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"Hobbist or Terrorist?" in Time Magazine

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Mark W. Hemphill Three comments: 1. Almost ANY activity public or private is associated with terrorism. Using a cell phone, traveling on an airplane, moving your household goods, and using hand tools have all been definitively linked to a terrorist act in recent years (Madrid, 9/11, Timothy McVeigh, and the Unabomber). 2. Railroads are vulnerable to sabotage, but that's not the same thing as terrorism. Sabotage is intended to cause economic or military disruption (which can often be the same thing). Terrorism is intended to cause rapid political change. Sabotage is an additive act; each event degrades an enemy and even small events are useful if there's enough of them. Terrorism doesn't work unless each outrage tops the last one: a public rapidly gets inured to little catastrophes. Any event of lesser caliber than 9/11 would probably be non-motivational to the U.S. public at this point--it would at most reinforce, not change, the course of national policy--and a train derailment or bombing is unlikely to be big enough to match 9/11. Terrorist actions against railroads in the U.S. would very quickly look like sabotage in that resources would be reallocated to prevent them, but they would not significantly change national policy. For that, a terrorist has to do another 9/11 or something even larger. The technology of railroading doesn't lend itself to that very well. 3. A national ID card system for rail photography is more akin to a concealed weapons permit than a hunting license. A hunting license is a system of positive value that taxes hunters to pay for game-management programs: the hunter gets something of value. A concealed weapons permit is a system of negative value; it verifies the possessor is not a criminal and is allows him or her to engage in an activity that has great potential for harm. So first, a photography permit would weed out anyone with any errors in judgement in the past or any unfortunate associations. Second, it would probably be highly conditional with restrictions of location, timing, and situation -- just as a concealed weapons permit doesn't get a gun onto an airplane, a rail photography permit is likely to permanently prohibit all sorts of places deemed sensitive. Third, because the possessor in effect is granted a get-out-of-jail-free card, the permit would be avidly sought by miscreants (if it had ANY value at all). Thus, it's likely that very few would be granted. Fourth, and most importantly, it would probably bear with it a requirement for a higher standard of conduct; e.g., anyone with a permit caught trespassing or speeding or taking photos off-limits or what have you would probably face severe penalties and permanent revocation of the permit. A permit system is more likely to result in the permanent loss of photographic privledges for some, and significant loss of privledges for all, than it is to free anyone from the worry of being arrested or interrogated, albeit temporarily. Moreover, just the very act of asking the government for a permit system will bring organized, top-down scrutiny of rail photography instead of the current ad hoc, localized scrutiny, and the result might not be a permit but instead a permanent prohibition. Those are all observations. An opinion: a railfan permit will not return anyone's world to the way it was pre-9/11. This is a solution that should be looked at with great caution, if one would even call it a solution at all. [/quote] Excellent insite- this is why you are Editor and I am a learning reader and railfan!
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