Did we mention we're searching your car?

Beginning this week, Charlotte Douglas International Airport officials will offer you the courtesy of letting you know your car is being searched.

The only reason they're fessing up, of course, is because they got caught.

According to a WCNC/Observer report over the weekend, airport employees have been searching valet-parked cars for the past year and a half without the consent or knowledge of car owners. The reason we know now? When one traveler was paying her valet bill inside at the airport last week, she noticed through the window an employee with a flashlight looking through her trunk.

Update, 4:45 p.m.: Interim Aviation Director Brent Cagle told the editorial board Monday that the airport will suspend curbside valet parking – along with what he called the “visual inspections” –for 5-10 days until officials can determine the best way to notify travelers about the practice. Cagle, who became interim aviation director in July and was hired by Charlotte Douglas last year, was not involved in enacting the policy. But, he said Monday: “We understand now that we should have done a better job.”

The searches were part of the airport's security plan. Each U.S. airport is responsible for submitting such plans to the Transportation Safety Administration, according to the TSA's Bob Burns, who addressed the issue on an agency blog in July. The TSA approves the plans, but no TSA agents participate in car searches, Burns said.

Not all airports handle the searches the same way, according to Mother Jones magazine, which wrote on the issue in July. At the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston and Nashville airports, the searches are done with the car's owner present and consenting. But the search issue first popped up earlier this year because of one airport in Rochester, N.Y., where a woman returning from a trip found a placard on her car windshield saying her car had been searched.  

The searches thus far would seem to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which says the government can't search without suspicion. But Indiana University law professor Fred H. Cate says maybe not. "The Supreme Court has made an exception to searching items that you've voluntarily given to someone else - like a car," he told Mother Jones.  

The key may be notification. If a sign is present at the valet check-in letting you know your car may be searched, you are likely offering consent by choosing to park there, anyway. But you have to know first, and Charlotte Douglas officials waited a year and a half too long to give travelers that information.

Make no mistake - the searches themselves can be a legitimate security tool involving cars that are parked close to airport terminals. But there doesn't seem to be a valid security reason for keeping customers in the dark. Rather, it seems more like an arrogance we're seeing too often in government lately - that as long as you're doing something in the interest of public safety, the public doesn't necessarily need to know about it. 

Peter St. Onge