LISTEN TO VOICES FROM THE METRO BAG SEARCHES KNOW YOUR RIGHTS SYMPOSIUM:
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Is it just a lot of Mickey Mouse? – Retired FBI agent James Wedick on Metro’s bag search policy
“Is this Metro [bag] search policy necessary and is there a sound criteria for it?” asked Mike German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
At the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law, the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital Area presented a symposium in April entitled “Metro Bag Searches: Know Your Rights. Know the Law.”
The event was held in response to Metro’s Dec. 2010 launch of a program that has Metro Transit Police Department officers and U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials conducting random bag searches of riders of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA, but commonly known as Metro).
“This [bag search policy] isn’t a minor inconvenience, this is actually a violation of people’s privacy,” said German. “This type of security approach is what we at the ACLU call ‘security theater.’ It’s merely meant to look good and to make people feel as if the government is doing something to address their security but there is nothing to indicate that this would actually be an effective methodology… In fact what it will do is draw resources away from more effective security measures like real investigations based on evidence and logical leads.”
“The threat is real but these kinds of searches do nothing to address that threat, but [they] do a lot for public relations purposes,” said Andrew Taslitz, a professor at Howard University School of Law and author of Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment: A History of Search and Seizure, 1789-1868.
Jim Harper, director of Information Policy Studies at the CATO Institute and member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, said, “You may foreclose some risk in one place but move the risk to another place.”
Harper co-edited the book Terrorizing Ourselves: How U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is Failing and How to Fix It. “If the threat we’re talking about is the idea of a bomber coming onto the Metro risk transfer is very real. In fact risk transfer is guaranteed because the [Metro bag search] program as its currently instituted would have MPD at some locations and not at others and signage in fact, which is appropriate, but it’s poor security [and] signals the fact that these searches are going on.”
WMATA has more than 1.2 million weekday passengers who access the public transit system from 12,000 bus stops and 86 rail stations.
Harper said, “Someone who is prepared to do something like this, heaven forbid, would go to a different entrance, go to a different Metro station, go someplace other than the Metro where people congregate. You haven’t actually protected the District of Columbia. You haven’t actually protected its people by instituting these searches. What you’ve done I think is correctly characterized as ‘security theater.'”
David Alpert is founder and editor-in-chief of the popular blog Greater Greater Washington which covers transportation issues extensively. Alpert is also DC vice-chair of the Riders Advisory Council (RAC), a group that advises the WMATA board.
“[RAC] had a forum in early January. Over 50 people testified and all but one were opposed to the bag search program. We then passed a resolution from the Riders Advisory Council saying we think the [WMATA] board should not go ahead with this bag search program,” Alpert said.
It’s not just the WMATA board that has been less than responsive to riders’ concerns, said Alpert. “The Metro police officers… definitely showed an attitude that any security measure was a good idea regardless of its impact on civil liberties, regardless of its specific effectiveness or the way riders react to it.”
James Wedick spent 35 years at the FBI and is married to an agent. “As you might imagine I am pretty pro law enforcement,” he said. “What concerns me about these searches that are being conducted [is this]: Are they being conducted because it fulfills a safety need?” asked Wedick. Or are the searches being “conducted because there’s a monetary need – that a department now sees a grant… for [its] office to procure?”
“What happened after 9/11? We all saw those buildings come down. We saw Congress pump millions upon millions of dollars. And don’t think it wasn’t lost on all the police departments in the United States as to who could get those dollars… If you had a terrorism case you could ask for more cars. If you had a terrorism case you could get more bodies,” said Wedick, who referred to this type of funding as “terrorism dollars.”
Metro’s bag search policy “troubles me,” said the former FBI agent. Is it really about security or “is it just a lot of Mickey Mouse?”
Related Sites:
http://aclu-nca.org/
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/