Friday, August 05, 2005

Random bag searches


FROM THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY...for the past few weeks the New York City Police Department has been randomly searching passengers entering the subway system. These searches take place inside the station, but outside of the turnstiles. The police allow any one who doesn't want to be searched to not be searched, but they are also not allowed to enter the subway system. The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD saying that the searches violate people's civil rights. The suit says that "the bag searches were almost useless in stopping would-be bombers, and therefore violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments allowing innocent people to move around the public streets without police searches." There are a few things wrong with that statement. First, the usefulness of the searches should not determine whether or not one's civil rights are being violated. Second, the subway system is not exactly a "public street." Have these people been in an airport in the last 30 years? We can save the constitutional rights arguments for a later date (like in the comments) but I heard an interesting alternative solution to the problem. If you do not want to be searched, fine, but you have to sit in the last two train cars. The last two train cars on each train would be designated as the cars in which "NYCLU Security techniques" have been used tp protect against terrorism. Let's see how many people decide to use those cars. I bet they will be empty.

2 Comments:

At 1:36 PM, Blogger MPH said...

found this at kirazalan.net

First, we must stop pretending that the terrorists so far, by-and-large, have not been of the same ethnic origin. This will reasonably narrow down the search for potential perpetrators. But, it makes ALMOST as little sense to stop every Arab or North African in NYC today as it does to stop every 5th random person. Therefore, the profiling must be even more exact than race to be effective.

Israel has been perfecting the art of profiling, and has successfully prevented El Al (national airline) hijackings since 1970. The profilers are trained to look for signs of suspicious behavior (body language), which provides effective clues of whom to question. Barring exceptional con artists, body language is a dead give away of suspicious behavior. In fact, police officers are trained to look for such clues when dealing with everyday criminals.

The results: plenty of Arabs fly El Al, and yet enough people have been turned away to prevent terrorist attacks since 1970.

So why not fly some Israelis to NYC to train New York’s finest on such tactics?

 
At 3:29 PM, Blogger NYJustice said...

One of those "suspicious behaviors" is heavy sweating. I seem to sweat a lot while in the subway stations. I haven't been searched yet.

 

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