(no subject)

[camwyn]

So.

New York City's gonna do random searches of people's bags if they wanna get on the subway and 'people who don't want to be searched are perfectly free to turn around and leave the station'.

Show of hands- do I start carrying a bag full of mousetraps, or should I start carrying a bag full of some formulation of Play-Doh that feels like dog crap if a cop puts his hand on it? Not that I dislike the members of the NYPD; I'm very fond of cops in general. But since the city doesn't seem to think that the Constitution matters any more (small surprise, since Washington doesn't either)- or that this constitutes a reasonable search and seizure- I'd like to make it plain that if you're going to search me, ever, you are going to have to pay for that privilege.

I'm thinkin' the play-doh. Or a can of non-dairy creamer with a lid that comes off easily- no, then they'd go "ACK ANTHRAX" and I'd be late for work. But you get the idea.

Suggestions?

Comments

[irian.livejournal.com]

Eh. The security guards check everyone's bags over here. But then again, what they're doing isn't exactly what I'd call checking, since all they do is poke this stick into your bag and prod around a bit without actually looking.

[camwyn]

I think what annoys me most about this is that it represents an intrusion on everyday life, and that it's not universal. I don't mind the searches at the airport. Air travel is something of a rare event, and so naturally comes with (for me, anyway) rare dangers. And everybody at the airport gets searched, or is supposed to, anyway. But I take the subway every day of the week, which means that it feels as if the searches are suddenly intruding upon ordinary existence- as if they were poking into my car, assuming I still had one. And like I said, they're not doing it to everybody. They're doing it to people with backpacks and large bags, and they're doing it at random among those people, so far as I know. That's no way to inspire a feeling of security. That's how you inspire a feeling of 'we're doing something token, and it's inconveniencing you, and it's intrusive, and you can't do anything about it unless you feel like walking to work, so HA HA BITCH YOU'RE STUCK WITH THE LINE AND THE SEARCH AND THE INTRUSION now turn your head and cough'.

[irian.livejournal.com]

At random means anybody who looks remotely dark/Middle-Eastern and has a beard will probably be the ones who'll be forced to have their bags checked.

[camwyn]

Except that New York's cops have been slapped in the face with several racial profiling cases lately, so they're going to be going out of their way to tag people who don't look like that just so that when someone complains they can say 'hey, man, we're searching Aryans too'.

[irian.livejournal.com]

Hmph. Typical.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

In Israel every restaurant has a security guard, who checks the bag of everyone who comes in. So does every large office building. You can't go a day without having your bag checked several times. It just becomes part of daily life. What I found odd was being asked whether I was carrying a gun; at first I thought it was like those stupid questions they ask at the airport (did anyone give you anything to carry, etc), until I realised that it's a serious question, because so many people do carry, and if you are that's fine, you just have to show the guard your permit.