I'm stunned by the way so many on this thread just wholeheartedly throw their arms around an announcement like this and declare as idiots anyone who dares to express concern.
I'm VERY pro-law-enforcement, VERY anti-terrorist, and a 100% conservative. BUT, there's a reason why some protections are built into the constitution, and respecting those elements of the constitution does not automatically make one a "moonbat." Granted, the people behind these t-shirts probably ARE moonbats, but not because they see a problem with this.
It is the very height of naivete to automatically assume that ALL policemen are honorable, or that ALL members of ANY authority-group are honorable. This is EXACTLY why these protections are built into the constitution. It's called FREEDOM. The very notion that "if you got nothing to hide, you shouldn't have a problem with it" is entirely antithetical to the U.S. constitution, and it's a bizarre thing to see trumpeted on a board that so prides itself on allegiance to that document.
Finally, there's the reality that the odds of stopping anything via random searches are so miniscule as to be statistically non-existent. It's a knee-jerk move that will do nothing except cause trouble and clog up the arteries of public transportation.
MM
you could make the same argument about border security. everyday on FR, we have people who say "seal the border, stop the terrorists". I could easily make the case that the border cannot be sealed adequately to stop a small team of determined and well funded terrorists from crossing - so that logic says, why bother having any border security (immigration control aside). if random subway searches are useless because the odds of catching someone is too low to justify the civil rights intrusion, then border security isn't worth it either because ths odds of stopping a dedicated group from crossing with the 1000s of miles of borders we have, is too.
and we could run down a list of other things:
- random searches of trucks entering NYC tunnels. again, low odds of capture, so should these be eliminated?
- random boarding and searching of cargo ships entering NY harbor by the coast guard. again, low odds of capture, so should we eliminate that too?
I could go on and on - each individual security activity has "low odds" of success - should we eliminate them all?
what's left that we can do? because internment camps for muslims isn't going to happen, we both know that.