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In the continuing campaign to take away all privacy, Amtrak is introducing random screening of baggage, starting with trains on the Boston-Washington route. This is not a response to any specific threat. Passengers who are boarding the randomly selected train will be randomly pulled out of line and their baggage checked with a swab; if it shows a positive reading for possible explosives, their bags will be opened for a search. Passengers can refuse a screening; they will be denied boarding and their tickets will be refunded.
This is useless as a security measure. Anyone planning to bomb a train can simply turn back on seeing the screening line and try again another day, or he can set off the bomb in the line. In a bizarre piece of illogic, the AP article quotes Tim Connors, director of the Center for Policing Terrorism at the Manhattan Institute, as saying, "A random approach is actually more effective than a constant one." If this is true, why doesn't the TSA just let everyone onto every other plane with no checks, just to frustrate the plans of terrorists who had planned on going through a security line?
The use of similar screenings on the MBTA has shown that the claim that they don't cause delays is false. People get delayed; when false positives occur, they're subjected to searches and possibly to overreactions by train cops. At least the MBTA cops, unlike the Amtrak ones, don't carry automatic weapons.
Among the listed concerns which supposedly motivate the searches are train bombings in Russia in the past few years. These were the acts of radicals seeking independence for Chechnya. Does Homeland Security seriously expect us to believe that Chechen separatists are going to come after our trains?
There have been no terrorist attacks on trains in the US. The government simply wants us to believe that we're in a terrible, imminent danger which justifies taking away all our rights while letting government officials and their friends break any laws they find inconvenient.
None of these criticisms are mentioned in the AP article, which simply feeds us government propaganda straight.
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