Glad I read this after I got off the plane!
Scary article from USA Today on high-tech ID cards designed to “prevent armed terrorists from boarding a plane by posing as airport workers or law officers…The Transportation Security Administration still is experimenting with biometric identification systems, which match people’s unique physical characteristics to confirm who they are.” These cards, which the article says are already commonly used in nuclear plants, hospitals and businesses, still are doddering along when it comes to their use to keep unauthorized people out of secure areas of our airports.
Why is this important? According to the article, “congressional investigators created fake law enforcement IDs from software they downloaded from the Internet four years ago. Undercover agents were 100% successful penetrating federal buildings and two commercial airports using the phony IDs…A copy of the report on the penetration test was found later in an al-Qaeda cave in Afghanistan.”
Then again, with all the money it would cost to develop and implement these cards, they could probably hire security guards to watch all these areas! Either way, I wish they’d stop nattering and get a system in place. This ain’t rocket science, folks.
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