Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Here We Go: I haven't blogged for awhile, so it's time for me to piss everyone off.

We've all seen that image of four Middle Eastern, young-adult men carrying large backpacks getting onto the London tube, shortly before they blew themselves up -- along with many innocent Britons.

Given the current war on terrorism, that scene should count as "suspicious activity". I know this is based on nothing more than racial profiling. But I'm not saying we should detain all Middle Eastern men. However, when a group of them congregate as such with big bags, I wouldn't put it past a police officer to check at least one of their bags before letting them ride the subway.

Drudge has a link to an article about how DC subway riders may be subject to random searches, in the wake of the London and Madrid attacks. That's fine with me. And I hope the police will have enough discretion to interpret "random" so as to not bother searching a group of middle-aged white female tourists and instead will concentrate on searching people who look more like, well, me!

I'm a 28-year-old white guy. But I have short black hair and a somewhat dark complexion. Although I'm usually confused for Hispanic more often than Middle Eastern (I'm really Italian), my appearance should get a second look from police patrolling the subways.

And I've always been a privacy nut. But I'd rather let the police know what books I'm reading than for them to let by someone who intends to kill me and my fellow DC residents on the subway.

I hope nobody is so short-sighted that they will accuse me of racism after reading this post. In no way do I believe that all Middle Easterners or all Muslims are our enemy. But after the 9/11 attacks and the other bombings that have taken place around the world, we know the profile of our likely attackers. We need to use that to protect ourselves.