Passenger Trains > MBTA set to begin passenger ID stops

Boston Globe, May 22, 2004

MBTA set to begin passenger ID stops
Effort part of national rail "security" program

By Mac Daniel

MBTA transit police confirmed yesterday they will begin stopping
passengers for identification checks at various T locations, apparently
as part of new national rail security measures following the deadly
terrorist train bombings in Spain.

Although officials would release few details about the initiative, the
identity checks will mark the first time local rail and subway
passengers will be asked to produce identification and be questioned
about their activities.

Officers have been training for the security checks since May 11,
transit officials said. MBTA Police Deputy Chief John Martino confirmed
via e-mail yesterday that officers have been training with State Police
at South Station this week.

T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the State Police involved in the training
were from Troop F at Logan International Airport, where such
identification checks have been taking place since about a year after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Pesaturo wouldn't say where or when the identification stops would take
place, or how long they would last.

"The training is part of the MBTA's overall plan for enhancing safety
and security for the hundreds of thousands of people who use our system
every day," Pesaturo wrote in the e-mail. "Law enforcement personnel
are being trained to detect whether a person's or persons' actions are
an indication of any level of risk or threat to the transit system ...
and to then take appropriate steps based on the observed behavior.

"If the MBTA did not do everything it can to protect transit users, it
would be a dereliction of our duties and responsibilities as public
servants," he added.

Ann Davis, Northeast regional spokeswoman for the federal Transportation
Security Administration, refused to confirm that T's ID checks are part
of a new national rail security program announced Thursday by federal
officials. Those new security initiatives are scheduled to start
tomorrow, in response to terrorist train bombings in Madrid that killed
191 and injured 2,000.

"We don't want to map out for potential terrorists how we intend to
protect the rails," she said.

Concerns about threats to the nation's rail system have risen since ABC
News reported a pattern of suspicious activities along the rail corridor
between Washington, D.C., and New York. The report said New Jersey's
attorney general is investigating at least seven instances in the last
week of suspected surveillance along the New Jersey Transit commuter
lines leading into Philadelphia, Trenton, and New York.

FBI agents in Philadelphia are also investigating the discovery of an
infrared sensor concealed along the track bed of a Southeast
Pennsylvania Transportation Authority rail line.

The State Police officers based at Logan who are instructing T police
have been trained in "behavior pattern recognition" in order to identify
potential terrorists.

According to past interviews with Logan's primary security consultant,
Rafi Ron, former head of security at Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel, such
a program helps avoid accusations of racial profiling and is based on
the behavior of those stopped. Logan was the first American airport at
which the method was used.

Martino said "we do not racially profile and do not consider that
someone is suspicious because they appear to be Middle Eastern or that
they are not suspicious if they don't appear to be."

The expansion of identity checks to rail and subway passengers has
raised concerns among civil rights advocates about what is gained
through such stops and whether they are truly random.

Last October, State Police at Logan stopped Lylburn King Downing, the
national coordinator of the American Civil Liberties Union's Campaign
Against Racial Profiling -- and an African-American -- who was ordered
out of the airport after he refused to answer an officer's questions
during an identification check.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has since sought
more information about the policies of Massachusetts Port Authority and
State Police governing such searches, but ACLU officials say they have
had little cooperation from either agency.

"About a year ago they admitted they were using training based on an
Israeli security model of behavioral profiling or selection which they
declined to either explain or to otherwise amplify what it means," said
John Reinstein, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts. "We asked
for the records and they said that's no longer a public record because
anything that has to do with security is no longer a public record"

Dick Wolf, creator of "Law & Order" when asked why so many of the bad guys on the show were Middle-Class White American males, replied "they are the only group without an advocacy group"

When der Fuehrer says, "We ist der master race"
We HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face
Not to love Der Fuehrer is a great disgrace
So we HEIL! (phhht!) HEIL! (phhht!) Right in der Fuehrer's face

---

Swell. Now "F Troop" will be in charge of security. I hope Dobbs has retired.

Can you say "Papieren Bitte"

What I'd like to know is this, will the fascist cabal in Washington make the trains run on time? Mussolini was able to do that at least!

O Tempora O Mores

--Cicero

Figured the civil libertarians around here were going to have their fun with this.

GBNorman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> O Tempora O Mores
>
> --Cicero
>
> Figured the civil libertarians around here were
> going to have their fun with this.


The "civil libertarians" are worried about the path this country is taking. We do seem to have neofascists in the White House and its administration. If you want to live in a country and have to look over your shoulder to see what government official is watching you, go for it. I want to remain an AMERICAN.

So what are these hyper-vigilant security checkers going to do when some semi-cephalic terrorist cashes in his Enron stock, rents a semi, fills it full of explosives, drives it on to some urban freeway at rush hour, get stuck in a traffic jam and blows it up? Stop harrassing innocent railfans doing their thing by surveilling the Northest Corridor with cameras in tow?

John

This is classic over doing at its best. Besides, Terrorists try to "blend in" to the society they are about to make victims. These people are trained in their craft. Asking for ID's and keeping railfans from taking pictures is not going to keep one of these criminal monsters from following their assigned mission.

Do you think that if Mr. ATA had he been questioned who he was, ID'd & searched would they have discovered that he was about to assault an airline cabin, and fly a plane into a skyscraper ?

I think that they can do better than that.