[IP] more on New Website: John Gilmore vs. 'Papers, Please'
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Kevin G. Barkes" <kgb@xxxxxxx>
Date: August 17, 2004 11:23:46 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] more on New Website: John Gilmore vs. 'Papers, Please'
by now every major domestic airline is allowing people to
print their
own boarding passes on their own printers, that are
checked only for
consistency against some identity document
-- which allows anyone with any of a few hundred
legitimate-looking
govt issue photo ids and a bootleg of photoshop and a
printer to
go to any gate at any time!
[ actually PIT now checks again ID at the gate at least
they did one
day djf]
PIT requires you to keep your boarding pass (but not id) out
and visible while you go through the x-ray and magnetometer,
which seems kind of strange when you consider you have to
provide the pass and id to an agent immediately before you
enter the screening area. I'm not complaining, though... the
PIT TSA folks have always been professional, efficient and
friendly, unlike the surly bullies at other locations.
I use self-printed boarding passes all the time. So far,
I've only been requested to show ID at the gate one time...
at PIT, about two months ago. But I was wearing dark glasses
and a baseball cap.
Here's another interesting incident... I was stuck in Newark
last week waiting to get back to PIT. The gate agent
announced our flight would be arriving from Pittsburgh, but
that it hadn't taken off yet. Newark has wireless internet
($6.95/day, not free like PIT), so I logged on to one of the
flight tracking sites and discovered the flight had indeed
left, was at 27,000 feet, and was 140nm out of Newark. I and
my fellow strandees amused ourselves watching the flight
proceed to Newark, while the gate agent kept announcing it
was still on the ground. One passenger seemed extremely
upset that I was able to somehow "hack into the FAA" to get
this information; I thought she was going to call TSA on me.
Of course, the question here is not why I am able to access
realtime inflight data at the gate area, but why USAirways
can't.
Regards,
KGB
-----
Kevin G. Barkes
Email: kgb@xxxxxxx | Web: www.kgb.com
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