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Friday, February 22, 2008
Amtrak passengers to be surveilled, searched
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The pleasures enjoyed by airline passengers being subjected to surveillance and searches will now be available to Amtrak passengers. The government recently announced that it will shortly institute a program to randomly select Amtrak passengers for searches. Even though the government says there is no general or specific threat, it has now decided to begin this new “security” program.
“Mobile security teams” will be set up at selected stations, and passengers “randomly” selected to have their belongings swabbed for traces of — one supposes — explosives. If such testing results in a positive “hit,” Amtrak says that person will be (1) searched further, or (2) not searched further, but prevented from boarding the train and refunded the price of their ticket.
Does this make sense to anyone?
First of all, despite Amtrak’s statement that random searches will serve as a “powerful deterrent” to potential terrorists, the reality is that random searches do not and will not deter a determined terrorist. Second, on what basis will the “random” search be conducted? Truly random? If so, exactly what is the purpose?
Moreover, what sense does it make to test a person, presumably determine they may have explosives, and then simply refund the person their money and send them on their merry way? Can you see the government doing that? If they did, it would be appear to be counterproductive. Would they at least make a note that the person was thus positively tested and place them in a database? If they did, would this be proper?
In short, the program thus announced raises more questions than it answers. The only question it answers is this: Is this yet another intrusive government “security” measure designed simply to give the appearance the government is doing something about security on trains to make the public feel good? And the answer to that question is “Yes.”
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