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Airline Pilots Allowed To Dodge Security Screening
OverTheGeicoE writes "Wired has a story about TSA's known crewmember program, which allows airline pilots to bypass traditional airport security on their way to the cockpit. Pilots will be verified using a system known as CrewPASS that relies on uniforms, identity cards, fingerprints, and possibly other biometrics to authenticate flight deck crews. Once they are authenticated, they can enter secure areas in airports without any further screening. Participation at present is voluntary, and applies at Baltimore/Washington (BWI), Pittsburg (PIT), Columbia (CAE) and now Chicago O'Hare (ORD) airports. TSA is hoping to expand the program nationally. Bruce Schneier thinks this program is 'a really bad idea.' Pilots are already avoiding scanners and patdowns at security checkpoints (video). Is the new program just a way for TSA to hide this fact from the flying public?"
Couldn't a pilot who's convinced to pull off a terrorist attack just, well -- do it? They are at the controls and all...
Send them through a breathalyzer-only checkpoint and you will have satisfied me.
The issue is whether a terrorist can impersonate a pilot long enough to bypass the screening process.
Once you introduce multiple avenues for clearance, you introduce vulnerabilities.
Is there really any significant advantage to not screening crew?
Sure, for the crew. If you, the crew, have to go through the same tired, intrusive screening 3, 4, 5 times a day...you'd get pretty damn tired of it.
And you know this how?
If the TSA had actually achieved anything at all, don't you think they'd be shouting across the media to publicise that fact?
I work at an international airport. There's only one gate between the street and the runway. The 'guards' routinely flag us through from over 100 feet away if we so much as hold up something that looks remotely like it might be a badge. I've held up credit cards, library cards, and once, the Queen of Diamonds. So why in the hell should I submit to a full body X-ray operated by someone without a medical degree, or submit to sexual molestation if I refuse that? Is that supposed to make me feel safe?
Actually, we can to a high degree of certainty. It is as much in the nature of a disliked government agency to crow from the rooftops any small success it might have as it is for water to flow down hill.
They haven't crowed.
We do know that two terrorists slipped right through the TSA since 9/11. Both were stopped by the passengers.
In baseball, that's called an Ofer
And you left one thing off.
And the consequences of FAILING with a false positive (terrorist mistaken for authorized pilot).
I think the problem here is the same as with the TSA in general.
People hear "pilot" and they think "person flying the plane".
Which assumes 100% verification of every pilot, every time, at every location. Including 100% verification of NON-pilots.
Once you get past that assumption, the flaws are obvious.
Hey, now I have figured it all out. The terrorist have just changed tactics:
They started impersonating TSA agents a few years back without anybody noticing. After all, those are the ones terrorizing people these days.
Airline crews are limited to flight hours as a means to limit the radiation they receive to stay under OSHA limits. It is one of the careers that receive relatively high doses over their careers. Doses are cumulative (think about how people develop skin cancer supposedly from sun burns as a child).
For these reasons pilots try to avoid even small doses of radiation where they can, and walking through a body scanner several times every day they work over several years would add up.
Examples of industries with significant occupational radiation exposure:
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/53939/radiation-exposure/
And that's the logical failure of your argument. You hear "pilot" and you think "has hands on the controls".
Meanwhile, a terrorist can impersonate a pilot to get through security (or get licensed by a small airline) and move multiple bombs through security to hand off to other terrorists on other flights.
The TSA introduces 1 weakness into the system and now every single flight is more vulnerable.
Again, no. You'd have to be able to tell who is NOT a terrorist. Not who IS a pilot.
And this system is not able to do that.
Hi! I'm Captain Jack!
Hi, Jack!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I guess that's why they still have to go through bio-screening?
sheesh, calm done and think.
Why does a pilot need a bomb?
No, you are showing an ignorant view of security.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Each pilot would normally have control of one plane, but each pilot that gets a special pass through security could, if they were inclined to do nefarious things, brings weapons through and deliver them to terrorists inside the "secure" area who had already passed through security (since they aren't pilots) but who would each board other planes.
Immediately after 9/11 -- with the reports from the planes of weapons including not only box cutters, but also guns -- there was a lot of speculation that this is essentially what happened with the terrorists in those attacks, that weapons had been brought through by one or more airline employees who were permitted to bypass the screenings that were in place for passengers entering the secure area of airports. That was one of the reasons given for federalizing airport security and eliminating the exceptions to the screening requirements.
The US government could F up a cheese sandwich, and make it cost $20,000.
It's not like you had to choose, they are perfectly capable of doing both at the same time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're not backing off. They are removing the only people from the list of "those who get pestered by them" who could sensibly debunk the whole theater.
