Rick, please don't take this as a personal attack, but (a) that statement regarding liberty & security was (as gutdoc says above) made by B. Franklin, not T. Jefferson and (b) please tell me where you live & work, because I can't tell whether you truly understand what daily life in a major urban area is like. A lot of personal liberties & rights are compromised or surrendered when one lives/commutes/works cheek-by-jowl with millions of other people in the NYC metro area.

In principle, as I've said elsewhere in this thread, I agree that civil liberties should be sustained to the utmost letter of the law. (That's why I am a member of the ACLU -- I don't agree emotionally with all of their positions, but I agree intellectually with most of them because the ACLU is a fierce defender of constitutional and other legal rights -- no matter how unpopular the folks whose rights they're defending.)

But in real life I (like Polak187) believe that it's a miracle that no terrorist incident has happened yet on the NYC transit system. If we can get a decent search procedure set up -- minimize the potential for abuse and maximize the potential for locating possible attackers -- then I am willing to accept that search procedure as the price of living in NYC. (I'm not happy about it, mind you, but I'm willing nonetheless.) And by the way, it costs about $475/month for covered parking in my neighborhood ... I have much better things to do with that money -- like feed my ETS-fuelled gear lust -- than keep a car in Manhattan merely to avoid "random" searches on the subways & trains.