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" What&amp;#039;s a &amp;quot;no-ride&amp;quot; list, exactly? An idea conceived by New York Senator Charles Schumer, who came up with it after a document recovered at Osama bin Laden&amp;#039;s Pakistan compound showed that al Qaeda has considered trying to derail a U.S. passenger train in the past. Schumer thinks Amtrak should use the same &amp;quot;no-fly&amp;quot; list used by airlines to bar potential terrorists from jumping onboard, saying, &amp;quot;Anyone, even a member of al Qaeda, could purchase a train trip ticket and board an Amtrak train without so much as a question.&amp;quot; Are our trains really that insecure? Well, yes and no. Amtrak asks passengers to show IDs at major hubs or when checking baggage, but given the number of stops on any given route, doing it everywhere (much less checking against a list) is a little impractical. Likewise, baggage is only screened at random. Plus, people paying $24 for a one-way to Chicago don&amp;#039;t necessarily feel like taking their shoes off or waiting at a checkpoint. On the other hand, Homeland Security says it&amp;#039;s spent more than $1.6 billion on rail security since 2006, with measures that emphasize police presence, like regular inspections and the New York City subway system&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;See Something, Say Something&amp;quot; campaign. Could something like this actually happen? Not likely. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already more or less dismissed the idea, calling it &amp;quot;very difficult to enforce,&amp;quot; and Amtrak released a statement saying it&amp;#039;ll look into the idea, somewhat reluctantly, but that &amp;quot;it would ... have to be developed in close coordination with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and implemented in a way that respects civil rights and allows for the rapid flow of persons and trains, necessary for effective mass transit.&amp;quot; The key word there is rapid, which Schumer&amp;#039;s idea is not. Well, is it at least a good idea? In theory? Depends who you ask, but Bruce Schneier, the oft-quoted security expert and author, doesn&amp;#039;t seem to think so. &amp;quot;Wow, what an idiotic idea,&amp;quot; he told us when we asked him about the no-ride list, before pointing us to his earlier diatribe against the no-fly list, which he says is poorly maintained and much more effective at flagging false suspects \u2014 like Asif Iqbal, a Rochester resident who&amp;#039;s been stopped at flights because he shares a name with a Guantanamo inmate \u2014 than catching actual terrorists. So maybe you&amp;#039;re better off doing what you always do on Amtrak: just hoping for the best. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/q-and-a/a9877/no-ride-list-5719966/>