Face it: Pilots know how airport security works. Pilots and everyone working at airports will all tell you the same story: The whole security theater is a big machinery to create jobs and revenue for companies that have good ties with certain parts of the political circus. You DO NOT want to piss those people off with the same security theater that they could debunk.
Now, TSA employees won't cry foul. Duh, if the pointless crap gets removed, they're out on the street. Plane personnel is a completely different matter. First of all, they don't work for you, the airport. They work for other companies. While you can easily shut up anyone working for you (i.e. keep your mouth shut or I'll replace you), it's not as easy with people who do not, but who have to pass through your security theater on a near daily base. And that's the second part: They're subject to it more than anyone else. More than people who fly regularly. And I cannot imagine that they are too happy about being subjected to rather high radiation doses (on top of the radiation they catch by flying some 10k feet nearly all the time). These people are actually more endangered to develop radiation related cancers than anyone working in a nuclear plant.
Can you see a rather high inclination to debunk the scheme and at least get out of the radiation tunnel? And we're not even talking about the inconvenience yet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess they are considered like all other airport employees having security clearances and working behind the TSA security veil... There are thousands of people going in and out of the "secure" areas every day in any airports through the world each day without seeing such security screening.
They do simple background checks on these employees. I can't see any reason to threat crew differently.
Understood? It's not his job to understand anything. Actually, I'm pretty certain that it's easier to do that job if you don't even try. Saves you the headaches. His job was to keep you from carrying weapons on the plane and that he did.
Don't expect too much from a TSA agent. Also, try to limit your vocabulary when talking to them to two syllable words. Some get really pissy when they don't understand you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While I detest the security theater at airports these days, your argument has a major hole. If the present day security has dissuaded someone from attempting a terrorist attack because they couldn't think of a way to bypass the security, then that's a success, but not one that the TSA could ever know occurred. Perhaps only those people who think of a way through are willing to try it.
The normal way to measure the deterrent effects of security is with statistics. Terrorist attacks are too infrequent for this approach to work, but that doesn't mean that there is no deterrent effect.
For my part, I don't think this is the case. I think international terrorism is a bogeyman, and doubly so as it relates to air travel. The enormous waste of money and lives in Iraq aside, Al Qaeda has been sufficiently disrupted by drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that they aren't really able to attack, and no other organization has the means or desire to do so. Most terrorist groups are far more interested in effecting change in their own societies.
Additionally, terror groups can achieve better results with numerous small attacks against soft targets. They aren't stupid. Crazy, maybe, but not stupid. If they had the means and motive to attack us, they would be bombing grocery stores and schools and such, like they were in Israel ten years back, or in Ireland during the Troubles. The fact that they're not suggests that those that want to can't, and those that can don't want to.
If the TSA made a terrorist decide not to attack an airplane, they wouldn't immediately stop being terrorists, they'd just attack something else. Since no one has attacked anything else, it would be fair to assume that no one's been dissuaded form attacking airplanes.
Yes it will, tons of lovely publicity for the cause. Then as the fighter jets scramble, it plows into the middle of downtown wherever, 15 minutes from the airport by air.
Dude! Take from everyone else who has already told you... that shit won't work. Like someone else said, the plane would never make it past the gate, assuming you could even get to the plane in the first place. It's not like you can just show up with a pilot's uniform and board a plane. That hasn't worked since Leonardo DiCaprio did it in a movie! You don't even have to RTFA to know that it will not only deal with various forms of ID, but will also use biometrics.
The other reason your plan sux is because these people happen to know each other. My brother is a pilot. He leaves from the same airport two to three times a week and flies to the same airport where he leaves from the other two to three times a week. The TSA guys recognize him on sight. If you show up with a pilot's uniform and they have never seen you before, you will get a going over.
But all that's neither here nor there. All this is proposing is not making pilots going through a pat-down. There is nothing here that changes a pilot's access to a plane. So if your dumb-ass plan would work if these proposals went into effect, then there is no reason they won't work now. Like I said, this is just allowing pilots to not get the same going over that passengers do. I mean, it's no like they are going to be locked in the cockpit anyway. Why would they need a weapon to take over the plane? Most planes have two pilots. Wait for the other to pee, lock the door and push the nose down. No one is going to break into the cockpit at zero or negative G's. So, searching the pilots is kinda stupid anyway. The don't need a weapon to hijack a plane... they already have it!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You might have missed it, but that was actually my point. There's no reason to screen the pilots at all once you determine their ID. It wouldn't matter if an impersonator did or did not have weapons and it doesn't matter if they get screened or not, the outcome is the same.
I'm actually in favor of just doing away with the TSA, but failing that, at least don't harass the pilots.