Decius wrote:

It took less than two hours after the bombing attempts in London's transit system on Thursday for the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, to decide to begin random checks of passengers' bags in the city's mass transit system. But he said Friday that his decision had been nearly a year and a half in the making.

Mr. Kelly said he started to focus more closely on the vulnerabilities of the city's transit system in February 2004, after a deadly explosion in the Moscow underground... But Mr. Kelly, who has long thought that searches would be necessary in the transit system, said he realized that the measure might be seen as invasive. The time, he said, wasn't right until Thursday.

"The reality is, you need an event such as London for people to realize this is a procedure put in place for their safety," Mr. Kelly said during an hourlong interview in his office at 1 Police Plaza. "Searches are intrusive. The issue is what the public will accept. You still need an event to get public support."

This is an interesting datapoint. I'll save the cynical commentary.

Actually, the cynical commentary would be on the mark. All the things that went into PATRIOT were things that the far right wanted to do, and 9/11 was simply an excuse to do them. It gave them sufficient "scare" to make them happen. This is no different.

As I've noted before, everything that was done with airline safety (note I said airline, not airplane) has made airPORTS significantly less safe. If there is a easier place to cause a horrendous number of casualties than in the throng of people stuck in line at the airport, with the possible exception of subway stations at rush hour, I don't know what it is.