LT

I have not liked the idea of being able to print your boarding pass yourself since the airlines began this hair-brained idea. Now, there's proof of just how potentially dangerous this idea is:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur...breaks_si.html

Just as one responder put it, all a group of terrorists have to do is print out multiple copies of a boarding pass to make it through the security checkpoint and get much closer to boarding an aircraft.

Are we really that spoiled and lazy that we can't get a boarding pass at the terminal?!? Why don't the airlines just go the next logical step and allow us to create our own boarding pass in crayon on a gum wrapper?!?

RonDace

I was just going to agree with you but I changed my mind.
The bad guys still can't get on a plane with the fake BP, even if their quart size zip lock bag is loaded with shampoo and toothpaste.
I don't like printing my own BP because I like the gold color that I get when I use the Check-In kiosk at the airport or at the counter. But then I thought, "Oh, I can just use gold-color paper in my printer!" Problem solved.
I only use the on-line check in when I have no baqs to check. Otherwise I prefer to use the check-in kiosk, although it's nice to exchange pleasantries with the ticket agent as well. (Almost all of the ones I've met are friendly and professional.)

AAFrequentFlyer

huh?

Let's see:

The res has to match the name on the ID - check!

The holder of the BP has to produce an ID multiple times together with the BP before s/he gets through security - check!

The BP has to be real in order to be scanned before allowed to board - check!


So, the only thing this exposes is the stupidity of TSA's no-fly list, because if the terrorist has a fake ID what would make them not just buy a ticket and check in at the airport with the fake ID to get a "real" BP printed at the airport?

Please, please explained that to me.

Home printed BPs have nothing to do with this stupidity.

HKP

What does "spoiled and lazy" have to do with it?

The lines at check-in counters are now so much shorter since at-home check-in has been allowed. If we had to go back to the original arrangement, those lines would balloon again and you'd end up adding at least another 1/2 hour to the time you need to arrive for a flight. After a while, you're in the terminal longer than you're in the plane.

I LOVE print-at-home BP -- I know they won't monkey with my seat assignment and, in a pinch, I can gate-check my small rollaboard. Even if I have to check baggage, I can go to the automatic check-in kiosk, for which there is rarely a long line.

By accident once, I printed mine out on glossy photographic paper -- this delighted the gate agent! She said regular paper always got wrinkled and often didn't "read" right under the scanner light.

LT

AAFF:

Let me explain:

Theoretically, a person need only produce the boarding pass & ID ONE TIME prior to the gate -- the security checkpoint. If fake boarding passes are this easily printed, I'd say it's only a logical assumption that fake IDs are also as easily printable.

While it is true that the pass must be scanned before entering the jetway, it would be FAR easier for a terrorist to overpower the gate personnel (who are unarmed) then it would be for them to try this at the security checkpoint.

I see the greatest benefit of having boarding passes printed only at the counter is the fact that there would be an actual, live human being checking in each passenger, thus creating another (albeit minor) level of scrutiny. It's also something that could be easily implemented.

IMHO, I still see this as sacrificing safety on the altar of "convenience."

BTW, AAFF, I'd still love to hear some SPECIFICS on what you would do if you were running the TSA, instead of just armchair quarterbacking . . .

AAFrequentFlyer

LT, let me explain something to you.

If Osama bin Laden wanted to do something, do you actually think he would show up with his real ID? My guess - not.

If he already has a fake ID, why not just purchase a regular ticket and at that point what's the difference where the BP is printed.

Now, a US citizen named John Laden is harrased and put on a no fly list because his name looks similar. It takes him weeks, months and possibly years to convince TSA to take him off the list. He won't show up with a fake ID because he is a law abiding citizen and thus gets put through the ringer.

See the stupidity of no-fly lists?

and that's the only thing that this experiment by the student was suppose to expose, not the fact that it's easy to print a fake BP. When a terrorist with million$ backing her/him up wants to get fake IDs, fake passports they are able to do it. The no fly list is a useless excercise and it should be abandoned.

That said, I have no problem with tight PHYSICAL security at the airports. It is totally necessary and in fact if you read some of my previous posts, I'm all for it,

but your notion that somehow a fake BP exposes our security system is incorrect. One has nothing to do with the other.

