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TSA Now Investigating Boarding Pass Hacker
An anonymous reader writes "A week after the Justice Department cleared him of any wrongdoing, Chris Soghoian, the Indiana University PhD student who created an online boarding pass generator for Northwest Airlines to highlight security holes is on the government's 'no-fly' list. The Transportation Security Administration has now launched its own investigation, says Wired blog 27strokeB. The TSA is claiming that Soghoian 'attempted to circumvent an established civil aviation security program established in the Transportation Security Regulations,' violations of which carry fines of up to $11,000 per violation. That could be a steep fine, says Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog: 'Something like 35,000 people viewed and possibly used the boarding pass generator during the less than 72 hours that it was live on his site in November. Soghoian told WaPo: "If they decide that the only safe way for me to leave the country is by boat, then that's pretty much the end of my career here in the States. It's one thing to harass researchers, but if they can chase them out of the country, then that's a real chilling effect."'"
The idiots here at Slashdot have modded you troll, but you are right.
Legally, what he did was wrong. And it doesn't require a degree in law to know that.
Second, what did he think was going to happen? It's one thing to state what everyone already knows: The security is a joke. But to demonstrate it in a way that makes the security easy to circumvent so that any idiot can do it is stupid. It serves no purpose. Consider the only three possible outcomes of this fiasco: 1) We can no longer print boarding passes at home, which really would annoy those of us who try to be as efficient as possible. 2) The security checkpoints would need scanners to scan the boarding passes to make sure they are real which is costly and just one more thing to slow down lines. 3) No change. It looks like we made it with #3, which was what I was hoping for myself.
And as a traveler, what he did was wrong. Yes, we know the security is worthless but the last thing I want is more security on planes. We have too much as it is. Make an effort to make sure no firearms, explosives, or unusually sharp objects are let into the secure area and call it done. I don't want more security, I want less. And drawing undue attention to the weakness of the current system only serves to increase the probability of them implementing real security that is going to make air travel so inconvenient as to be useless. Sorry, I don't want that.
So, basically, the guy that put up that boarding-pass generator is an idiot. Is he really a threat such that he should be on the no-fly list? No, of course not. But in this particular case, do I care? Nope. His little exercise had (and still has) the potential of making traveling less convenient for millions of people. So forgive me if I don't really care if his travel convenience is impacted.
Really? Come on, I'll bet he printed one. I have no doubt he destroyed it, but if I were writing a system like that I know I'd at least print it to make sure it still looks good on real paper.
What did he do? He made us all safer.
How are we safer? I'm not aware of any changes to policies regarding home-printed boarding passes. And I'm glad there haven't been any changes to policies. But how did he make us safer? Even with his little system it was impossible to get on a plane anyway... it was just possible to go buy lunch at the McDonald's inside the security area instead of the one on the corner.
Really? He forced the TSA to fix the system? Exactly how was it fixed? I can still print boarding passes at home and last time I was at the airport, the security checkpoints still weren't scanning them. So exactly how did he force them to fix it? The whole issue was swept under the rug, and I'm glad.
We don't want real security. As it is now, we complain about the fake security because it's a hassle. Do you know what real security would be like??? Seriously, I'd just start driving anywhere on this continent and leave air travel for intercontinental travel--and only because my car doesn't travel well over oceans.