As ridiculous as it sounds, NYC is searching one out of every five subway riders for explosives in their backpacks. Any reasonable person with an ounce of common sense knows how imbecilic this is, including Mayor Bloomberg. What this PR stunt proves is that image is more important than protecting innocent commuters and making sure their bodies remain intact.
Just as long as the random searches are “fair” and non-discriminatory, Mayor Bloomberg, in his own mind, is doing his job.
When the NYC subway system is bombed and body parts are flung here, there, and everywhere, I hope the ghost of Lady Macbeth pays Bloomberg a visit. She can tell him that no amount of soap will wash the blood off his hands.
(A personal account)
Ann Althouse: “Currently, the official search procedure is to randomly select one person out of five — the old as well as the young, females as much as males. Actually, I find it hard to believe that they aren’t also noticing men with recently shaved beards and smelling of flower water. But isn’t it better not to mention they are?”
The dousing of flower water is prep work for “Paradise,” where they’ll have eternal sex with virgins.
Update: The object in the photo is what awaits NYC commuters as the cops frisk little old ladies while waving through young Muslim men of Middle Eastern descent carrying backbacks: nail bombs.
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Although they will gladly search the backpacks of anyone who volunteers. Now isn’t that special.
What’s to prevent a terrorist from just detonating a bomb at the place where the bags are checked? That would cause probably as much terror as detonating one inside the subway itself, and the random search policy doesn’t do a thing to prevent it. And devoting so much human resources to implementing random bag searches in the NYC subway system pulls money and/or people away from policing other parts of the city, which opens the door for terrorists to strike there instead.
The random search policy is what Bruce Schneier would call “security theater” — it provides no real improvement in security but does provide some feeling of security to the general public… at least until they start to think about whether it works or not. Sort of like having the armed National Guard troops at the airports right after 9/11. Nobody was probably any safer then, but lots of people “felt” safer. There’s some value to security theater because it improves the morale of the public, which can have an impact on whether terrorists view themselves as having succeeded or not.
But certainly making people feel safer won’t prevent the next bomb from going off, and Bloomberg had better start putting his resources into efforts that will actually improve REAL security and not just people’s feelings about security.
Doesn’t discriminatory searching equal “reasonable search and seizure?” Random is using no reason and is therefore unconstitutional. Searching with discrimination, only people you have reason to search, seems to employ reason and therefore fit within constitutional limits. However, I am no lawyer.
Nardo- I’m not a lawyer either, but my understanding is that “reasonable” in the 4th amendment sense is not interpreted as meaning simply “the opposite of random”. “Reasonable” means that the facts of the situation lead you to conduct a search — in other words, whether or not a search is “reasonable” depends on the case. Merely discriminating before conducting a search need not be Constitutional — in other words, it might and it might not, depending on what the facts of the case are.
I think the real question is, how “random” is a “random search”? One suspects that the folks conducting the search are using some sort of non-random criterion to decide whom to search and whom to let through.
Again, I’m not a lawyer, so I could be totally wrong.
Robert,
Being employed in law enforcement, I can say with assurance that you are 100% correct. We do a lot of things which are no more than “security theater”, and accomplish little more than providing a sense of something being done.
You know how conservatives used to accuse the far-left of “hoping” for a defeat in Iraq to “teach us a lesson”? It looks it’s swung the other way…
This reminds me of the story of the small village in India whose residents were being eaten by tigers. So the village headman, wishing to protect his people, sent the hunters out into the surrounding jungle with instructions to kill every fifth animal, of whatever species, they should chance upon. They did just that. And then all the people lived happily foreverafter.
fredlb
Regarding the subway searches, be sure and check out The Citizen’s Guide to Refusing New York Subway Searches put out by the Flex Your Rights Foundation. It teaches subway riders exactly what they need to know in order to assert their rights when they encounter a subway search.
I love and support our President, but sadly I must admit that due to his spinelessness in identifying islam as the enemy and subsequently handcuffing our already sorry excuses for military commanders, we have lost the Iraq battle. Iraq WILL become another Iran.
Our boys in uniform did the best they could with the pathetic leadership appointed over them and they fought nobly and are heroes in my eyes, but the Iraq battle was lost the minute we failed to level the place to dust and only negotiate with what survived.
We have failed.
Matt, you mean like refuse and turn around, don’t try and get on the train or go home? Or walk to your destination or catch a ride is a cab where many terrorists are employed. Then you and the terrorist can whine and moan over how unfair the bomb searches are.
I agree that this sure sounds like the moderately absurd TSA airport checkpoints, but it seems to me that it might work. At least, there’s some search percentage at which the terrorists would choose other (non-subway) venues, which is the goal. Plainly effectively searching 100% of passengers would do it. Presumably a small fraction of a percent would not. 20 percent might.
I think the best solution is to go to mosques. Take pictures of the terrorists (muslims) going and coming. Write down license numbers. Find out where all of these fools live, watch their actions,tap their phone lines, see who their kids associate with and generally intimidate them into leaving this nation.
