i suspicion in this case and because of that the stand they began the screening was minimally sixteen of the record if someone tried to leave they would follow them but they would not try to arrest them there was no testimony by anybody suggesting that they were there to look for evidence of a crime and that is a key distinction in all the cases including the currency case cited by coun that was the greatest concern of this court in the hundred twenty four thousand dollars currency that heard that the the search there was actually they were using an administrative search and trying to find generalized evidence of crime and because of that by electing not to fly mr peterson testified that this was a search limited for weapons or explosives go to court anything that could bring a plane down and when you start when you did the hand wand over mr marquez and it alerted to the to the ribbon he was concerned he tried to try to touch it through what he testified to was sporting resolve the alarm and it was at that point that he felt the hard object and when he felt the heart just heard object he based on his training and experience was concerned that it was before something that could bring the plane down because of that he was required to resolve the alarm and make sure that mr marquez was not carrying something that could harm the passengers here as focused on weapons and explo alerts then you have to resolve the alarm and mr peterson had to resolve it by touching it and examining the object just last week himself that he had no problem whatsoever with that mr peterson touching that area in order to try to resolve the alarm to see what was beneath the rhetoric and in fact the judge pointed out you know if people can just say well that's a rivet and nobody can go any further that of course terrorists or those intending to do harm to our allies are going to hide company or the the organization that selected people randomly that is what was in the records and if they were screened or selected by the airline mr peterson said we didn't have anything to do with that we that they screeners could select people at random the only time we do that is when they are in the slow work day and we can select people but that wasn't the case here it was the airlines through whatever policy they have in place that elects people judge classic that the only reason he can think that would be passengers a random postdocs research of passengers for weapons or explosives does not violate the fourth amendment fourth amendment law as it has been interpreted by its ministry of service is basically a balancing test between the public psychic toll that would take would last for years on top of that you have to think about what can cause that destruction i'm not alive and it was a box cutter with richard reid it was a shoe box with ahmed respond it was liquid nitroglycerin bombs can be plastic they could feasibly bypass the first level of security you have to balance that against the intrusion this is a search that last about thirty seconds it involves running and won over a person for a short period of time it involves a visual inspection in light of that the the district court thank you thank you very much characterizations they flat out refuse to produce but your honor i think that's the point is the district court erred by not ordering it to be produced because we don't the government there's an oral argument that we all know it's not a racial times like today when the nation does face these threats it's when we have to be extra careful to protect our precious constitutional rights airport security is obviously correctly regarded as highly secretary of defense donald rumsfeld members