kmersh

Check it 10x or check it once, whatever, but please use some common sense when making the check.

Not checking Mobile Boarding Passes and those who used Passports as a form of ID and instead only checking those who used Drivers Licenses and Paper Boarding Passes makes absolutely no sense. I rolled my eyes when I saw the TSA at the gate and knew some sort of check was coming​, but when the Gate Agent informed us that the TSA was ONLY checking paper boarding passes and those who used Drivers Licenses was just stupid. As I said earlier, so many people just looked at the TSA employee and said I used my Passport or Mobile Boarding Pass and he just waved you on.

If a would be bad person was trying to do something bad and they were doing ID checks at the gate, he or she would simply either say they used their passport as their form of ID or quickly get a Mobile Boarding Pass (if they didn't already have one) and they have bypassed the extra layer of security, simply by following the rules of this particular ID check.

Boggie Dog

What benefit is accomplished?

Boggie Dog

Source = I can count.

jdrtravel

that comment is a real winner.

Pesky Monkey

But they don't check at the security line, at least not the countries I've visited.

Boggie Dog

Take the number of TSA gate checks/ID checks done in a days time versus the number of flights in a days time. Then reduce that by the number of people on a given flight that gets a gate check or ID check. Whatever the percentage, 1, 2, 5, or even 10% it is not significant and offers little to nothing in the way of improved security.

TSA could implement better security by simply screening airport workers. Those people face little oversight and can bring in most anything they want. I observed an airport worker at DFW bringing in several bottles of what appeared to be 2 liter bottles of soda, yet I am limited to 100 ml. Another worker had a roll aboard. Neither was screened nor were any of the other 20 or so workers that entered the secure area through the employee entrance adjacent to the TSA security checkpoint that I observed.

I am convinced that TSA is focused on doing things that add nothing to security because doing them is easy. Some call it Security Theater, an appropriate term for what TSA does.

jdrtravel

Allow me try to help with the confusion.

Checking ID's at the gate is not a way to detect weapons (obviously). The idea, presumably, is that if someone with weapons, or even more likely, someone on the no-fly list, had found a way into the terminal without going through security at all, and did not have a ticket, they would not be able to board.

Furthermore, randomized practices like this create a sense of unpredictability in the security environment, and this sense of unpredictability is very important.

Boggie Dog

Do you think a person with weapons might have the resources to obtain an ID that matches a boarding pass or even create a boarding pass to match an ID they want to use?

Why aren't you concerned about that baggage handler who can waltz in with most anything and has direct access to the airplanes, often unsupervised access?

I think your priorities are in the wrong place.

chollie

TSA already has 21 layers of security, all of which are based on inconsistency and unpredictability. There are no hard and fast rules because individual TSOs have 'discretion' to do pretty much what they want.

TSOs engaging in this entirely fruitless pursuit are TSOs who are not engaging in more productive activity. Rather than tolerate sloppiness at the checkpoint that has to be occasionally double-checked at the gate, why not improve checkpoint performance? If you are failing to find 95% of the contraband the testers bring through the checkpoint, you really should be focusing your efforts (and your TSOs) on getting the checkpoint right before you start diverting resources to pointless gate checks.

After all, if your understaffed checkpoint staff miss a gun at the checkpoint, which we know they have done twice already this year, a gun that would not have been caught by an ID check at the gate, perhaps you should start getting your checkpoint act together. In fact, one of the guns missed was carried on an international flight, and international flights departing from the US do actually include a mandatory final passport/BP check as you are boarding. The pax showed her ID/BP again at the gate, but it didn't prevent her from boarding with the gun in her purse.

TSA should take a tip from the rest of the world: there are no ID checks at security because the number one purpose of security is to ensure that no contraband gets through. They are there primarily to prevent bad STUFF from getting through, not bad PEOPLE.

As I and others are fond of posting: I wouldn't care if Osama bin Laden was sitting next to me on a flight if TSA has done its job. If they have, he is no threat.

jdrtravel

I do think that. Again, multiple layers and randomness. Why is this so hard to grasp?

