T.S.A. and no I.D.

Have you ever known anyone who had a fake ID when they were under 21 so they could buy booze? Have you ever used Photoshop to doctor something to make it look like something it isn't supposed to be? Chances are you have done one of the two things above, or at least know someone who has. And since it's relatively easy to pay for or make a decent-looking fake ID, and it's even easier to use Photoshop (to make things like, say a fake boarding pass), these questions lead me to a third question:

Why exactly do people check IDs when we get on the airplane?

First, you may not know it, but you don't actually have to show ID if you want to get on a plane. In a ruling on December 8, 2005, the US Ninth Court of Appeals (San Francisco) determined that a passenger must either show ID or be subject to a more thorough search, including "walking through a magnetometer (*metal detector, in layman's terms), being subject to a handheld magnetometer scan, having a light body patdown, removing one's shoes, and having one's carry-on baggage searched by hand and a CAT-scan machine" (see the whole ruling here). The TSA website for air travel now confirms this.




This was spawned by a rather aggressive activist, Jim Harper, who last challenged his friends to mail their licenses home to Boston and then fly from San Francisco (where they were attending a conference) back home. Mr. Harper and his friends all got home eventually (after missing a few flights), and successfully boarded without ID, but the ruling last year was actually a ruling against Mr. Harper; he was hoping to both board without ID and also not be subjected to the more rigorous search (the entire story about Mr. Harper, which is quite comical, is here).

These things said, a second comical story was published in today's Sunday New York Times (found here), about a graduate student named Chris Soghoian who is under investigation for creating a website that generated fake Northwest Airlines boarding passes. The website wasn't very original or secretive in name: it was called "Chris' Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator." The boarding passes obviously couldn't get you on the plane - the boarding pass would've been checked with the roster of people who actually paid for tickets - but Mr. Soghoian said it was a convenient way to meet grandma or gramps on the jetway instead of at the curb.




Mr. Soghoian is under investigation by the T.S.A., however doesn't this seem a little pointless? Some people cry that we're teaching the terrorists the holes in our system. But I don't think this gives terrorists enough credit. As the New York Times points out, "Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them."