I only used the big guys name to make a point, so don't tell me that the ticket agent may have a chance to recognize him.

Physically secure our airports, our ports and we will be fine. No fly list is total waste of time and money.

If you actually believe that a known terrorist is going to show up with their own ID then I have nothing to discuss with you,

yet thousands of law abiding citizens get hassled every day at our airports.

Feel secure!

Wednesday

..just printed my boarding pass for a flight tomorrow morning, now me and my small carry on can take our time and not have to sit at the gate for 2 hours. I vote Aye.

clevelandbrown

LT, I don't think your analysis makes sense, at least in my experience.

On round trips, I print my boarding pass at home for the outbound flight, but since I don't take a printer with me, on the return flight, I have it printed at the kiosk. The kiosk is not a person, so I end up with a boarding pass without having been checked out by a "real live person". Only if I have luggage to be checked do they look at my id at the checkin.

I think you stray from reality when you equate avoiding standing in long lines with laziness, but if you equate industriousness with standing in lines, you don't have to print your own boarding pass. Be sure to get to the airport extra early to avoid tieups, another efficient use of your time.

Now, I don't know if all airlines have the kiosks, and I suspect that if one is unable to operate the kiosk, a real person will come over and process you. I speak only from my experience.

I don't doubt that a skilled and determined hacker could produce a fake ID and boarding pass, but if he could do that, he could no doubt hack a reservation and have the boarding pass printed by the airline. Perhaps you would want to do away with on-line shopping and reservations, too.

LT

Some good food for thought here.

AAFF, I think that there are two seperate issues here -- the "no fly list" and the issue of being able to print your own boarding pass. As far as the former, I think you raise some very valid points. Nevertheless, I still think you haven't produced any valid rebuttal to the notion that having to be checked in by a live human being provides another (again, albeit small) layer of physical security -- the same type of security you keep advocating.

El Al trains their staff to look for behavioral signs of a potential troublemaker. With print-at-home boarding passes, we have eliminated another opportunity for someone to potentially spot these characters. And it's not just terrorists, either. It's the mentally deranged, etc.

HKP & Clevelandbrown: Let's face it -- we've become a nation of whiny, "I need it right now" people. I shudder to think what would happen if we were called upon to make real sacrifices (a la W.W. II). Nobody's crazy about standing in lines, and it's specious reasoning to assume why I am advocating the abolition of print-at-home (and kiosk) passes is because standing in line is somehow "industrious." A comparison of pint-at-home passes to purchasing a ticket online is also quite specious.

But, AAFF, I'm STILL awaiting SPECIFICS on how you'd improve physical security . . . IMHO, no matter what we do, NOTHING will be 100% effective. And have you calculated the cost of dramatically increasing physical security? Here's one SPECIFIC:

According to a RAND Corporation study on cargo shipping security, 11.3 million containers move through U.S. ports every year. There are 2,100 federal inspectors to examine 226,000 containers per week. If we did 100% inspections, each inspector would have to inspect 22 containers per day. RAND estimates that it would take 15 to 20 inspectors an average of four hours to inspect just ONE suspicious container. And we’re not even talking about one cent or one person for any airport security yet. Do the math.

We need to make some hard choices about what's a reasonable and acceptable level of security -- something that the TSA is trying to do. I'm not crazy about everything they do, either, but I sure as heck wouldn't want their job!

AAFrequentFlyer

Your notion that as long as the terrorist gets past security s/he will be somehow able to overpower hundreds of people just shows that you don't trust the physical security.

I get past security very eaily many times. If I want to meet somebody at the gate all I do is buy the cheapest fully refundable ticket to anywhere that particular day, check in, and get through security using my ID and "real" BP. When my guest(s) land, I walk back to the ticket counter and apply for a refund. See how easy it is?

A fake BP is nothing without a fake ID. Don't you see this easy point?

I'm out of here. Not going to get into this useless excercise.

I said what I wanted to say.

Fake BP is nothing. The hard part is fake ID to match it. I and you won't do it, but somebody that wants to, will and if they can acquire a fake ID, why would they even bother with a fake BP. They would just buy a regular ticket. Can't you see this simple point?

On that note, I'm out of here.

