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Serial stowaway slips aboard Minn-Fla flight

Serial stowaway slips aboard Minn-Fla flight

Old Feb 11, 2015, 1:27 pm
  #16  
 
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Originally Posted by KRSW
So..if a little old, possibly demented, woman can do this so often, what about actual terrorists? Certainly terrorists would have more resources and time to do research than a little old lady.

Further proof that the TSA's document checking is for show. Then again, most FT'ers in this forum know that. Illegals, high school, and college students all know where to get fake docs, why wouldn't a terrorist be able to do the same?
Although your question is reasonable, it proceeds from a flawed assumption - that a terrorist intent on doing harm needs or wants to circumvent the document check, as this little old dementor has.

There is no need for actual terrorists to circumvent the document check - they can gain entrance to the 'secure' passenger areas simply by buying a ticket and printing a real, honest-to-goodness, legitimate boarding pass. If their name appears on a no-fly or watch list of some kind, they can easily circumvent THAT by buying fake ID documents and booking the legitimate ticket under the false name on their fake ID, as your second paragraph illustrates.

The question here is not about people gaining entrance to the airside public areas. The question is whether this little old lady, with her simple stowaway techniques, could have smuggled weapons, explosives, or incendiaries into the airside areas - either public or secure - and onto an actual aircraft.

I doubt that her techniques would meet with any more or less success than those used by actual terrorists, because although her technique circumvents the document check, it does not appear to circumvent the physical screening. The technique mentioned in the news article - tagging along with a family so as to pass through the TDC in the confusion - would not have bypassed the physical screening.

Whether the physical screening would detect any WEI she might be carrying is an entirely different kettle of fish and has been debated ad nauseum on this board for years.

I think this bears repeating, because a lot of people completely lose sight of it amid the many air travel security topics - ID doesn't matter. At all. Ever. It's simply too easy to purchase fraudulent ID and travel under an assumed name, especially the way the ID check is done in US airports, with no database access, merely a cursory visual inspection by poorly-trained, bored, often angry personnel.

It's been a long time, so many people forget, but the travel document check was put into place for only one reason - to limit the number of people that have to be screened at the c/p. It had nothing to do with providing another layer of security - because it doesn't - it had everything to do with simply limiting the number of people being screened on a daily basis to ticketed passengers only, and not non-traveling visitors. It was all about shortening the wait times by keeping those without tickets out of the queues.

The idea of keeping non-travelers farther from the actual airplanes was merely a side-effect which sounded reasonable on its face - until you recall that anyone who passes through the c/p is screened equally, so non-travelers should present no more or less risk to the aircraft than travelers do.

Now, it goes without saying that if this little old belfry was able to enter the sterile area by means other than the c/p, and was actually able to completely bypass any sort of physical screening whatsoever, that would be a genuine cause for concern.. However, that doesn't appear to have been the case with Ms. Bugs and Friends, so I'm not terribly worried.

I'm more worried about TSOs and other airport workers whose access to the aircraft and airside areas, both public and secure, are so broad, and who are seldom if ever screened. We've already seen multiple large, organized theft and smuggling rings uncovered among such workers in the last few years, and frankly, I'm a lot more worried about having my valuables go down some TSO's pants than I am about whackjobs with pipe bombs trying to bring down my plane.
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