A Dangerous Loophole in Airport Security

[gdub]

Dispatch guy is right. There is no possible way to secure a boarding pass if your name is on the no-fly list. The web check in will tell you "Airport Check In" required.

 

[FN FAL]

But, and I am just playing devil's advocate here, if youre name was on the terrorist watch list, would the system still allow you to checkin, or, when you attempted to checkin over the web, say that for some reason, that airport check-in was required.

If you get a boarding pass from an online transaction, then, and again only an assumption, youve been checked against the watch list, and not found to be on it; yet.

Actually, that would be a great scene for an action movie.

Open scene to a TSA guy checking out a passenger in a line and he's checking his "no fly list" against the guys ID.

In the background, a bunch of people are milling around waiting for their flights to depart or are waiting on line to be screened.

Clem and Amos are standing by one of the observation windows...camera focus zooms in on them and we hear, "Dang Clem, what's up with all those skydivers landing on the ramp?"

"I don't rightly know, Amos. But it looks like they are wearing some funny looking vests with road flares on them."

Cut to a close up of one of the men running on the ramp screaming, "lalalalalalalalala!", then zoom out to show the full scene of 15 guys in black garb running towards airliners parked at the terminal.

In the background an alarm Klaxon goes off. Cut to various scenes of airport police and security dropping coffee and donuts and bolting.

Fade in Wagner's Flight of the Valkarie and the camera scene shifts to outside by the terminal, starting out wide angle to show three distant but ominous figures standing on the top of an airline food catering truck.

As Flight of the Valkaries gets louder, the camera slowly zooms in and soon we are able to make out three buff shirtless men, with bandoliers of ammo crisscrossing their chests, load bearing harnesses, big knives in scabards on their belts, tight camoflage pants and jump boots. Each is holding a belt fed machinegun and with sunlight glinting off the belted ammo, they turn and glance at each other as the camera zooms in on their faces and we see it's Arnold, "the rock" and "Vin Diesel".

The camera then zooms in on the central figure...Arnold, who then takes his cigar out of his mouth and says, "No 72 Virgins for you, Girly Mans!"

The camera zooms out just enough to show the figures three wide, waist high as they begin to shoot the belt feds in slow motion. Empty brass gingerly flies through the air in slow motion streams, each hero's face grimacing to the beat of the recoil.

Simultaneously, the music fades from Wagner and explodes to "Rage against the Machine"...

"Killing in the name of!
Some of those that were forces are the same that bore crosses
Some of those that were forces are the same that bore crosses
Some of those that were forces are the same that bore crosses
Some of those that were forces are the same that bore crosses
Huh!"

Fade to opening credits...

COMMANDO III
The day Allah ran out of virgins!

 

[kenimpzoom]

Fn Fal that movie would ROCK!!!! I'd pay money to see that.


Ken

 

[Metro752]

The camera then zooms in on the central figure...Arnold, who then takes his cigar out of his mouth and says, "No 72 Virgins for you, Girly Mans!"

COMMANDO III
The day Allah ran out of virgins!

Thats awesome, I bet we can all hear Arnold sayin that.

 

[chawbein]

But, and I am just playing devil's advocate here, if youre name was on the terrorist watch list, would the system still allow you to checkin, or, when you attempted to checkin over the web, say that for some reason, that airport check-in was required.

If you get a boarding pass from an online transaction, then, and again only an assumption, youve been checked against the watch list, and not found to be on it; yet.

Dispatch guy is right. There is no possible way to secure a boarding pass if your name is on the no-fly list. The web check in will tell you "Airport Check In" required.

The article points to a possible terrorist buying a ticket under a false name i.e. John Doe and checking in online with the John Doe name. Then using photoshop or some other desktop publishing tool to change the name on an exact copy of the internet boarding pass to their own terrorist name i.e. khalid sheik mohammed to use going through security. That pretty much bypasses the no-fly list. If you make like John Malkovich in In The Line Of Fire and make a plastic gun; well, there you go.

 

[9GClub]

What about post-security checkpoint issues?

The bottom line is that absolute security is pretty dang close to a complete joke. What about an inside job? What about stuff that goes on past security?

Some have suggested-- albeit in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion-- that gate agents hand out knives (guns, tazers, tweezers, forks, whatever) to everyone getting on a commercial aircraft ("Ladies and gentlemen, in your seat pocket in front of you you'll find a complimentary copy of our inflight magazine, the venerable vomit bag, and a Glock 19......"). The good guys will probably outnumber the bad.

Joking aside, however, the TSA folks do a pretty fine job considering the logistical nightmares they have to deal with.

 

[jethro]

Yup we could give the pax guns and knives, but then the airlines couldn't serve alcohol, a major source of revenue... thus they wouldn't be able to pay pilots those $130,000 salaries MSN was reporting on.

Speaking of which since that article had the average lawyer making $90k, I'm pulling my kid out of Harvard law and enrolling him in Comair!

 

[FN FAL]

Thats awesome, I bet we can all hear Arnold sayin that.

Fn Fal that movie would ROCK!!!! I'd pay money to see that.

Cool, glad you liked it...sometimes I get one cup of coffee too much and "BRUGADUNG!" Maybe I should keep writing on that screenplay and theme it like the "kung pow-enter the fist movie". Kind of like a COMMANDO movie naked gun/airplane thing?

But anyway, it was the only way I could illustrate that the paperwork inside the building is only as good as how far bad people are willing to do the do outside the building, without risking a black van pull up in front of the house.

Here's a question I gotta ask you guys...I know from the news that they busted those jerkoffs coming in from Canada with the US girl just after 9/11. I think they even got caught with some plans or were trying to sneak some stuff in. But other than those guys, the Moosowie character, Reid the shoe bomber and the guys they whisked away to gitmo, where the heck are all these US based terrorist cells they told us were out there?

They bombed a train in Spain and got an election changed over it, we didn't even have one single act...not even a shiite taking a dump on a USPS mail box...before our election. You'd think those guys would have surfaced by now.

Don't get me wrong, I think overseas there is a great risk of terrorist cells acting out and they are working hard at busting these guys, but what happened over here? Now they want to privatize the TSA screeners...whazzup with that? Could it be that we totally cleaned their clocks over in Afghanistan and Iraq...at least as far as them being able to commit acts out of their theater? Good then...it must mean we are doing something right.