With the recent attacks on London's
underground (along with two double-deckers) all mass transit in the United States is on code orange. And we all know what that means: Bag checks, Yeah!
New York City is attempting to nearly do the impossible, random bag checks of subway riders.
Now, I don't know the specifics (or if certain stations are excluded. If they
were, I still would not list them on here anyway.) However, this is applying
the tactics of airport security with mass transit. Bag checks also cause additional
questions on whether the 4th amendment rights of citizens are being violated
when the checks are conducted in terror sweep operations.
Slate covered the constitutional issues of the fourth amendment in an excellent
explainer on the topic.
Essentially, an officer may search your bag for anything which could be used to
cause an act of terror. But the actions of the individual, by agreeing to the
search, could open the door for the arrests of the person and/or seizure of illegal
items, during the course of what was a terror search. Sorry, that's just the
way the cookie crumbles in the legal world, anything which equals consent
(presenting your bag to the officer, saying "yes," a nod in
agreement, etc...) justifies the officers search. A person may refuse the
search but then that opens up a Pandora’s Box of issues (like the man who ran
and was shot and killed in the heat of the moment by British police).
In matters of public safety, searches may be allowed in cases of special needs,
such as:
- Persons on Probation
- Protection from acts of Terror
- National Security Events (Don't even get me started on the amount of security
I had to go through in Boston)
When I worked the DNC in Boston, every day was a security search. The metal
detectors, the snipers on the roof, the uniformed secret service checks, the
screening and sniffing of backpacks, etc... All were conducted with the purpose
of protecting the attending dignitaries. In this case all searches were
justified and any refusal would result in people not getting the proper
credentials.
Returning to the explainer, a district court in Boston ruled that random bag checks on the "T"
were justified to protect the public from possible harm. In this case, the
train bombing in Madrid
prompted the searches and the searches were only for a limited time. In New York, another court
ruled random searches were an invasion of privacy at protests and thus could
not be conducted.
But the big question here is what is the duration of the search on the NYC
Subway?
Is it for the duration of the Orange Alert or indefinite considering the
current climate?
Searches have to be random, like every 7th passenger who walks through the
turnstiles or a mathematical random equation that selects those to be searched.
No one can be targeted based on race, sex, color, or other distinguishable
features that stand out in a select group of people.
Airports, on the other hand, are exempt from this as everyone is searched using
the same machine and at the same checkpoints. No one is exempt from the search
and failure to comply would result in a person being pulled from his or her
flight.
