I should have insisted on being an anonymous source

I was quoted in today's San Francisco Chronicle.  On weekdays, I take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train to work in San Francisco.

Thursday morning, a Chronicle reporter asked me as I got off the train if I had heard about that day's bombing attempt in London.  When I told him I had, he asked a couple of other questions.  I told him that I didn't think there was much that individuals could do about the threat, except maybe to watch out for strange packages.  I guess I should have said "unattended packages".  Because here is how it showed up in the paper (Transit security ratcheted up by Steve Rubenstein and Suzanne Herel San Francisco Chronicle 07/22/05.):

"This is bad, but it's a sign of the times,'' Bruce Miller of Oakland said as he arrived on BART Thursday at the Powell Street station in downtown San Francisco. "I hope the government is going to try to do more. "I'm not sure there's all that much an individual passenger can do, except watch out for strangers.''

Advising people to "watch out for strangers" on the BART train would be a pretty airheaded things to say.  Since you're lucky if you even see anyone you know on the entire train, with the tens of thousands of people riding it every day.  You do sometimes recognize passengers from other BART rides.  But if you were to "watch out for strangers", you would be a pretty paranoid BART rider.

Maybe I should just say, "I did not have a conversation with that reporter!"

A co-worker suggested that I could have insisted on being quoted as a source who "asked to remain anonymous because he's suspicious of strangers."