Flying Faster Without ID 528
jjh37997 writes "A Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee member finds that flying without a photo ID is actually faster than traveling with proper identification. According to Wired the committee member, Jim Harper, accepted a bet from civil liberties rabble-rouser John Gilmore to test whether he could actually fly without showing identification. He found that traveling without ID allowed him to bypass the long security lines at San Francisco's International Airport, and get in faster than if he had provided his driver's license."
Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
not that shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Honestly... (Score:1, Insightful)
For some it's the other way around, is the full cavity search really worth the cost of the flight. Esp on those flights from SFO.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
As with all things, it helps to look sharp - whenever you find yourself in a potentially dodgy situation, stop and ask yourself, "how expensive of a lawyer do I look like I can afford?"
If you're travelling with kids, then yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real problem is getting your boarding pass (Score:5, Insightful)
DOS airport security (Score:3, Insightful)
TSA employees wearing baby blue surgical gloves then swiped his Sidekick and his laptop for traces of explosives and searched through his carry-on, while a supervisor took his ticket, conferred with other employees and made a phone call.
I wonder how many people it would take to DOS that procedure?
I never understood this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
He had a reporter with him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:not that shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, you seem to have little understanding about the nature of terrorism. In my country (the UK) we've had quite a bit of terrorism over the last thousand years... only one round of deadly attacks have been carried out by non-whites. Thousands of people have been killed by white people in the PIRA (who have also tried to kill the prime minister - and were nearly successful) as well as killing from the UDA/UVF/Real IRA/old IRA. Not to mention that but Guy Fawkes was white - he tried to kill all the members of the House of Lords and the king...
Are you seeing a pattern here.
One attack by non-whites does not mean that they are all terrorists. The evidence says that you should, if anything, be stopping white people.
Re:I never understood this (Score:2, Insightful)
Because in theory they know who a lot of the dumb bad guys are and can check....
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read this, have mod points, and agree, please mod the parent up a bit instead of me.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
(of course some uppity over-sensitive PC nitwit will mod this "flamebait" or some BS)
Perception of Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
This proove the old adage that the world is not driven by reality but by the perception of reality.
I would argue that no one in their right minds would try to highjack an airplane again. In the past highjacking was a political statement. Usually the highjackers would fly the plane to a neutral airport and make demands. Often this would include the release of fellow members of their organization who were incarcerated. If you were an unlucky passenger, you would be an unfortuante pawn in a global chess-game. (Obviously there were exceptions.)
After the terrorist attacks on 11 Sept. 2001, no passenger will sit still and let a highjacker take over an airplane. Highjacking is now synonomous with suicide attacks. In my opinion, the real danger to airline travel comes not from highjackers but from explosives being placed on the airplane, e.g. Pan Am flight 103.
But the perception in the US is that flying needs to be protected, so the result is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Others have pointed out that if you are not white, have any kind of middle eastern origins, and you try to fly without an ID, you're pretty much screwed. And because the TSA has near absolute authority about whether or not you fly, they can deny you boarding simply because they feel like it.
The result of all this is that flying, IMO, is not significantly safer than before. We are concentrating our resources on "fighting the last battle." Making sure passengers have proper Identification doesn't make flying any safer. One could point out that some of the highjackers on 11 Sept. 2001 had valid IDs, after all they entered the country legally. As a society we should concentrate our efforts on preventing bombings or other bomb like devices. The "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in late 2001 probably represents a greater threat, yet checking to make sure he has proper identification isn't going to help.
I would argue that the checks they do at airports to check for explosives are worthwhile. But making sure you have an ID with you are not.
The article doesn't prove much... (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, a little politeness can go a long way when dealing with government workers, especially in places like an airport or the DMV. Just think: these people deal with complaining a**holes all day for crappy pay, you might actually make their day a little brighter by being polite, or, God forbid, almost friendly. The time for civil disobedience in not after waiting 2 hours in the DMV line.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
"rabble-rouser": good or bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this intended as a favorable or pejorative description of John Gilmore?
If John Gilmore is a rabble-rouser, then in my opinion the USA needs more rabble-rousers. If we had 100 million of them, the politicians would never have dared take away all our rights.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
There's something to that. I think many mods read at 2 and up. I find that if any of my posts start at 2, they're much likely to go up. If I post w/out karma bonus, they're likely to languish at 1. Sure, I post some rather disposable comments at 1, but not all of them are as such. The difference in mod performance is much greater than the spread in post quality, IMHO. I'm sure being an AC, and thus starting at 0, is a double whammy, esp. since many people filter out ACs entirely.
