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Identity Theft From Tossed Airline Boarding Pass?
crush writes "The Guardian newspaper has a great story about how the gathering of information for 'anti-terrorist' passenger screening databases allowed a reporter and security guru Adam Laurie to lay the groundwork for stealing the identity of a business traveller by using his discarded boarding-pass stub." From the article: "We logged on to the BA website, bought a ticket in Broer's name and then, using the frequent flyer number on his boarding pass stub, without typing in a password, were given full access to all his personal details - including his passport number, the date it expired, his nationality (he is Dutch, living in the UK) and his date of birth. The system even allowed us to change the information."
The important thing is that you will not be allowed on an international flight without showing a valid passport. BA boarding procedures mandate a check of the passport against the ticket at the gate. This is kind of necessary now that outbound passengers from the UK are very rarely checked by immigration. True, an airline is unlikely to even have a UV light let alone a scanner there so it may be possible to get through with a forged passport.
See my journal, I write things there
Yesterday I was stopped by a cop in the Concord, MA national park because the muffler on my old vw bus was a bit loud. I handed him my Vermont driver's license, which is a bit of paper with no SSN, only a coded address and no photo. His response- "What's this". "My driver's license" I replied. "Well how do they hope to stop terrorists with this?"
Being an opponent of the current craze for every more comprehensive and intrusive IDs and ID checks here in the US, I hope some proponents of the Real ID act will pay heed to unintended consequences of this absurdity.
To add insult to injury, if your name even remotely resembles the name of a known or suspected "evildoer," you get flagged. My entire family now suffers an extra 45 minutes of screening at the airport, every single time we fly, because my dad's name matches that of some IRA gunman who was last active in the early 80's. (Before you go thinking this might be a valid concern, consider that we're talking about an extremely common name. "John Murphy" isn't exactly "Zaccarias Moussaoui.") And of course, all this color-coded rigmarole does not make us one bit safer, just more vulnerable to the constant fear-mongering coming out of Washington.
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
I flew from Sydney to Vancouver, and the plane happened to stop in Honolulu for refueling. Since Honolulu is in the US, every single person had to get off the plane, have their picture taken, and be finger printed. Then we all got back on, and flew the rest of the way to Canada. It took 2 hours, for nothing. Nobody was staying in Honolulu, we only wanted some fuel. Thanks US.
And surprisingly, they didn't catch any terrorists that day, either.
On 2004 I travelled a lot to USA.
This don't seem to be much, but I was "selected" for manual scanning of my handbag in almost every USA airport.
Common sense and good diplomatics told me to accept that and never question authorities when you are a foreign citizen, but on the last scan, at MIA airport, though I created the guts to ask the nice TSA security agent why I was being scanned over and over. The answer shocked me: "It is all that electronics you carry. Makes very difficult to see what you have". I always carried my cellphone, myPDA, my digital camera and my CD player with me, on the same bag, and it really looked a mess.
The funny thing: I felt safer, because they were really looking at the x-ray. The only time I got stopped by airport security where I live, was because I told the guys my cellphone never made those portals beep... THAT DAY, it beeped!!!
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken