TSA Employees Bypassing Airport Screening
Airport screeners are now able to bypass airport screening:
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rolled out the new uniforms and new screening policy at airports nationwide on Sept. 11.
The new policy says screeners can arrive for work and walk behind security lines without any of their belongings examined or X-rayed.
“Lunch or a bomb, you can walk right through with it,” said Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant in Evergreen. “This is a major security issue.”
Actually, it’s not. Screeners have to go in and out of security all the time as they work. Yes, they can smuggle things in and out of the airport. But you have to remember that the airport screeners are trusted insiders for the system: there are a zillion ways they could break airport security.
On the other hand, it’s probably a smart idea to screen screeners when they walk through airport security when they aren’t working at that checkpoint at that time. The reason is the same reason you should screen everyone, including pilots who can crash their plane: you’re not screening screeners (or pilots), you’re screening people wearing screener (or pilot) uniforms and carrying screener (or pilot) IDs. You can either train your screeners to recognize authentic uniforms and IDs, or you can just screen everybody. The latter is just easier.
But this isn’t a big deal.
Ryan • September 19, 2008 8:13 AM
I have to disagree here
“But you have to remember that the airport screeners are trusted insiders for the system: there are a zillion ways they can break airport security.”
This still should not make the ways to break security easier for them to do so. If we wanted to put a 100% trust for insiders, then we should trust every person that works in IT without monitoring.