In no way does preventing unticketed people from being able to go to the gate area improve security whatsoever. I understand the operational necessity of it (it makes the screening process more efficient) nonetheless, but people citing this as an example of "higher security" bugs me to no end. It just illustrates how people will believe that more restrictive = higher security, which is not necessarily true.

If it were really a security mechanism (it isn't), it would be trivial to defeat, as Spiff has pointed out five zillion times.