Sound anti-American? Good because they are!
Well, you can refuse and turn around, then walk down to the next stop, and turn around again and try the same stop 5 minutes later. So can any terrorist. Or, the terrorist could simply detonate right at the search stop, generating terror all the same.
This procedure does not help, only serves as an abuse of your CONSTITUTIONAL rights, use ‘em or lose ‘em.
http://www.flexyourrights.org/subway/
Abuse of your Constitutional Rights? Where in the Constitution does it say that you have a right to ride the subway or the train? I wasn’t aware of any trains or subways in the 1700s.
Aaaah, but the Constitution does say that you have the right to refuse UNREASONABLE search and seizure. For those with a public school “education” that means you have the right to say “No, you cannot search my bag or my person.”
Oh and one other thing, the Constitution in the Preamble clearly states that we have established that the nation must “provide for the common defense.” Which part of COMMON defense don’t you understand?
Just another waste of police resources, searching people who are obviously not terrorists. It won’t stop the determined terrorist.
Maybe Raymond -12, has a good point. If we put the fear of retribution into the Muslim community, they might not be so keen to aid and abet the terrorists.
While we are on the Constitution, wouldn’t it be nice if there were elected officials who would challenge judical activists up to and including the Supreme Court by using Article III, Section 2:
“…In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such EXCEPTIONS, and under such Regulations as the CONGRESS SHALL MAKE.”
In other words, Congress still maintains final say as to the jurisdiction of the Judicial Branch if only someone had the man berries to challenge some of their stupid rulings.
Abuse of your Constitutional Rights? Where in the Constitution does it say that you have a right to ride the subway or the train? I wasn’t aware of any trains or subways in the 1700s.
Raymond et al. — here’s the Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
So of course this doesn’t provide a Constitutional guarantee of being able to use mass transit whenever and however you like. But it DOES prevent an unreasonable search as being a prerequisite for getting on the subway. (Note that I’m not saying that the random bag search is “unreasonable”… just that if it were, there’d be some 4th Amendment issues.)
The bigger question even then the 4th Amendment is, again, whether this policy actually works or not, and whether resources would be better spent on other things.
There’s a whole lot of interesting background and commentary on this at
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/
Well worth a read because of the importance of the issues involved here.
Matt #13,
We have a constitutional right to get on a plane and not have our bags searched?
We have a constitutional right to get on a subway and not have our bags searched?
Hum. I’ll have to remember that next time I get on mass transit. I’ll be sure to protest, carry signs and refuse (in front of my daughters) to have my bags searched…. because it says it in the constitution. Ack. I’m losing my precious constitutional rights by having my bags searched. Someone help me !
Robert #17 wrote, “But it DOES prevent an unreasonable search as being a prerequisite for getting on the subway.”
I’m glad you wrote the next sentence because I don’t think it’s unreasonable for authorities to search bags before people can get on the subway. If you don’t want to be searched then don’t go on the subway. The people who do go on the subway would then be safer…
Regarding the subway searches, be sure and check out The Citizen’s Guide to Refusing New York Subway Searches put out by the Flex Your Rights Foundation. It teaches subway riders exactly what they need to know in order to assert their rights when they encounter a subway search.
The right to what kris?
Nowhere is there a right to not having your bags searched before going on a subway.
I have my bags searched before I get into the CA State Fair, Sunsplash Waterslide park in Roseville, The plane, The Strawberry Festival in Roseville, CA.
Shucks, I should’ve staged a protest as my “rights” were violated huh.
Guys, you’re missing the point — this is not about political correctness. Any pattern to the searches represents a vulnerability. If it becomes known that grandmas are unlikely to be searched, you recruit a grandma to carry your bomb, or you dupe her into carrying one for you, or you sneak it into her bag, etc.
The only safe strategy for searches requires a high degree of randomness.
Andy S. I’ll raise you one. The only effective way is to either ban packages, or do 100% searches like El-Al airlines does and the likelihood of muslims recruiting old white ladies to carry bombs in a back pack is slim to none.
When was the last time you saw an old white lady carrying a back pack off one shoulder? Come on now.
Andy S. I know. The difficulty is that we have to address lefties sometimes who will say things like “assert our rights when we encounter subway searches”.
We all know that bombs could be planted on grandma’s. For us conservatives though, we know it’s about the security resources we have, and it’s about the best way to use those limited resources to ensure the our safety smartly not purposely stupidly.
There could be random searches on top of “smart” security work (which would be trying to establish profiles). If we don’t have the resources to search “everyone”, then we either do things completely randomly or assert some common sense and smartness into the mix.
And the random searches (on top of the smart searches) could morph into something else later if there is a different pattern later. Obviously that is why airports want you to ALWAYS have COMPLETE control of your bags. That way you know if you are being used or not. You see someone slip something in your bag you are alerting the police. Thanks for playing.
Nice picture. Equally as lethal as the milk jug I left in my fridge for too long when I was in college.
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