Bobmrg

The mind boggles, LT. Let me see if I understand this...a terrorist overcomes the passenger service agent at the gate and runs through the jetway onto the airplane. What then? Does he order the pilots to start the engines? Order Ground Control to issue taxi instructions? Order the tower to clear the plane for takeoff (ignore the need for the plane to have an instrument clearance in the first place)? Seems an unlikely scenario to me.

LT

AAFF, all I'm saying is that no amount of security is foolproof -- including physical security. A "layered" approach to security seems IMO to work best, so why not have the "layer" of having to be checked in by a human who, if properly trained, MAY be able to spot something untowards? Waiting in line seems like a small price to pay . . .

As far as the ease of obtaining a fake ID, just go to virtually any street corner in east L.A., and you'll see just how easy it is to obtain a fraudulent ID. Additionally, we've been talking about a potential terrorist having to get a fake ID to match a boarding pass, but what about the reverse? According to ABC News, it took their INTERNS 20 SECONDS to doctor an online boarding pass to match their ID.

bobmrg, just look at what happened in Rome in 1973 if you want to see what can happen when terrorists storm an aircraft on the ground.

Would having to check in at the counter solve all of the security problems? Certainly not. Could a terrorist or deranged individual still wreak havoc after having to go through check-in in person? It's very possible. But, what would be easier for a large group of terrorists? Come up with either the cash or credit card #s to purchase tickets and then print out the corresponding boarding passes, or just simply get fake IDs (which are usually inexpensive and cheap to make), doctor up a bunch of boarding passes to match the IDs, and then rely on the law of averages to get something past security?

And AAFF, I have one more SPECIFIC before I leave this discussion:

ICIS is a cargo security system created by SAIC, a large defense contractor. All it does is combine already existing (and imperfect) technologies, at a cost of millions. SAIC itself estimates that in order to scan all U.S.-bound cargo at the port of Hong Kong – one port – it would take 50 lanes of ICIS at a cost of $3-4 million PER MACHINE. That’s one port out of approximately 700 who ship to the U.S.

I know you're very critical of the TSA, but, yet again, I ask -- what's YOUR SPECIFIC solution?

mrwunrfl

hare-brained, as in a brain like a hare, not hair-brained.

lynnejoel1015

Just want to add a couple of comments:

#1- Ask any 20 year old college student how hard it is to get a fake ID. Or even a "used" ID. I had one.

#2- The al Qaeda terrorists that hijacked the planes on 9/11 didn't necessarily use fake IDs. Many used their own names, their own passports, and their own IDs. The point is, they were flying under the radar (sorry for the bad pun)-- or as Rumsfeld would put it, "we didn't know what we didn't know." The government wasn't looking for them, so they weren't on the no-fly list.

#3- You don't even have to go to East LA to get a fake ID, I commute downtown from the West and there are plenty of stops along the way where one could obtain an ID!

Worktowander

Here's another blogger's take on the same subject (Nov. 29 post).

http://miva.sctimes.com/miva/cgi-bin...logid=LSchwarz

AAFrequentFlyer

I said I would not comeback here but...

<b>Worktowander's</b> link above is brilliant.

I believe she stole my copyrighted material!

I especially love this part:

<i>Tuesday's government absolution of Soghoian came more than a month after the Transportation Security Administration said that his sin - creating a Web site that makes fake boarding passes - was &quot;no threat&quot; to aviation security.</i>

and this one

<i>Not only was Soghoian's idea not illegal, it wasn't even his.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., raised the issue of fake boarding passes (and gave a startlingly thorough primer on how to do it) on his Web site in April, months before Soghoian's Web site was launched.</i>

and finally (and especially) this one:

<i>If breaching security to get to the gate area is a danger, (and the TSA says it isn't - see the &quot;no threat&quot; comment above) there are plenty of other ways to do it. A lot of people just get themselves a real boarding pass: They buy a full-fare, refundable ticket that can be used to access an airside lounge or the gate area then cash it in unused.

Soghoian's stunt unintentionally highlighted that boarding passes are a security risk - because Americans continue to be distracted by them and baggie rules and other looks-good-but-doesn't-do-much security measures. We continue to believe, for instance, that no-fly lists and ID checks are effective security measures, which they are not.