I am concerned about this and think it's a problem where is still happens (some airports do require staff screening). I would want both, not one or the other.

84fiero

Without a BP a person shouldn't be getting past the GA to board the plane anyway even without ID check.

And it's not all that difficult to fake an ID anyway - certainly these groups that we're told can make an extremely difficult to detect laptop bomb can pull off a convincing Iowa driver's license. Randomness can have its place, but a dedicated terrorist using a good quality fake ID isn't going to be worried about his ID being randomly checked at the gate.

Boggie Dog

The simple point is that checking ID adds nothing to improved security. Not yesterday, not today, not even tomorrow. What adds to security is keeping threat items out of the sterile area and on that point TSA fails by every measure.

notquiteaff

I haven't been to most countries around the world, but to many. And in my experience it is not common for domestic flights (which is what this thread is about). I don't think there are any checks in the Schengen zone, for example. Don't recall any checks intra-Canada.

I don't think it is actually a good thing. Just like I don't think random ID checks while walking around town are a good thing. Or random road blocks to check ID. (and I don't have anything to hide)

Why do you think it is a good thing?

GUWonder

It's a joke to believe in passenger ID checking as a multiple layer to detect and interdict contraband WEIs and secure flights from terrorists, other criminals and those with mental and social pathologies using such. It's a joke to believe in such ID checking as a good use of resources to physically secure flights. It's really just part of a dog and pony show to try to impress the gullible by public demonstrations of "force".

WillCAD

It's also easy to buy a ticket for Flight A under name 1, buy a ticket for Flight B under name 2, transit the checkpoint with one matching set of credentials and board the plane with the other.

Just as it's easy to buy a ticket under an assumed name and have a fake ID in that assumed name, which negates all background checking and makes the ID/BP check useless, since the names on the two documents match but are neither flagged in the NFL nor are they checked against the NFL by ID checks even if they were flagged.

ID checking is neither tactical nor security. It provides zero security benefits at all, none, nada, nicht, El-Zilcho.

Actually, bags are sometimes checked at the gate for WEI, and sometimes passengers are frisked/patted down/groped/assaulted as well. There's a multi-year thread somewhere in TS&S about gate checks.

But it's both infrequent and easily avoided, hence it is an ineffective and useless 'layer'.

Well, let's evaluate it logically:
1) It provides zero security benefit. None. Not one, not even a little bit, not even at all. Nothing.
2) It uses limited security resources that are desperately needed for other genuine security-related tasks.

On balance, since it takes something but gives nothing, I'd have to say that NO, it is not a good thing at all, but is a BAD thing.

Two points here:

1) The likelihood of someone with nefarious intent (i.e. a terrorist, whether on the NFL or not) gaining access to the sterile area without buying a ticket and then trying to board a flight without a ticket is ludicrous on it's face. Name one instance where a terrorist has attempted to attack a plane without buying a ticket on that specific flight. Fake IDs and assumed names aside, the Bad Guys always buy tickets for the flights they want to attack, because they want to insure one-hundred-percent that they will absolutely, definitely, and in all other ways, have a guaranteed seat on the plane they want to blow up.

Terrorists don't stow away. Nor do they fly stand-by.

2) Randomness in some things can certainly provide security benefit. Randomizing routes and schedules is helpful in preventing Remington Steele and Laura Holt from stealing the Quantum Gemerald by avoiding the museum guards on their rounds, or preventing the A-Team from hijacking your stolen Balinese gold bars in transit, but when it comes to physical plant security, randomness adds almost nothing. In fact, randomness in access security is actually counter-productive, because it prevents your own security force from remembering rules and procedures, which causes confusion and delays critical reaction time.

TSA claims to have something like 27 layers of security, but of those 27, only four or five that apply to passengers are actually randomized, which means that Bad Guys really only have to be prepared for four or five potential roadblocks instead of one. And there is no benefit to having multiple random ineffective measures in place vs. one actually effective method. As I said above, if something provides no benefit but uses finite resources, it's not only NOT a good thing, it's actually a BAD thing.

In that context, almost all of TSA is a BAD thing.