I’m hearing a lot of “It’s a stupid idea! And it won’t work! And it violates my civil rights! It’s a stupid idea! And it won’t work! And it violates my civil rights!It’s a stupid idea! And it won’t work! And it violates my civil rights!”
What I’m not hearing is:
Why is it so stupid? Specifics, please.
Why won’t it work? Specifics, please.
Yeah, right, random bomb searches, and we’re in Stalinist Russia. Boo-fucking-hoo.
Oh, yeah, and, again, any better ideas from you whiners?
[QUOTE=Biggirl]
A better idea would be to not go looking into random peoples shit for no reason. Just because I can’t think of a better idea doesn’t make this idea a good one. You haven’t explained to me how this invasion of my privacy will prevent a terrorist attack.
QUOTE]
No reason huh? Lookit, it’s fine and dandy to stand there and wave your arms and wring your hands about the Government rooting though your personal belongings. In fact, unreasonable searches are one of the things this very experiment in democracy is based on, but it ain’t 1776 anymore. These mutts flew planes into buildings, blew up trains in Madrid and London, and walked right in the goddamn front doors to do it. Now, a few people spend a few minutes getting checked out and sent on their way. I would wager that the folks who walked into Kings Cross that morning wouldn’t have minded the time it took to check a few bags and/or backpacks. It’s a new world, I suggest you adapt, or you’re going to make life that much harder for yourself.
How many people with guns and/or drugs with this measure force into the taxicabs of New York? Will the decreased availability of anonymous transport cause an increase increase in street violence?
OK, I got an idea: we have two subway lines, like “express” and "local. One line will have undercover cops, and random bag searches. The other line will have no security whatsoever.
Biggirl and Barbarian, you take the subway or your choice, and I’ll take mine.
No one has explained to me how randomly checking bags of subway and LIRR riders is going to catch a suicide bomber. The subway system is NOT an airport where you can control who goes in and out.
The NYC subway ridership is 122.5 million a month. Bus ridership 62.7 million a month and LIRR is 6.5 million a month. How many random searches of close to 200 million persons will it take to make any kind of difference?
I cannot beleive how many people with brains will give up their privacy for the illusion of safety. And it is just an illusion.
At least we’re doing something! Yes, you are doing something. You are giving up your liberty for safety and you are losing both.
It helps if you read the thread.
Thank you Mr. Franklin. Now hop on your horse and make the sixty-mile three-day trip to Philadelphia, so you can tell them the news!
God, I hope not. I get so sick of those drive-by shootings from taxicabs.
Besides, I think most of the recent subway shootings have been fights from aboveground that spilled over into the subway; same with our (very few) school and athletic field shootings. Dude sees mofo dude that dissed him last night at the party at the basketball game, bang bang. Or mofo dude ducks down into subway, first dude catches up, bang bang. Nothing to do with the subway per se. And if it is a random subway robbery, I’d rather have fewer perps with guns down there with me.
I’m in public when I’m on the subway. I don’t particularly want to have some cop paw through my gym clothes or my Sunday Times but people who carry bags much like mine have killed nearly 250 people carrying junk onto subways around the world.
[QUOTE=buttonjockey308]
Of course I’m going to adapt. There’s precious little I can do if the police decide to randomly search me. But security was at it’s height in London with searches and everything and they still blew it up again.
And of course the people with bombs will open up their bags and show the cops. Or are the cops going into hiding and ambushing riders to surprise them with the search? This is not “better than nothing” this is worse than nothing.
'Tis. Although the first thing I would do, were I planning an attack, is figure out the schedule the cops are on, get on at the busiest time of day at a part of the platform they’re usually not at… perhaps have someone else get searched as a diversion… anyway, point is that I have trouble buying this will actually be a deterrant.
I will not resist being searched (although I find it offensive and deeply disturbing), but it will be entirely pointless because I have no intention of ever blowing up a subway, or anything else for that matter. Well, the summer I was twelve I blew up a bunch of model cars with firecrackers, but I don’t think that’s the thing they’re looking for. Yet.
The last time I flew, I was intrusively searched four times in total (twice each way). A total of maybe fifteen people were busily involved in violating what little passes for my privacy. In the couple dozen flights I’ve taken since 11 September 2001, I’ve probably been frisked more than thirty times. It was all completely useless, because I was nothing more than an airline passenger trying to get from point A to point B. Other passengers’ security has never once been enhanced in the slightest by my having been searched.
I don’t like strangers touching me. I never have. There is no earthly reason to search me when I am out in public, and if there were no searches, the elevated risk to me, or to any other random individual, would rise from the nearly infinite to the merely astronomical. Go ahead, cheerfully give up any sense of privacy or decency if you wish, but leave me out of it.