How can fake boarding passes be a problem when false ID documents are so easy to come by that circumventing the no-fly list is no challenge for a determined terrorist?

How can ID checks and boarding pass-matching be vital to our safety when, for instance, it is perfect legal to fly domestically without ever showing ID? It happens commonly when people lose their wallets on vacation, for instance, and are put through rigorous screening then allowed to board their flight.

ID checks and boarding passes are the least of our protections. </i>

Thank You and school's out!


I guess on line check in stays. TSA got it right for once!

LT

I said I was going to leave this post as well, but . . .

. . . not exaclty, AAFF. The blogger is absolutely correct in that this student was not the originator of the fake boarding pass idea.

Nevertheless, does it really make sense that a potential terrorist is going to go through the hassle of buying a legitimate ticket when all he/she has to do is doctor up some phony ID &amp; a boarding pass? Doubtful. But, I guess if you feel otherwise . . .

And what's the REAL REASON the TSA claims that fake boarding passes are &quot; . . . no threat to aviation security?&quot;

Here's the answer:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/...ng_passes.html

I love this:

&quot;The TSA told ABC News they're not concerned about fake boarding passes because airports screen for weapons.&quot;

And, as we all know, they have been 100% successful at catching everyone trying to get contraband material past airport screeners, right?

And while the blogger is also correct in that you don't have to show ID, you will be subjected to additional, more rigorous screening. And again, what's easier? Get a fake ID &amp; boarding pass, or refuse to show ID &amp; get strip-searched?

Perhaps, at this point, instead of arguing over this, a more productive endeavor might be to come up with SPECIFIC WAYS security can be improved (something which, BTW, AAFF, I keep asking you for. I know you have been very critical of current security, and since you have a heavy travel schedule, I'm genuinely interested into hearing your insight into what SPECIFIC THINGS you think would work.).

Here's one idea, although I know it's not perfect:

http://www.rand.org/commentary/092401PPG.html

AAFrequentFlyer

You just don't get it, do you?

You do admit that's easy to get a fake ID, yet you have a hard time admiting that with a fake ID it's very easy to get a real BP - just buy a freaking ticket. And let's assume that they also printed a fake BP that matched the fake ID, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

They still need to get through security, and if TSA do their job right then what's the difference? if I'm John Smith with a real ID and a real BP or if I'm Osama bin Laden with a fake ID and a fake BP?

Tell me what's the difference?

You're telling me that John Smith could not be a terrorist and thus it's ok? How can you know that? What am I missing?

John Smith could cause the same havoc that OBL can, if that was the intention.Let's not forget some Americans did join his group and if needed I'm sure they could also call upon some more sympathisers that will look &quot;normal&quot; and very American, and their name could be John Smith.

HKP

Apparently, OP thinks &quot;terrorism begins at home&quot;! Only place people can do truly nefarious things is in the comfort of their home office? Make them go to the airport and they won't be able to get away with anything?

Next thing you know, OP will be suggesting that only in-airport agents can book reservations and issue tickets, and we'll all have to go to the airport to make our reservations, because any shmoe could be booking passage at home under an assumed name.

CarolA

&quot; I see the greatest benefit of having boarding passes printed only at the counter is the fact that there would be an actual, live human being checking in each passenger, thus creating another (albeit minor) level of scrutiny. It's also something that could be easily implemented&quot;

Have you ATTEMPTED to get a LIVE counter agent lately???? They don't have many of them left. So the ONLY thing that would happen is that you would print at a KIOSK.

If you want to have LIVE counter agents, how much are you willin to PAY? Those employees will need to be paid by the people buying the tickets and Americans have shown that &quot;Talk is cheap&quot; (Remember AA's more room in coach plan, everyone LOVED it, but when push came to shove and AA cost more they went with CHEAP over ROOM)

Not to mention that I once asked an AA counter agent if she wasn't suppose to LOOK at me. This idiot never looked at anyone.

I really doubt that a terrorist is going to RISK having someone print 10 boarding passes with the same name. Nope, they are going to buy 10 tickets. They are going to look just like YOU and I.

What's lazy is the American theory that &quot;the Terrorist will do dumb things to help us&quot; like printing fake boarding passes.