Brandon Mayfield. That's the name Boston transit officials should remember before adopting their misguided plan to search the bags of "random" subway riders and demand identification from "suspicious" passengers on commuter trains. Defining random and suspicious is at least as problematic as identifying potential terrorists.
Mayfield is the Oregon man jailed for two weeks last month after the Federal Bureau of Investigation misidentified a fingerprint on a bag of detonators found near the scene of the Madrid train bombings as that of the 37-year-old Portland lawyer. The FBI apologized to Mayfield, a convert to Islam who reasonably suspects that his religion had more than a little to do with the FBI's unwanted attention. His incarceration should send a shiver down the spine of every Bostonian with a T pass and a passing acquaintance with the Fourth Amendment.
Officials of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority need not look as far as Oregon for examples of overzealous efforts by law enforcement to thwart terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has released a 50-page report outlining some of the methods being used here in the Commonwealth to protect us from ourselves. It is not reassuring reading.
Police interrogated Jack and Susan Wright after intercepting the couple walking around Barton's Cove near Turners Falls in the western part of the state. The small dam in the cove is a good spot to spy bald eagles and Iceland gulls, but to authorities it is apparently a possible target for terrorists. Police were on the lookout for a suspicious male seen in the area. They let the Wrights go after Jack's footprint did not match that of the suspect, who turned out to be a student taking pictures of birds for a college photography class, according to the ACLU.
The Wrights only missed out on some birding. Abdur Rahman Kantamanto missed his bus when a Worcester ticket agent refused to sell him tickets to Philadelphia for an April school vacation trip unless he could produce birth certificates for everyone in his family in addition to the identification he had already provided. By the time his wife was able to locate the documentation demanded, the family's planned afternoon bus ride had turned into a late night journey.
Was the ticket agent's action random or did it have anything to do with the fact that Kantamanto, a Muslim, was attired in religious garb when he tried to purchase his tickets?
Even state Representative Kay Khan has confronted the effects of this kind of irrational hypervigilance. When her bank rejected a routine wire transfer of $300 to a relative from an account she shares with her husband, the Newton Democrat spent hours tracking down the cause. Her husband's name, Nasir Khan, triggered suspicion, she was told. It wasn't because his name sounded too Irish.
These are dangerous times, but trading liberty for a false sense of security is a fool's bargain. Subjectivity is the central problem with "random" searches and stops of commuters engaged in "suspicious behavior."
I didn't feel safer at the USAir Shuttle gate last weekend watching an elderly woman being patted down by an airport security guard. I felt sad and angry. She was a frightened American, not a mule for Islamic militants.
The alternative to searching the shopping bags and briefcases of our neighbors on their way to Downtown Crossing or the Financial District is not surrender. It's an intelligence network that knows how to identify a threat before he or she boards the Red Line.
It is easier to frisk one another than it is to take the time and care required to figure out who hates us and why. Until we do the latter, we should remember the experiences of Brandon Mayfield, Jack and Susan Wright, Abdur Rahman Kantamanto, Kay Khan, and many others who, the ACLU says, were too afraid to put their names to injustices done in the guise of protecting American freedom.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.