--JoeRe:not that shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and over 78.2% of statistics are made up. Al Queda and its ilk may be all the rage when talking about terrorism, but I assure you there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists around who would love to do harm to the United States. Timothy McVeigh wasn't Middle Eastern, and there are plenty of extremist groups in the US that are made up entirely of whites. Looking internationally, we have FARC and other guerilla groups in South America, ETA in the Basque region of Spain, the “Real” IRA in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on. Recently there has been an uptick in female suicide bombers, so the male part of your profile doesn't really hold up either. I suppose the age range is still fairly accurate, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that it will stay that way.
The point is, racial profiling would at least have a strong argument if it were actually effective. Unfortunately, all it really means is that the next terrorist to strike won't fit the profile. It's not like it takes long for a terrorist group to figure out what security agents are looking for and change strategies accordingly.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose is not to stop terrorists. It's abundantly clear that the measures that have been taken are ineffective at doing so. The purpose of airline security is assure middle America that Something Is Being Done .
Towards that end, it's much more important that people who look "Middle American" appear to be given much more scrutiny, because they're the ones footing the bill - they have to be the ones to get the warm fuzzies and thereby get assurance that it's safe to fly.
If you want some idea of how completely absurd the whole thing is, try being a pilot (or just pretending to be one) at a smaller airfield (yes, that still services larger jets) and see how easy it is to access airplanes without a single challenge from anybody. At most, you'll be asked for the tail number of your aircraft - which you can read from the big freakin' characters on the side of every airplane.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Profiling is doubleplusungood. Everyone likes forensic science, though.
All terrorists are people. The terrorists who attacked on 9/11 were indeed arabs. This does not all the terrorists make. Where's your data that leads you to believe most are arabs? Do you have a pie chart for me? How did you define terrorist? There are a ton of white, disillusioned brats like John Walker Lindh in the world. Of course there are some pretty bad ones in southeast asia. Just look up jemaah islamiyah or the abu sayaf group. Did I mention there are more muslims in that part of the world than the middle east?
Of course I would agree that we might want to lax security for the 85 year old grandmother type, and pilots who simply have to walk to a different terminal to their next flight should be given the chance to go around security, but it would be stupid and reactionary to say arabs are the only threat.
Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if I'm a terrorist
I get massive sympathy from her because I always get searched and "harrassed" by the "authorities".
Once we're in the air, I have access to her carry-on.
Any "profile" you setup can be defeated.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
How many terrorist attacks on airplanes have we had since September 11? What, the shoe bomber? That's a sample size of 1. And all the time we hear about the increasing threat of "home grown terrorists." Slashdot readers should know not to extrapolate from small data sets.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Crap. Most of the terrorists I've had to worry about during my life have been Irish Catholics. Many of the terrorist attacks on US soil have been at the hands of white Christians. Racial profiling is bad because it doesn't work more than for any other reason.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you want to want to bet the security supervisor's phone call went:
"Any idea why a Jim Harper might be trying to fly without an ID? He says he mailed it home instead of carrying it with him."
"Jim Harper... like the Jim Harper? White, brown hair, balding, thin widow's peak, short beard and mustache, grey eyes?"
"Uh, yeah, that sounds like him."
"He's on the DHS privacy committee. Make sure he's not sneaking a fake bomb on the plane or anything, but don't keep him from flying. And don't let on that you know who he is."
I mean, the people checking him out probably had access to hard-to-fake photographic identification than anything he could possibly be carrying himself. And a quick Google reveals that his new book is about "How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood". It seems obvious that, if he attracts enough attention that somebody looks him up, he'll be given exactly the treatment that he got: pretend to ignore his identity and check him sufficiently thoroughly that you'd catch it if he had anything prohibited.
Not if... (Score:2, Insightful)
If everyone else is going 100MPH then you doing 100MPH is not fast or slow, its the safest thing for traffic.
It might be safer if everyone were to slow down but you can't control everyones behaviour, so it's best go to with the general flow of traffic - and if you aren't comfortable with that find a side road.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
An ironic thing to ask in this particular thread, don't you think?
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only is racial profiling "not PC" and "offensive" to those we hope to gain intel from, but it's stupid. If you profile Muslim Arabs, how many Ted Kaczynskis are you going to stop? Or Timothy Mcveighs? Or Eric Rudolphs?
Do you think our enemies are retarded? If we annouced to the world "we will only search arabs, never whites" exacty how many seconds would pass before they recruited a white person to blow up a plane?
