You want to do searches of people at subways? Do it this way.

[bluestateguy]

Put metal detectors at the subway stations. Everybody has to walk through them. The white businessman. The Lebanese taxi cab driver. Everybody. Police searches should only be conducted on the basis of suspicious behavior.

Oh, and one more thing with these searches, if the NYPD insists on doing them. Any drugs found in these searches should be ignored by police. We don't have time for that shit anymore.

[Beetwasher]

1. How About Passing Legislation First

Airport security is mandated by law NOT by fiat as are these Subway searches. If they want to have random searches of anyone on public subways, let's have a public discussion about it and pass legislation and do it properly NOT BY DICTATORIAL FIAT!

[bluestateguy]

2. That was, of course, implied

but point well taken.

[slaveplanet]

5. not only that

the airlines are PRIVATE transportation services that one has to contract with for carriage.

The subway is publicly owned it is the same as the roads.
What the security forces are doing is illegal and unconstitutional.
It is a breach of the 4th amendment and restricts the public's right to travel. They will claim that is a privilege but the court records are clear about this sort of thing.

This is a test to see what public reaction will be and what they can get away with, and set precedent before they expand it to malls and every area of daily life.

from the lack of outrage, they seem like there is no need for written laws anymore...

[Ian David]

7. NO MORE ACTIVIST HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENTS!

The people have the right to vote on anything and everything that might in any way involve homosexuals.

[Spinzonner]

3. How is a metal detector going to solve the bomber problem ?

and its going to catch a lot of people carrying perfectly ordinary objects and require personal searches.

How many people will be required to manage and maintain these detectors and man the checkpoints.

Don't see how it does any good at all, much less at an acceptable cost - monetary and logistical.

[XemaSab]

4. Like at the airport?

do people using the subway really want to stand in line for an hour twice a day while 50,000 jerkwads in front of you "forget" to take the keys, or the quarters, or the pocket knife, or the nail clipper, or whatever out of their pockets and trip the alarm?

do ladies really want to take out the contents of their purses twice a day? or school children with backpacks?

if the subway becomes so much of a hassle to use that nobody uses it and everybody takes their cars, the terrorists have won.

[Ian David]

9. I've lost a fair number of pocketknives that way

You forget to take them off the keychain before going to a government building, and they won't just hold them for you until you're ready to leave.

They'll let you leave with your pocketknife and go away, but they won't hold it for you if you want to go inside.

The solution: Find a newspaper machine near the building, buy a paper, and put your pocketknife in the back corner of the machine, under the last paper. When you're done, come back to the machine, buy another paper, and hopefully your pocketknife is still there.

[XemaSab]

13. seems to me

like being caught putting things in paper machines anywhere near federal buildings could get you a nice, taxpayer-funded vacation to gitmo.

[Ian David]

17. If it were something truly worrisone, they wouldn't let you leave with it

I'm not talking about a Uranium Pew-36 Explosive Space modulator.

I'm talking about a little key-chain pocketknife or one of those Sharper Image credit-card-sized utility kits.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. I think explosive sniffing devices would be more in tune with this goal.

Just saying, it's annoying enough to be required to disrobe at the airport and then get stuck behind five people who forget to dump their metal objects in the bin.

And I'm not taking my shoes off to walk anywhere in a subway station.
:yoiks:

[Ian David]

8. The easy counter-measure to explosive detecting devices (or dogs)....

is to spread bomb-making chemicals around the sidewalk outside train stations.

Just sprinkle saltpeter or nitrates or blackpowder around the sidewalk around the stations.

Everyone walking through the detectors will be carrying traces of explosives on their shoes and clothing.

Technology alone never solves anything.

[KarenInMA]

11. I saw a bomb sniffing dog at North Station today

(for those of you not fortunate to live in the greatest state in the US ;) that's a large commuter rail station in the heart of the city).

Three cops were milling about the dog, who was adorable, and had attracted the attention of some young ladies. Both the cops and the dog seemed a little distracted.

[bluestateguy]

12. Been there before

But if I remember I found North Station to be kind of dingy. I liked South Station better.

[KarenInMA]

18. How long ago?

North Station is also the Fleetcenter (or whatever the hell it's called now), the basketball/hockey stadium. Before 95, it was the Gaaahden, where as legend has it, the rats were bigger than some of the hockey players!

But, South Station is still nicer! :hi:

[Gormy Cuss]

14. Stop promoting terrorism

(Kidding)

I am jaded enough to know that nearly every security measure can be circumvented, and I think the allegedly "random" bag checks are at best modestly effective at prevention and at worst utterly useless.

Tommy Thompson is promoting implantable medical history chips. Technology like that will be promoted as a security measure in the future. Of that I have no doubt. Refusal to have an implanted chip will be grounds for mandatory searches and exclusions from venues and it will be sold as a 'voluntary' measure just like the current 'voluntary searches in the subway.

[Eric J in MN]

10. Do you have any idea how much that would slow people down?

The subway is a public place, like a sidewalk.

Let the people be free.

[Goldmund]

15. You do realize that everybody will beep?

[sweetheart]

16. And really the war on drugs is again the problem

THe war on drugs sponsors terroism because the police are busy shaking
people down for things that should be legal... having a vice.

So instead, people will distrust the police and this whole thing will
be a sham because the war on drugs is a sham, and although some persons
might very well have hand grenades for the subway, the war on drugs
will let them set them off by its collateral effects.