US security: Protection or intrusion?

By Stephen Evans North America business correspondent

New York is on high alert, as it seems some of the world's big financial institutions have been surveyed by members of al-Qaeda. But what is it like living in a city constantly looking over its shoulder?

New York is on "orange" alert, the second highest level on the scale

To live in America in these strange, tense times is to live in a country of the bizarre, the unsettling, the surreal.

We ordinary citizens go about our business, live our lives, with powerful forces shaping our paths and daily routines.

We know there are evil people out there intending to kill and maim us, perhaps watching us, riding the same trains.

Against them are the authorities, officialdom, offering us information which we have no way of verifying; so it is hard to make sense of the never-ending brouhaha of security.

A year ago, for example, I found myself as a tourist in northern New Mexico, and as any good tourist would do, I decided to find out if there was a museum at Los Alamos.

This is the remote town, you will remember, chosen for the Manhattan Project to build the world's first atom bomb.

Today, the site remains America's prime nuclear laboratory, the place where new generations of nuclear weapons are devised and engineered.

Top secret, you would think.

Yet, when I was there, I managed to drive unimpeded onto the site in a hire car, park it and wander round, trying to find someone to ask where the museum was.

Americans are not used to terrorism and the environment it creates

Not only did nobody confront me, but I had a hard time finding anyone who could actually point me in the right direction.

Now, I am not saying I actually wandered round the cyclotron, where particles are whirled around and processed, but I did manage to park a car and wander, unimpeded by a heavy-booted officer or even a simple question about who or what I might be.

Left luggage

It is partly that Americans are not used to terrorism and the environment it creates.

Inkless fingerprints taken at JFK airport are checked against the criminal and terrorist databases

The other day, I came out of the cinema on Union Square in Manhattan and spotted a small, black briefcase all alone on the pavement.

After years of living in London, any unattended case arouses suspicion so, no doubt to my discredit, I decided to head away sharpish - at which point, two security guards appeared in black T-shirts marked appropriately "Security".

They waddled up, they looked a bit, and then one of them kicked the case. No bang - so that is all right, then.

On the one hand, security seems lax; on the other, it seems to be everywhere.

Photo-identity like a passport is demanded constantly - to travel on trains and planes, of course, but also to get hotel rooms.

Why? I am not quite sure.

It is true there is slightly less chaos now at airports. The searches seem swifter and more focused.

Ma'am, if I were you I'd take the dog off the belt

We have moved on from the time when I witnessed an official at Detroit airport shouting: "Everything through the X-ray, everything on the belt," only to see a grand lady place the plastic case carrying her dog on the conveyor.

This sweet, roly-poly creature - the dog not the lady - was then heading towards the scanner and, I surmised, its doom.

Nothing but charcoal would be left of the curls and ribbons. There was a moment of mischief in my mind, but then I relented and spoke out.

"Ma'am", I said, "if I were you I'd take the dog off the belt".

Weariness

It is, of course, easy to sneer but there is a serious point.

If security regimes at public buildings seem arbitrary, the public will not trust them. And crying wolf is now a problem.

Random checks by police are part of everyday life in New York

It is true I am only a sample of one, but I live in Lower Manhattan and work in Times Square - two targets on any evil doer's list, you would think - yet when the authorities tell me I am more at risk today than yesterday, I have to say that I am unconvinced.

There is a view that states of permanent high alert and tension suit President George W Bush's election hopes.

You do not have to subscribe to that theory to think that the authorities are getting it right.

It may be, rather, that putting security at the top of the agenda legitimises endless intervention in our lives. And because the enemy is unknown, it is impossible to know how much intervention is warranted.

So the police scream around in convoys. People in uniform - railway officials, hotel staff, security guards - seem to think they have a right to know your business.

That is not a conspiracy to keep the people frightened.

Anyway, I am not sure that a state of constant alert does suit President Bush.

A weariness and a wariness of officialdom may be setting in with people who think they have heard that cry of "Wolf!" once too often.

Of course, if there were a serious bomb attack, let us say a week before the election, that would be a different political matter.

Mr Bush might then look like the strong defender, the man whose warnings were prescient.

Terrorists shape our daily lives in tedious ways.

They also shape the election for president of the United States of America.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 7 August, 2004 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.