ATL: 1,400 Security Badges Have Gone Missing, but That’s Not So Bad Over 2 Years
Mary Minor Davis March 05, 2015
Officials at Hartsfield-Jackson show 1,400 employee security badges have gone missing over a two-year period.
An Atlanta ABC affiliate is reporting that some 1,400 employee security badges were lost or stolen at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) between 2012 and 2014. However, airport officials say that while the missing badges are concerning, a badge alone is not enough of a credential to get people past security checkpoints.
In an email, ATL spokesman Reese McCranie told WSB Channel 2:
We take the loss and theft of employee badges very seriously. Badges are deactivated as soon as they are reported lost or stolen. Secured areas of the airport can only be accessed with a valid badge and PIN, and each badge has a photo of the employee on it. Due to these safeguards, we do not believe that lost or stolen badges pose a significant security threat to the airport.
Anthony Lemieux, a terrorism expert at Georgia State University, told WSB he believes the badges are “a concern” but it’s important “to keep in mind is the multiple layers of security.” ATL does not currently use biometrics screening, such as fingerprint and eye scans, for employees.
A report from ABC News noted that while employees lose badges at airports all around the country, the TSA would not release exact figures due to safety concerns. ATL officials pointed out to ABC that with 63,000 people employed at the airport, excluding airline employees, “1,400 lost badges isn’t so many over two years.”
[Photo: iStock]
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Airport employees losing badges is a normal incidental aspect of airport operations. Baggage handlers get their badges caught on luggage or on machinery. The rate of badge loss for two years may seem high to people unfamiliar with airfield operations, but it's really not. LAX, and other airports, have had to redesign badges because the number of lost badges exceeded the threshold # mentioned in the article.
My concern is that once you had a credential like this, it is possible to reverse engineer it and use the information on it to create a new card that uses an active ID number, as well as new picture and name.
USAFWSO, it's a federal requirement that after x% of active badges are lost or stolen the airport has to redesign the badge and reissue to everyone. It's not that easy, imagine re-issuing CACs to everyone on a large base and you're about in the right scale. EDGEWOOD, TSA does not issue or track badges, it's up to each airport to do so on its own, this failure is on the ATL airport management as is the failure to catch the arms traffickers that NYPD had to catch.
A very simple fix: Reissue new badges to all authorized employees and cancel the old badges. How difficult is that? Being Atlanta I am not surprised.
Maybe some of them will turn up on eBay...