No-ride list won't get us far
Passengers heading for the Amtrak train at Penn Station in Manhattan. Credit: Uli Seit
Security has become a fetish in the fight against terrorists. There's a tendency to accept that anything promising to make us safer is worth doing. That's not always so, for instance creating a "no-ride list" to keep suspected terrorists off Amtrak trains.
Checking anyone who buys a train ticket against the names on the no-fly lists used to screen air travelers would provide a thin veneer of security, but little additional safety.
The no-ride list would be unworkable for subways and commuter trains where mobs of riders and the need for speed make checking identification impractical, something Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) acknowledged in proposing the new protocol only for Amtrak.
But some of those trains use the same tunnels as Amtrak, so screening only one group of passengers won't do much to secure the system. And it would compound the absurdity that people on the list deemed too dangerous to fly or board trains could still legally buy guns.
Besides, anybody who has seen a train heist movie knows tracks and bridges are the preferred places to strike, and that's done from outside a train. Apparently intelligence from Abbottabad, Pakistan, suggests al-Qaida knows that too, since it focused on possibly sabotaging tracks to cause derailments.
New Yorkers have an obvious interest in safe trains. But not everything that looks like security will actually make us safer. hN
