Hanno Kaiser has a nice post over at Law & Society about today's filing of suit by the NYCLU. Kaiser asks if people (especially New Yorkers) are really docile enough blindly go along? Well... yes. They don't mean to be, but they're influenced by the world around them and think that such a minor imposition as a bag search isn't such a bad idea. And certainly nobody thinks of the consequences.

So what are the consequences? Kaiser says:

The subway search program is yet another step towards a culture of permission, a culture in which basic rights (such as the right to travel freely within a city) are conditioned upon obtaining prior approval from whatever authority claims to have such powers of pre-approval.

Exactly right. The small transition made in the last few weeks is that instead of paying customers having a right to travel on city transport, they now have the right only subject to NYPD approval. In a sense, we no longer have a right to ride the subway, but merely a license to. Certainly plenty of people in days past have been detained before a subway ride, but not without some cause. But this isn't the case any longer. Rights give way to licensing, licensing to tougher licensing, tougher licensing to prohibition.

Of course, I'm not one to begrudge "reasonable" searches; the Forth Amendment only protects against "unreasonable searches". I would even be willing to consider as (at least potentially) reasonable searches based on profiling that includes some consideration of race. But how can the current searches possibly be characterized as reasonable? They can easily be avoided - there is ample warning and, if selected, one is allowed to walk away. The only way these searches could logically be rationally related to the security interest is if those with illicit materials are presumed to be irrational, i.e., to assume that they would be so stupid as to knowingly walk right into their own capture.

I generally walk everywhere in NY, including between home and Cardozo, but tonight I rode the subway to avoid the light rain. It was the first time I rode since the searching began and, had I remembered it, I probably would've decided to get home a little wet instead. Luckily, I neither saw nor experienced a search on the subway to serfdom.