Ramzi Yousef wanted to blow up planes over the Pacific using bombs in toy cars, but I think you’re okay. 
I think it’s a stupid fucking idea, and the powers that be should go search their asses for their heads. It won’t deter a suicide bomber one iota. You probably have a bigger chance of getting stuck by lightning on a Tuesday night at 11:38 then you do of getting blown up.
Naw, a terrorist will now just get on the subway at the busiest station, therefore killing hundreds or thousands of people if caught during a search, as opposed to getting on the train itself and killing dozens. For every hypothetical that you can come up with that you consider to show these searches as a plus, I can counter it easily.
Comparing it to airline travel is also silly. If I want to bypass security and blow up a train, I just place a bomb somewhere on the 656 miles of track, with a detonator tied to a pressure switch. Hell, I don’t even have to use a suicide bomber for that. Pretty hard to put a bomb in the path of an airplane, and without inside connections, there is a single point of entry to an airplane.
This is the same attitude that is why even some fucking chickenshit Democrats just recently voted to make many of the Patriot Act provisions permanent. They were probably afraid of being seen as weak on terror, when in reality, they’re just being weak on civil liberties.
Finally, fiveyearlurker posted above about being olive skinned and implied that that would affect the number of times he will be searched in the future. Are we admitting up front that the searches will be anything but “random”?
While I just took your side against the searches, I wanted to comment on the bolded portion. I don’t think it’s all that unlikely for someone to blow up a subway train or bus in a busy city like New York in the future. I just don’t think the searches will help prevent it in any way, shape, or form. In other words, while a specific individual is unlikely to be affected, some New Yorker is likely to be.
If you mean that the average American is extremely unlike to die as the result of a terrorist, and that the perception of danger far outweighs any actual threat to themselves, I’m with you a hundred percent. I’m much more likely to die this morning in traffic than die to some terrorist activity. That doesn’t mean I won’t be driving.
I think the Op perfectly addressed why this is an idiotic idea that won’t deter anyone but rank amateurs. You want a better idea? How about: embrace the freedom this country was founded on and take your chances (saying a loud, symbolic “fuck you” to the barbarian terroists) instead of embracing a police state that will only give you a false sense of safety. Anyone with the will and half a brain can get around this lameass anti-American measure, much less a real pro. Why redefine our society for a barbaric minority? “Home of the Brave” remember?
I would feel better about it if the police could not use stuff found in a terror search to haul you into court for something else. It seems obvious that the police would be able to search people at will and claim it was a safety search.
So if they don’t find a bomb, they have to give you back your heroin and gun.
Sure, and NOBODY is going to notice a swarthy middle eastern guy with a big backpack entering the platform from a locked gate. Your watching too many James Bond movies.
Can you stop a suicide bomber? Not really. You cannot prevent people from walking the streets or leaving their homes with packages. Even if you search them, they can pick crowded places, even crowded search areas, to blow themselves up. The only thing you CAN do is make the most vulnerable places a bit less so. The NYC Subway has just stopped being the lowest hanging fruit.
You do not plan a bombing that hinges on being fortunate enough to not be randomly searched. You pick a different target The terrorists work within the framework you give them. If you say “we acquiesce to the demands of plane hijackers” then their plan becomes - Hijack plane, be let freely into cockpit, fly plane into buildings. If you say “nothing that goes onto the subway is EVER searched” then their plan will use that. Change those rules, and their options change. Instead of going for an A train with 200+ people jammed on it, they pick a bus with 50.
Hey jerk. The “useless” random searching just nabbed a piece of shit who had weapons at the Brentwood LIRR train station. Some illusion.
Shut the fuck up and stop your incessant ranting about your privacy. Face it,
a lot of people don’t mind giving up some privacy for security. It’s not an illusion.
I guess you won’t be satisfied unless these useless searches turn up Osama bin Laden himself.
Or a mall food court with 500, or a nightclub with 800, or a restaurant with 150, or a stadium with 80,000, or an office building with 2,000, or a picnic with 100, or a swimming pool with 250, or a county fair midway with 500, or an amusement park roller coaster with 150.
I’m guessing some of you are okay with random searches of anyone, anywhere, at any time, just to be “safe” from something that is currently 1/500th as likely to kill you as getting in your damned car and driving to the office. I’m becoming more and more afraid, but it’s not of terrorism.
Big talk coming from someone living in Portland. Try living in NYC with a big bulls-eye on your back and then comment.