Airport Insecurity
 

News Flash: Argenbright decertified by DOT.

Maybe they should change the name of the company to Arentoobright Security to reflect its corporate culture.

Any thoughts about Airport Insecurity?

I took two trips within the space of 10 days in October last year. Coincidentally, I made the plane reservations first thing in the morning on September 11 and finished the reservations right when my boss stuck his head in my door and asked me if I had heard about something happening at the World Trade Center.

Due to the face that I made some connections, I ended up flying out of Philadelphia, Raleigh/Durham, Baltimore/Washington, Denver, Portland (OR), and Dulles on these 2 trips. I'm sad to report that the security at Philadelphia was by far the slackest. In addition, US Air staff just looked at my e-ticket printout and sent me through. At least American had a printout of their records of e-ticket holders, and if you did not have a paper ticket, you got checked off against that list.

While I was having my ID examined by the guy in front of the xray, 3 or 4 maintenance workers went through and waved their badges through the air. The guy checking my ID barely noticed them.

My impression: very few of the changes implemented (including the stationing of National Guard personnel, who provided me with my first up-close look at any firearm more serious than a shotgun) are anything more than window-dressing to reassure a skittish public, and the airports & planes are probably not substantially more secure that they were on September 10.

Lets keep this all in perspective. Previously one could carry knifes and other non-explosive weapons on planes when such was not permitted in any county courthouse (Doylestown, Norristown, etc).

TV crews photographed applicants who could not complete tests had those tests completed by company employees responsible for given the test. What did the FAA do? Nothing but a few small fines this was the exception.

Then there remains this *classic*. News investigators routinely, repeatedly, and blatantly challenged and defeated airport security. What was 'our' response? Many of us were outraged at the reporters - fallout from the Food Lion lawsuit. But even worse was Congress's response. They made such investigations illegal rather than address the FAA's graveyard mentality. FAA officials were not held responsible.

You may find security to be weak. But it is so much improved because now it does what it claimed it did on pre 11 Sept.

We don't need big security measures or more military hardware in airports. We simply needed the existing systems to work. 1) That meant that things illegal in a county courthouse were illegal on a plane. 2) That meant that a person who booked the flight could prove who he is - something that we still cannot do today.

3) That meant that any flight or ground crew attacked is protected by the full force of the law. Oh... in Newark, a family so brutally attacks the ground crewman to paralyze the man .... and be declared not guilty.

Of course the FAA now has a standard for all metal detector sensitivity? Well, are we citing specifics or just what we see?

Had we enforced security that was suppose to exist in pre 11 Sept, then the WTC attack could not have happened. We had the necessary security. Unfortunately we also had (and still have) FAA graveyard mentality. What changed? We now have graves. The FAA is doing what it claimed to do pre 11 Sept.

We are not at war (despite those who would use such fears to promote their agenda). We are under less attack today than we were in the 1990s. We don't need exotic security - just let (or even better require by law that) reporters expose security lapses. Lapses directly treaceable to FAA officials. The greatest weakness in airport security is the FAA's graveyard mentality that has not yet been addressed. Of course that would be addressing the source of a problem - 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management.

I was listening to Kylie and Booms yesterday, a sports talk show that tends to wander off topic enough to be interesting. They were interviewing a guy who has crashed all the superbowls but one over the last 36 years. It took him 6 1/2 minutes to sneak into the Louisiana Super Dome under very heavy security. We are making a big mistake if we think we can lock down our society to the point where terrorism is a non issue. We really need to think about why these nuts want us dead and what we can do to change that underlying reallity.

edit for verbs and nouns and things what if read made no sense such as they were laid out so as to be sorta confusing much.

Stopping terrorism isn't the goal. Locking down society is the goal; terrorism is the excuse.

We can't stop the nuts from wanting us dead either.

Stopping terrorism is the goal. We use filters. No filter is perfect.

The gate crasher is not what those filters are seeking. Readers may have made a serious assumption error. They 'assumed' a system designed to intercept armed persons will catch gate crashers. Did he carry a gun or bomb? If so, then the filter failed. But he did not carry terrorist equipment nor was he a terrorist. Therefore the filters worked as designed.

Security filters were not designed to catch the gate crasher. As best we can tell, the filters worked perfectly. No terrorism succeeded. That was the goal.

He was asked if he could have brought in a weapon. He was emphatic, yes easily. The Fed who ran the operation hung his hat on the same thing, we are not the ticket takers. Taking tickets could have been one filter, but wasn't. The crasher went around security and entered the stadium through a side door, he was never challenged. Could Al Queda find and dress up an old white guy in financial distress willing to do something heinous for his families financial gratification? I assume we agree about the foreign policy angle but we have different views of when security becomes the problem. The couple in California who lost their child had a security system, did it make them more safe?

Russ, didn't you get the memo? "Everythings changed." Politicians are no longer power hungry, security gaurds no longer get a kick out of humiliating folks or feeling up women, its a brave new world.

bump

Where are we now - anyone feelin safer flying? Any regular flyers have any stories to share? Anyone flying for the holidays?....

I was interested to learn they don't allow knitting needles on planes...so all the grannies use pens instead.

I wonder why they let you have pens and not knitting needles.

I reckon you could do a fair bit of damage with a plastic fork too.

"Take the plane to _______ or everybody on this plane gets done!"