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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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]
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p>Look for the bombs, not the odors.
This business of bag checking was ridiculous to begin with because frankly in the name of “political correctness” old ladies and moms with strollers were getting pulled over. It was definitely not working on way or the other. I do think the presence of cops is good, whether it is effective is questionable. They still check them randomly at 47-50 Rockefeller Center but those guys should all be fired or replaced. They are all so busy flirting with the women and making small talk with eachother, a man could walk thru the turnstiles with bombs strapped to the outside of his clothing and they’d miss him!!
You would not want to walk through one of these security machines after celebrating Diwali.
or new years, or 4th of july, or if u r a miscreant teenager or middle schooler after u’ve tied a cracker to a cats tail, or… … …
u know how they get ex-cat burglers and bankrobbers etc to help out the cops in figuring out deterants, they should get a bunch of these morons who have been caught and offer them timeshares in fla and trips to the caribbean in exchange for real “realistic” actual deterant ways of beating would-be terrormongers.
btw, m., glad someone on the interwebs has the intelligence to see it for the baloney it obviously is…
=)
on a moderately related topic, i saw a mta cop at 42nd station open a bag someone had left behind and people on the platform apparently had brought to his attention…
so let me deal out the scenario. i walk down stairs, see hullabaloo, see cop actually open the bag, OPEN the strange left behind bag sitting by itself on bence!!! and as i am thinking of running the heck out of there, he starts to take stuff out of the bag…
then i figured, i would prolly already be dead, or have contracted ebola or anthrax by this point, so no use running. so 2nd-ing joat, maybe real training for the mta cops before wasting our tax $ to fund some senators bros-in-laws company’s product..
Cubic is the same company that built the metrocard system and any body who has had to swipe the ticket a 100 times just to see the “swipe again” message will know how well this is going to work.
I think the swipe technology is terrible. Why can’t they make it the same technology as my work ID? I don’t have to swipe, just hold it up and it swipes me thru. Just lower the power so random people won’t be charged just because they are a few feet away. Doesn’t the Path train have something similar like this type of technology that is being tested right now? I thought I read something on the news about this the other day.
the path train has been advertised the ‘smartlink’ cards (the ones that will allow you just to hold it up and walk through) for seriously a year now. i’m beginning to think it’s just a myth that the port authority has manufactured.
anyway, similar technology on the mta, i would imagine, would cost a fortune as there are many more stations then path station. besides the mta’s policy seems to be if a train hasn’t shut down in the middle of a tunnel at least several times a week, had a broken air conditioner for most of the summer, or smell like burning on an alarmingly consistent basis – IT AIN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING BROKE.
There aren’t any new subway tunnels being dug in New York City, which after all is the city that brought us the Second Avenue Subway (planned in the 1920’s, paid for twice, never built) and more recently the 63rd Street tunnel extension (seven years to dig 1,500 feet of tunnel).
Hmm… maybe I’m conflating the newly-passed Second Ave. subway referendum with the tunnels being dug to upgrade NYC water mains.