Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk@private> http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=686213 By LESLIE MILLER Associated Press Writer April 20, 2005 A congressional investigation found airport screeners employed by private companies do a better job detecting dangerous objects than government screeners, according to a House member who has seen the classified report. [...] I don't find this suprising, my good friend who graciously has been hosting C4I.org on his box since day 1, joined me for the flights to and from Cleveland to attend NOTACON [1] He hasn't flown very often since 9-11 and usually it's for longer trips where he checks his luggage with anything that he knows might be questionable by TSA standards tucked inside. So we flew out of Chicago O'Hare uneventfully, my friend who was running late to begin with, had sailed through security without issue even though he'd packed a Leatherman multi-tool [2] and a Swiss Army CyberTool [3] in his dop kit inside a gym bag with his clothing. He made it to the gate just in time and left the bag on the ramp to be stored in the cargo hold of the jet powered puddle jumper we were on. Both items have blades on them, the Leatherman blade comes in just at or over the 3" rule the security screeners go by. You can imagine the hypothetical situations where this could really be a dangerous item onboard, but the item never made it into the passenger cabin of the tiny Embraer RJ135 that my friend compared unfavorably to a school bus in terms of space and cabin-height. The blade on the Swiss Army Knife could barely stab someone serving in the Swiss Army let alone injure them. So, coming back to Chicago from Cleveland on Sunday evening, they make you take off your shoes, (If they look like they are thick enough to do a shoe bombing with) there are no posted signs that you may or may have to take off you shoes, (The locals know this, but I rarely fly and rarely to Cleveland) nor does O'Hare make you take off your shoes, I didn't have to again, at O'Hare, (again the worlds busiest airport), and at Cleveland there is no signs if you didn't know better, I don't take off shoes, but everyone around me was. I had to take off the shoes, (No problem but I missed the area to take your shoes off, everyone else meekly took theirs off and I have my laptop and TravelPro bag to watch) During the routine x-ray search of the carry-on bag, the TSA finds my friend's Leatherman stashed in his dop kit. The TSA agent asked if they could search his bag, looking for the the item they saw in the x-ray, they dug in the bag and finding the dop kit. Then the TSA opened the dop kit where both tools were packed and ONLY GRABBED THE ONE. How they missed the Cyber Tool is beyond me. This is especially troubling with 2-3 TSA agents hovering over my friend checking out all the other tools on the Leatherman like they are Kalahari bushman and they have never seen a multi-tool before, they are opening all the tools, having no clue how to close them and trying to figure if this is a prohibited item or not. So the lead TSA Golden Retriever tells my friend within earshot of me tells him that he won't face a fine, if he does one of the three following things... 1.) That he could toss it in the garbage (a $50+ Leatherman) 2.) Mail it back for $7 and take your chances with their TSA authorized mailing provider no pinching it for themselves. OR... 3.) Check a bag with the TSA manager placing the item in themselves into the bag under their watchful eyes. My friend was willing to check his bag, but being basically a duffel bag with no locks, I offered to check my TravelPro bag since it was lockable (not realizing that made ultimately no difference). "So here's where it became the Keystone Kops of Cleveland time." It was damn close to the time of departure with this delay I had no idea that my luggage would make it through to the plane but we never had a chance on boarded with it. BUT, the TSA didn't tell us we'd miss our flight, also this being a Sunday, with everyone getting out of Dodge we were in the general queue for searches, I fly with Continental out of Chicago for the upgrades to first class (This might be considered odd when I have United as my hometown airline but eternally in bankruptcy court), we tried for the VERY empty first class line and was told we weren't first class, we couldn't use that lane. Who pays for a first class ticket on a plane with no first class cabin [4], there was a workaround to that, but I wasn't thinking, I was thinking about sleeping in my own bed for once. So we both missed our flight back to Chicago. Sitting around the gate (not more than 20 paces from the security checkpoint) wondering where the plane is, I called the airline and found out that we missed the flight. However, my bag DID fly ahead of me, and would be waiting for me, (Unlocked, since Cleveland's checked bags explosives detectors are under the airport and I had to unlock the bag) we had to leave the gate and go back to the front and get new tickets. We explained to the nice lady at the check-in desk what happened, got tickets with no fees, thank God (and Continental), and went through security for the second time, and what happens this time around?!?!? TSA discovers the Swiss Army Knife... The one they conveniently had missed with their deft little gloved hands previously. My friend isn't stupid and noticed this the first time around. But he assumed, right or wrong, you don't volunteer anything in a situation like that - hell, more than likely they'd talk over you explaining that "they're just doing their job"." The TSA agents had no clue who we are, they forgot in the timeframe of half an hour that we were went through before, and that we had to take off our shoes again, it was like the Cleveland TSA office was managed by pet-quality Golden Retrievers in snappy TSA uniforms, nice looking, but dumb as a bag of hammers. Another condemnable fact is that both of us, having gone through the SAME exact screening line 3 times, never got so much as a visual acknowledgement from the 4 or so TSA agents on our subsequent trips. It so happens on my friend's last run through the gauntlet he was asked by the agent at the metal detector "How's your day going?". Incredulously my friend said "You should know! This is my third time through here!". Forget any notion that should a photograph ever be circulated amongst these 'agents' that that person might be caught in line. They pay zero attention to the people they herd through their maze." You have to really wonder about these TSA agents that should be really flipping burgers at the airport Burger King if there was no TSA or private screeners, but they're high on the buzz of authority, knowing they can't do anything wrong, and if you get out of line with lip and talking back, secondary searches can and will happen. Mind you, all of this wasn't a punitive search just procedural, lock-step, rule-following security drones there really for the Govt paycheck. Airport/mall rent-a-cops can get fired for royally screwing up, TSA agents can't really get canned, unless its something that they really screw the pooch over. So my friend checked the Cyber Swiss Army knife in the bag he was originally going to check for the Leatherman in. What really irked me, was there was not likely going to be some report about why they missed the items at O'Hare, and why they missed the Swiss Army knife after the first screening with the Leatherman and a gaggle of TSA agents and managers, why wasn't there a secondary search for more items, more knives, box cutters, explosives, etc. when coming back to Chicago. Also the TSA will escort you out of the checkpoint, but wasn't able to escort him through the whole mess from the ticket counter back to the security checkpoint without any real justification especially when the evening rush was over and the TSA agents were all hitting the Burger King, and Ben & Jerry's for dinner and snacks, at 6PM, it was just that dead there. As much as I have scary National Guard security stories, (Everyone does) when they were placed at the airport in those trying weeks after 9/11, I think I miss them over the TSA since they had at least six weeks intensive basic training under their belts, over maybe one week of training a bunch of slupoffs who left their jobs as Taco Bell line cooks to work for the TSA. Besides, the Army National Guard members were better cleared for doing security in the f&cking first place. As a information security professional that regularly meets with my physical security counterparts, I can't believe there is a definite lack of standards and compliant rules on what happens when a prohibited item is found and why there isn't any reports being taken as a lesson learned for next time. It boggles the mind, Grandma that maybe fly's once every three years (Grandma can fly with her knitting needles [5]) likely feels more secure, me personally, I don't, I feel less secure since 9/11/2001 and because of that, either take the train or drive. :( [1] http://www.notacon.org/ [2] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000WU85A/c4iorg [3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005ML8H/c4iorg [4] http://www.continental.com/Travel/inflight/aircraft/erj135.asp [5] http://www.tsa.gov/public/interweb/assetlibrary/Prohibited_English_4-1-2005_v2.pdf *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ================================================================ C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* _________________________________________ InfoSec News http://www.infosecnews.org
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