Aesop said it better than I ever could:
A DOE blind in one eye was accustomed to graze as near to the edge of the cliff as she possibly could, in the hope of securing her greater safety. She turned her sound eye towards the land that she might get the earliest tidings of the approach of hunter or hound, and her injured eye towards the sea, from whence she entertained no anticipation of danger. Some boatmen sailing by saw her, and taking a successful aim, mortally wounded her. Yielding up her last breath, she gasped forth this lament: "O wretched creature that I am! to take such precaution against the land, and after all to find this seashore, to which I had come for safety, so much more perilous."
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, white, "normal looking", and with signs of reasonable affluence.
He was also travelling with a reporter in tow.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell that to the cop who caught the Oklahoma City bomber, jackass:
You would have been harassing innocents, and would have ignored whity. Good thing that cop did his damn job instead of knee-jerking (or "using forensics" as you call it).
Re:Not if... (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried to use that excuse to get out of a speeding ticket and even chatted with a couple of my civil engineering buddies at the state transportation department. After that chat, I gave up and pleaded guilty. The research doesn't back the "everybody else was doing it" defense.
-h-
Couldnt agree more.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
If you care enough to say it, you should care enough to attach your name to it.
If it's not important enough to you to attach your name to it, it isn't important enough for you to say to begin with.
(That's my view, anyway.)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
I personally read /. at +1, and have moderation totals hidden. I also have deselected "Willing to moderate" etc. in my profile. OTOH, I have excellent karma and see no reason to piss it away. If I feel my point deserves a bit of boost, I'll post at +2. The only way I know that my posts get modded up or down is by looking at my user information screen.
The way it works is if you have sufficient karma, your posts start out automagically at +2. When you post, there are checkboxes below the post for "No Karma Bonus" and "Post Anonymously." If you checkmark "No Karma Bonus," the post goes out at +1, otherwise it goes out at +2. If you click "Post Anonymously," it goes out as an AC post (which, IIRC, start at 0).
--JoeRe:Not if... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't stay in wolfpacks or drive too fast for conditions - if everyone else is then I take my own advice and take alternate routes. That's how you avoid having to be cut out of your car.
Re:Not if... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, remember this story? [cbsnews.com]. If the kind of conspiracy you are expounding were true, don't you think it would have been a lot easier to ID Senator Ted Kennedy than freakin' Jim "Nobody you'd know" Harper?
Heisenberg's principle (restated) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Like in a "prisoner's dilemma" ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you mean by 'fail'? Terrorists would take over a plane? Maybe nobody would be allowed to fly - bet the airlines would be keen on that scenario. If EVERYBODY defected business would go on as usual. No way the airline industry is going to stand for stopping large quantities of people from boarding planes.
Re:Not if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
-Want to avoid looking like a karma whore (e.g. posting a reformat of their post and scouping extra mod points, putting up a copy of a link that died from slashdotting)
-Want to troll/flame without reprecussions
It's a way to post without your post affecting your karma. Undoubtably there are more reasons to post AC, but those were the first three that came to mind for me.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
And the terrorists in that attack were not only white boys, but they were also Americans. And if memeory serves, McVeigh was younger, but Nicols was well into middle age.
Generalizing about who might attack doesn't help. Checking everyone equally for dangerous chemicals and weapons does. It's really that simple.
Re:not that shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny, I don't recall hearing a declaration of war or a ratification of such by congress since 1944.
Pay attention people! We are not "at war". We are merely "warring"!
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Invalid; Arabs are very much a minority (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be great if your example were valid... but it doesn't hold up. "... you might argue that this does not reflect probabilities in the larger population, but... let me use this as an example, to make a mathematical pont." You aren't really making any point; your hypothetical sample is completely unrealistic. This is a real-world, not hypothetical, situation, and you must make arguments that are realistic. The chances of some 115 random people (in the US) including 100 Arabs is fatanstically low; generally speaking the chances that so many as 15 of them *are* Arab would be low. Similarly, you could easily go your entire life grabbing random groups of 15 non-Arabs without finding 2, let alone 5, terrorists in one group. So, while I agree with the point you are trying to make, I am worried that this is being held up as an 'insightful' argument on the topic.
It's a matter of percentages. I agree with essentially every post thus far that stated we shouldn't focus exclusively on Arabs, but your example is flawed, especially for US application.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
If he'd said that his wallet had been stolen, or that he'd accidentally left it in his luggage, which he'd already checked, or something logical, I'd buy that they'd use their standard procedure. But this situation just screams "you'd better figure out what's really going on here."
(And, in the story you cite, the security people did ID Senator Kennedy, and the computer told them not to let him fly. The computer didn't say that it's okay to let him fly if he's actually the US Senator, so they're not going to risk their jobs by second-guessing it.)