I'm curious to see how a new proposal by the mayor of New York will be accepted by the public. Due to the recent bombings in London the mayor of New York is authorizing random baggage searches on New York subway systems. So will this really make a difference, other than slowing down people on their commute, infringing on the freedom of Americans afforded by the constitution (4th amendment). The ACLU has already been opposed to a similar plan proposed in Boston in 2004, though I do not know the outcome of that situation.
Now lets look at things from a statistical, logical point of view. There are 4.5 million passengers a day on the New York subways. So let's say there are 4 people with bombs, as there was in London, you have 1 terrorist in every 1,125,000 passengers (that's on a day with 4 terrorists, otherwise there is ZERO). Ok, so at this point my ability to do anything useful with statistics is proved, I don't know what the odds are of finding any of the 4 terrorists, but think of it this way: if there were 4 terrorists and if the police checked 1.125 million people on the train, they would be likely to catch one of the terrorists, the three others would likely still be on their merry way.
I understand the desire for people to feel secure, but the idea of random searches will not deter the terrorists, heck they probably know stats better than I do. But what this will do is put everyone one step closer to an Orwellian society. Seriously, how long until random searches of cars and homes becomes acceptable? I really worry about how easily the "Land of the Free" are willing to give up freedom for the sense of (not actual) security.
5 Comments:
Couldn't agree with you more. And I'll add one more small step to your statistical analysis, too:
As you mentioned, there is a 1 in 1125000 chance that a random bag search will catch one of the 4 bombers. That means you would have to search 562500 bags (1/8th of all the passengers) each day in order to have a 50% chance of catching just one of those 4 bombers.
So, for the feeble security of knowing that 50% of the time one of the bombers will be caught, you'd end up having your bags searched about 1 out of every 8 times you took public transit. That would be VERY expensive, not to mention extremely slow.
You're totally right that these kinds of measures are all about feeling safer, not about being safer.
Most people have a severely limited ability to think reasonably about very small probabilities, which is the only good explanation for why this world has smokers and heavily obese people who worry about being killed by terrorists, as though that's the major threat to their health.
(Statistically speaking, smoking, obesity, and even just driving to work on the freeway are all far greater dangers than terrorists are. Your odds of dieing at the hands of a terrorist are vanishingly small--even your chances of being killed by lightning are quite a bit higher.)
12:59 p.m.
As I recall, even your chances of being killed by a meteor are better, statistically speaking... An interesting example is to (simplistically) assume that a meteor that kills about half the Earth's population strikes every 500,000 years (not unreasonable), and that the average human lives to 100 years old (still not the case yet, but we're getting closer). In this case, your chances are around 1/5000 of being killed by one. That's way "better" odds than a lot of more commonly known (and feared) threats.
Statistics are freaky things. :)
1:48 p.m.
I am certainly more worried about how freaky the US is becoming than I am about terrorists. What I do find interesting (or ridiculous, or ironic...I dont quite have the proper word yet)is how London has its transit bombed and North America freaks out, assuming their transit systems are next. Let's see... the "first" set of bombings went after the World Trade Center. The "next" set targeted London transit. There is NO correlation between the two and yet every country assumes they: (a)will be targeted and (b) targeted in exactly the same manner as the last bombing. Maybe they will target libraries next time. Who knows?
9:07 p.m.
Don't forget that they will only be searching people with turbans and/or beards and/or dark skin (incl. Brazillian tourists). And since 100% of them are terrorists, the operation will be a complete success.
1:52 p.m.
GeMatt, the hijackers were searched. Remember this was at an airport, you know, high security and all that crap. It was simply the ignorance of the system, allowing knives and such on board that lead to the outcome. And trust me, if one wanted to attack people on a subway it wouldn't be too hard. Remember Tokyo and sarin gas? Sarin can be concealed in a water bottle. Are we going to keep all water bottles off public transit now? The searches will not help the situation at all, if terrorists wish to attack they can and will do so at will. Searching a few million backpacks won't make you or I any safer, nor will I feel any safer. I will however feel that I'm being forced to do more and more things against my will, simply to support an illusion.
12:19 p.m.
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