Earlier this week, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, more commonly known as the Metro, announced its latest security plan. In partnership with the Transportation Security Administration, the city will buy $100,000 machines that offer “advanced portable passenger screening technology.”
So, what are these fancy-sounding devices?
They are moveable black boxes that detect waves emitted by human bodies and anything that blocks those waves. The idea is that if you had, say, an explosive vest under your T-shirt, that the scanning device would detect it and the vest would show up as a black spot on the scan that would otherwise render your body green.
At first, this might sound like a great idea: a noninvasive scan that doesn’t require people to line up while still detecting weapons and making people safer. Like most things that sound too good to be true, it is.
For one thing, it’s unlikely to actually prevent an attack on the metro. It turns out terrorists aren’t likely to carry their explosives on their person. Instead, they stash the devices in backpacks or small bags. That was the case in both the 2004 Madrid train bombing and the 2005 attacks on the London Underground. Even if both of those transit departments had employed L.A.’s fancy new scanners, they wouldn’t have caught the bombs stashed in bags because the scanners can only detect things blocked by body waves. Besides, since L.A. plans to warn people at the stations where the scanners will be in use, any would-be terrorist, like the man who attempted to detonate a homemade bomb in the New York Subway, could just turn around and enter the transit system somewhere else.
Think about it: If they stopped everyone with a backpack that blocked body waves, that would mean just about everyone carrying a laptop would be targeted for additional screening. At that point, you might as well funnel people through time-consuming and ineffective airport-style security.
Perhaps even worse, the scanners don’t protect passengers from actual, demonstrated dangers rather than imagined security threats.
At an event designed to show off the scanners, Alex Wiggins, who runs the Los Angeles Country Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s law enforcement division, explained the goal of the scanners: “We’re looking specifically for weapons that have the ability to cause a mass-casualty event.” Wiggins added, “We’re looking for explosive vests, we’re looking for assault rifles. We’re not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don’t have the ability to inflict mass casualties.”
That’s all well and good, but the only recent attacks on California transit weren’t exactly mass casualty events. In April 2018, a man was stabbed on an East L.A. bus, and in July, 18-year-old Nia Wilson was stabbed to death on BART in the Bay Area. Wilson’s stabbing was the third homicide in Bay Area transit that week.
The scanners wouldn’t even try to prevent those types of crimes.
Keeping riders safe is certainly important, but L.A.’s new scanners won’t do the trick. Hopefully, other cities won’t spend $100,000 a machine for this latest act of security theater.
