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| December 3, 2008 | ||||
More Security, Less Secure |
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| Charles Peña | ||||
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The Washington, D.C., metro is following in the footsteps of the New York subway and is now conducting random searches of passengers. The justification given for further eroding the Fourth Amendment (which guarantees "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") is, predictably, the same reason we've heard time and time again for ignoring the Constitution: "the Security Inspection Program aims to deter terrorist attacks." But an effective deterrent must be just that – effective. Yet – just like with the New York City subway searches – a simple analysis demonstrates that the search program can be easily circumvented. To begin, it's not possible to staff every metro station (the D.C. system has 86 stations, many with multiple entrances) to conduct round-the-clock searches (moreover, the searches are random, so not everyone would be searched.) So a would-be terrorist just has to be willing to find a station that isn't conducting searches. And unless there was some compelling reason why a terrorist attack had to be conducted on a particular day at a particular location, a terrorist could simply come back on another day (or another time on the same day) when searches aren't being done. Or several terrorists could try to gain access to the metro at multiple locations, relatively confident that at least one of them would get in at a station without being searched. Finally, a suicide terrorist could blow himself up while standing in line to go through a turnstile or waiting to be searched. In other words, the search program would only be effective if a terrorist allowed himself to be searched (and the D.C. metro program shares a common feature with New York: you can refuse to be searched and simply walk away). Security expert Bruce Schneier described the D.C. metro search program as "security theater against a movie-plot threat." And it's worth noting that in the aftermath of the July 2005 London tube and bus bombings, British authorities decided against conducting searches of riders – rightly making the cost-benefit calculation that the security benefits were minimal and not worth the cost. Nonetheless, the general public seems more than willing to accept that the D.C. metro searches are effective and necessary. This doesn't come as any great surprise, given that the public has accepted having to nearly disrobe and trying to fit as many 3-ounce containers into a quart-size bag to pass through airport security (and I can't help thinking about George Carlin's pre-9/11 piece about airport security). And this is the same public that seems to believe that warrantless eavesdropping is OK too – all in the name of protecting against terrorism. What's fascinating is that many of the people who don't mind giving up their Fourth Amendment rights by being searched without probable cause to ride public transportation are the same people who would argue against any form of gun control and believe that the Second Amendment right "to keep and bear arms" must be defended at all costs. Seemingly lost on them is that one of the reasons the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment (however cryptically worded) was for the people to have a way to protect against government taking away all of their other rights. In other words, preserving the Second Amendment doesn't amount to much if the rest of the Constitution isn't also preserved. Ultimately, the D.C. metro random search program reflects the post-9/11 preoccupation with trying to prevent the unpreventable. It's simply more security that has little or nothing to do with making us more secure. |
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More Security, Less Secure 12/3/2008 Missile Defense and the American Empire 11/19/2008 You Can't Cut Spending and Spare 'Defense' 10/29/2008 What Happens in a Police State… 10/22/2008 Can Afghanistan Be Won? 10/11/2008 The Pakistan Dilemma 9/24/2008 What $700 Billion? 9/10/2008 Georgia On My Mind 8/28/2008 My Energy Plan Is Better Than Yours 8/6/2008 Bidding War Over Afghanistan 7/23/2008 Is Iran Still an Option? 7/9/2008 Change We Can Believe In? 6/25/2008 Having Your Cake and Eating It Too 6/11/2008 Things to Remember on Memorial Day 5/28/2008 Mission Accursed 5/7/2008 Whither the Price of Oil? 4/23/2008 McCain's Foreign Policy Vision: Style Over Substance 4/2/2008 Hard to See the Benefits Through the Bills and the Blood 3/26/2008 The Golden Rule 3/13/2008 More Amtrak Security, More Safety? 2/27/2008 Hobbled in Kabul 2/13/2008 Is Bad PR Really the Problem? 1/30/2008 Shocked, Shocked by Bush's Broken Promises 1/16/2008 Providing for the Common Defense 1/9/2008 Not Home for the Holidays 12/26/2007 Bush's Surreal Iran Policy 12/12/2007 An American in Paris 11/29/2007 Fred Thompson and the Kitchen Sink 11/15/2007 To Bomb, Or Not To Bomb 10/31/2007 Not -So-New Homeland Security Strategy 10/17/2007 Misunderestimating the Price of Iraq 10/3/2007 Greenspan's Unsure Grasp of Economics 9/19/2007 Close, but No Cigar 9/5/2007 Defusing Nuclear Hysteria 8/30/2007 More Troop Reduction Legerdemain 8/22/2007 Memo to Rep. Ron Paul 8/8/2007 Surveillance Society 7/25/2007 Lucky, but for How Much Longer? 7/4/2007 Cooperative Threat Reduction Is Worth the Cost 6/20/2007 Unprepared for Bioterrorism 6/6/2007 Rudy Giuliani and the Fort Dix Six 5/23/2007 Good Intentions and Unintended Consequences 5/9/2007 Still Whacking Moles in Iraq 4/25/2007 Yankee, Go Home 4/11/2007 Foreign Follies a Sobering Read 3/28/2007 Reducing the Risk of Nukes 3/14/2007 Our Pals in Pakistan 2/28/2007 The Future of Terrorism 2/14/2007 Whither the Surge? 1/31/2007 92,000 More Soldiers? 1/17/2007 Requiem for a Dictator 1/3/2007 Another Year, Another Iraq Plan 12/20/2006 Two Pair of Twos 12/6/2006 Worse Than Staying the Course 11/22/2006 The Mother of All Defense Supplementals 11/8/2006 Fish or Cut Bait in Iraq 10/25/2006 Co-Dependency in Iraq 10/11/2006 Know Thine Enemy 9/27/2006 Remembering 9/11 9/13/2006 Backdoor Draft 8/30/2006 Flying the Unfriendly Skies 8/16/2006 The Lebanon Conundrum 8/3/2006 What a Fine Mess 7/20/2006 Wile E. Coyote's Fourth of July 7/6/2006 Why Liberals Can't Win the War on Terror 6/22/2006 |
Charles V.
Peña is a senior fellow at the Independent
Institute, a senior fellow with the Coalition
for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a senior fellow with the George
Washington University Homeland
Security
His articles have been published by Reason; The American Conservative; The National Interest; Mediterranean Quarterly; Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy; Journal of Law & Social Change (University of San Francisco); Nexus (Chapman University); and Issues in Science & Technology (National Academy of Sciences). His exclusive column appears every other Wednesday on Antiwar.com. |
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