A new breed of NYC subway card vending machines which can sniff trace amounts of explosives on customers’ hands is about to be tested in Baltimore.
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K9 agent |
Two companies have teamed up to develop a machine that can detect whether the straphanger who just touched the start button or screen has recently handled explosives. Alerts - including a digital image of the person at the machine and the type of substance detected - can be quickly transmitted to law enforcement officials, company officials said. The device can be programmed to lock turnstiles at the station… A pilot project to test its effectiveness in a mass transit system is expected to be launched in Baltimore in the coming weeks. [Link]
The companies involved may be going this way because there are fewer card vending machines than subway turnstiles, and there’s more space inside each one to cram in sniffers. But this method so indirect, it’s like looking for a lost quarter under a streetlight instead of where you actually dropped it.
First, a terrorist smart enough to build a bomb is probably smart enough to buy a subway card from any newsstand or convenience store. Second, trace sniffing seems like it could be easily circumvented by using gloves and changing clothes (pure conjecture, this is not my field). Third, there’s a risk of false alarms from people who work with explosives-like substances, such as gardeners who use fertilizer, and those who work with explosives as part of their jobs, such as the mole-men currently digging new water tunnels in NYC.
NYC’s bag check security theater seem to have faded away after the post-7/7 hysteria, but subway cities still need to scan for actual bombs, not indirect conjectures of WMD-related program activities. Entrances and turnstiles are the right places to put these scanners, not easily-bypassed vending machines. And profiling is just as useless — based on actual empirical evidence in NYC, we’d be targeting white male software developers and Latino ex-cops:
The random bag checks were a joke, a simulation of security but nothing more. Little old ladies lined up to prove they were good citizens, while anyone smart enough to build a backpack bomb would also likely be smart enough to go to one of the stations where there weren’t any bag checks…And what has that gotten us? Thousands of people panicking about discarded CVS bags and a whole lot of useless train delays—but nary a bona fide terrorist threat thwarted. Consider that in recent history two bombs have detonated on or near the city’s subway—and neither was planted by a Muslim extremist.
In December of 1994, an unemployed computer programmer named Edward Leary carried a homemade firebomb onto the 4 Train. The bomb prematurely detonated at Fulton Street, while Leary was holding it in his lap. Some 50 people in the car were slightly injured, and Leary (who was severely burned) is serving 96 years in prison.
In July 2004, Joseph Rodriguez, an ex-cop with problems of his own, made a small pipe bomb out of gunpowder and BBs and brought it to the Times Square Station. He was in the process of warning people away from it when it exploded. He was the only one who was injured. It’s reported that he “hadn’t been right” since 9/11, and just wanted to be a hero. [Link]
Look for the bombs, not the odors.
