The Honorable Mayor Giuliani has made an important point in his statement. Although it was made during a campaign, and is thus can not be held in any high regard as truth, there is some strong insight in his idea of relinquishing freedoms to the government in exchange for safety. In a nutshell, I agree with the quote, and I feel it's my duty to qualify it.
For one thing, take our injured city, the great capitol of the world. Although it's a sad state of affairs when National Guardsmen have to patrol the streets, it is certainly safer than the previous level of alertness that our police force was operating on. Before the tragedy - and in considering the issue at hand, we must only use the pre-bombing condition of the city for evidence "" the security at major institutions was so low as to be laughable. I have challenged this security on many a bored afternoon, and found that bringing illicit items in "" for it could barely be called sneaking "" was incredibly easy.
Skyline panorama of New York City from Empire Stat...
Empire State Building
Search and seizure training in BahrainThe specific locations and items shall be left unnamed to protect the innocent, but the bottom line is that I so easily compromised these institutions because my right to be protected from unlawful searches and seizure of my property was being upheld. The security guards had no reason to believe that I was breaking the rules, and thus had no right to search my belongings. If I had been nervously twitching or doing something else to arouse suspicion, then it would have been all right. But there was nothing to tip off authorities, and this only goes to show that any cool, calm, collected person can smuggle Pringles into the Met.
Although it may be an easy item to use as evidence, the...