Search Me.
Jul. 22nd, 2005 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penpusherThanks to the terrorists, we now have the added issue of people searching your backpacks, knapsacks, shopping bags, messenger bags, oversized bags of every kind to be certain you have no WMDs when you get aboard a New York City subway train. It's in response to the bombings in London, that you might have heard about over the past couple of weeks and days.
Since I carry a fairly large sized backpack wherever I go... my Felix The Cat style bag of tricks (but with no devices that can destroy anything), I know I'm going to be on the watch list.
Actually, my bag gets searched fairly often. And it has been searched fairly often over the years. I remember going to Palladium (the once upon a time dance club that was on 14th Street near 3rd Avenue) and having some "security" guy search through my bag. He missed the bottom compartment which held my retractable umbrella. But instead of an umbrella, it could have been a machete, a pistol, grenades... So right away, the first problem to deal with is that a "search" isn't thorough. It's really cursory. The same thing happened on my last visit to the main branch of the NY Public Library this past Tuesday. They looked in the bag, but didn't look in every compartment. And if I wanted to smuggle a bomb into some building, I sure wouldn't put it where you could see it when you opened the bag.
Besides that, I was already inside the building when they searched me! I don't know how effective the security is if I'm inside the edifice before they look in my bag.
So what is it really about? Two things. First, it's trying to scare the terrorists from attempting to try to get on the subway with a bomb. See? We're looking through the bags of people. So you better not try to sneak in. Ha. Trying to scare the terrorists. Mm. Yeah, that'll work.
The problem with trying to secure the NYC subway is that it's a huge system. There are hundreds of stops on dozens of lines and once you are in the system, you can get to any one of them. So, a terrorist can go to a station where the security is very low, like out in some of the remote sections of The Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens and ride to Times Square or Grand Central or Penn Station pretty much without any examination. Sure, there are cops looking in bags and examining passengers when the trains arrive at those platforms, but by then, it's too late. The bomb could be detonated and the train and station destroyed. So, unless they're doing searches at every single station stop, this process is completely ineffective.
The other issue about this search process is that you are now being asked to show what's in your bag to someone. Maybe you don't want to do that, for whatever reason. But, now, this is "Our New Way Of Life." The right to privacy is gone because of it.
Recently, there had been cases on the New Jersey Turnpike of patrollers pulling over vehicles because of the ethnicity of the drivers/passengers. "Racial profiling" was the misnomer used to describe this practice of selecting and targeting "suspicious" motorists. Basically, you've got the same thing being celebrated here by local politicians and law enforcement agencies, and even many citizens. They're doing something to protect us! Hooray!
Maybe they'll bring back the interment camps that they used for Japanese Americans during WWII as well. We all saw how good and useful those turned out to be.
Random searches aren't fair and they aren't even random! And that's another part of the problem. They're calling it "random" but I think we all know the truth. They may never admit what's going on, but we do know. This is the NEW United States. Same as the OLD United States, to paraphrase The Who.
Which brings us to England and the bombings there, and their responses to them. As far as I've heard, they are not instituting "random" searches as you enter the London Underground, at least they haven't yet, and that's where the bombs were found! The reactions are very different.
There is a definite sense that our liberty is being taken for no good purpose. Yes, the claim is to stop an attack before it happens, but the only thing being accomplished is having some government official taking a look into a little bit of your life. Once that starts, it could continue into far more and far worse. Has any person with a bomb ever been stopped in this manner? And if they did get stopped, wouldn't they just set off their device right where they were, rather than be captured?
Look. I'm for safety. Of course I am! But measures like these don't make us any safer. They just permit more intrusion by public servants into our private lives. Once the government institutes these mandatory searches, there's no going back. Just as sure as the "Terror Alert" will never, ever drop back down to Blue or Green, we will never have the government out of our bags and our lives once they get in there.
If we are really interested in preventing these acts, we need to assess the situation a little more carefully. Right now, what we are doing will not "protect" us.
But really, that isn't what this is about, anyway.
Since I carry a fairly large sized backpack wherever I go... my Felix The Cat style bag of tricks (but with no devices that can destroy anything), I know I'm going to be on the watch list.
Actually, my bag gets searched fairly often. And it has been searched fairly often over the years. I remember going to Palladium (the once upon a time dance club that was on 14th Street near 3rd Avenue) and having some "security" guy search through my bag. He missed the bottom compartment which held my retractable umbrella. But instead of an umbrella, it could have been a machete, a pistol, grenades... So right away, the first problem to deal with is that a "search" isn't thorough. It's really cursory. The same thing happened on my last visit to the main branch of the NY Public Library this past Tuesday. They looked in the bag, but didn't look in every compartment. And if I wanted to smuggle a bomb into some building, I sure wouldn't put it where you could see it when you opened the bag.
Besides that, I was already inside the building when they searched me! I don't know how effective the security is if I'm inside the edifice before they look in my bag.
So what is it really about? Two things. First, it's trying to scare the terrorists from attempting to try to get on the subway with a bomb. See? We're looking through the bags of people. So you better not try to sneak in. Ha. Trying to scare the terrorists. Mm. Yeah, that'll work.
The problem with trying to secure the NYC subway is that it's a huge system. There are hundreds of stops on dozens of lines and once you are in the system, you can get to any one of them. So, a terrorist can go to a station where the security is very low, like out in some of the remote sections of The Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens and ride to Times Square or Grand Central or Penn Station pretty much without any examination. Sure, there are cops looking in bags and examining passengers when the trains arrive at those platforms, but by then, it's too late. The bomb could be detonated and the train and station destroyed. So, unless they're doing searches at every single station stop, this process is completely ineffective.
The other issue about this search process is that you are now being asked to show what's in your bag to someone. Maybe you don't want to do that, for whatever reason. But, now, this is "Our New Way Of Life." The right to privacy is gone because of it.
Recently, there had been cases on the New Jersey Turnpike of patrollers pulling over vehicles because of the ethnicity of the drivers/passengers. "Racial profiling" was the misnomer used to describe this practice of selecting and targeting "suspicious" motorists. Basically, you've got the same thing being celebrated here by local politicians and law enforcement agencies, and even many citizens. They're doing something to protect us! Hooray!
Maybe they'll bring back the interment camps that they used for Japanese Americans during WWII as well. We all saw how good and useful those turned out to be.
Random searches aren't fair and they aren't even random! And that's another part of the problem. They're calling it "random" but I think we all know the truth. They may never admit what's going on, but we do know. This is the NEW United States. Same as the OLD United States, to paraphrase The Who.
Which brings us to England and the bombings there, and their responses to them. As far as I've heard, they are not instituting "random" searches as you enter the London Underground, at least they haven't yet, and that's where the bombs were found! The reactions are very different.
There is a definite sense that our liberty is being taken for no good purpose. Yes, the claim is to stop an attack before it happens, but the only thing being accomplished is having some government official taking a look into a little bit of your life. Once that starts, it could continue into far more and far worse. Has any person with a bomb ever been stopped in this manner? And if they did get stopped, wouldn't they just set off their device right where they were, rather than be captured?
Look. I'm for safety. Of course I am! But measures like these don't make us any safer. They just permit more intrusion by public servants into our private lives. Once the government institutes these mandatory searches, there's no going back. Just as sure as the "Terror Alert" will never, ever drop back down to Blue or Green, we will never have the government out of our bags and our lives once they get in there.
If we are really interested in preventing these acts, we need to assess the situation a little more carefully. Right now, what we are doing will not "protect" us.
But really, that isn't what this is about, anyway.