Travel

by Guest/incoming-front-pager Thomas Nephew

(I): Taborn's bombshell:

In mid-December, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA — better known as "Metro" — and its police force announced a new random bag search policy:

…police will randomly select bags or packages to check for hazardous materials using ionization technology as well as K-9 units trained to detect explosive materials. Carry on items will generally not be opened and physically inspected unless the equipment indicates a need for further inspection.

The randomness of the program is implemented by choosing some secret number N for each site and date, and selecting every Nth person with a bag. As described, the policy allows people approaching a station to decide to refuse the screening — they just can't then bring their bags with them:

Anyone who is randomly selected and refuses to submit their carry-on items for inspection will be prohibited from bringing those items into the station. Customers who encounter a baggage checkpoint at a station entrance may choose not to enter the station if they would prefer not to submit their carry-ons for inspection.

Opponents of the policy (including myself) deemed the policy unconstitutional, ineffective, and misguided — security theater that demands public acceptance of routine, suspicionless, unaudited (and therefore possibly profiling-based) searches for zero security in return.

Thanks in part to a good deal of mobilizing by opponents — including an online petition and an evening of nearly unanimous public opposition — WMATA's "Riders Advisory Council" (RAC), the institutional voice of Metro users, overwhelmingly passed a resolution in early January calling on the Board to halt the program, and require their police department to consider alternatives in consultation with civil liberties advocates.

Be observed… be watched As welcome as the 15-1-1 RAC vote was on January 5th, the real news may have happened earlier in the same meeting.

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