March 25, 2007
More Airport Insecurity
One of the most important elements of security is controlling access to information that might be used to expose the principal, whether it is a company, a segment of vital infrastructure or a government entity, to the theft of industrial secrets by a competitor, to a terrorism or criminal act, or to a successful enemy espionage coup. Any security expert, agency or department will tell you this without a second’s thought. At least, any that can truthfully be considered even one iota beyond the level of rank amateur.
Many people whose occupational responsibilities lie outside the protective complain that a number of the time and effort concessions they are compelled to make in order to observe company security proceedures are inconvenieces (who the hell is going to want to steal this stuff, anyway?), yet when they ignore or sluff off on security policies and something goes wrong as a result, they are the first to lay the blame on the very security personnel who created those policies.
Having said that, while information security has always been vital, in today’s atmosphere of global terrorism, especially given the fact that on the terrorist world map the United States appears as a fat round target, any and all infrastructural information that can be of any use to terrorists should be very tightly controlled on a need-to-access basis.
I have posted before on holes in the security at some U.S. airports, but in those previous posts I mainly vented my concern (I fly a lot, you damn well better believe I’m concerned!) about actual physical security discrepancies.
My concern here is rooted in information security:
Orlando International Airport officials already scrambling to plug security gaps had a new concern to explain Friday: how sensitive documents detailing the airport’s layout, fuel-storage facilities, communications systems and power lines wound up in a Dumpster.
The documents, part of an OIA 20-year growth master plan updated in August 2004, are labeled “sensitive security information” that should not be released without a “need to know.” After being shown the documents by an Orlando Sentinel reporter, airport officials vowed to tighten security to prevent a similar mistake.
This is the kind of thing that should never have happened, nor should there have even been any condition or circumstance that allowed it to happen! This business of “…airport officials vowed to tighten security to prevent a similar mistake” is pure and total bullshit. Simply put, had the airport’s security manager been even remotely competent, there would have been safeguards against this happening to begin with. If it was a case of an employee being negligent, that employee needs to be severely disciplined or fired.
There’s another possibility here — one based on timing. What if an employee placed those documents in the dumpster so they could be retrieved later by someone else, and the young man that found them simply beat the intended “finder” to the punch?
One thing we can be certain of is that had the airport authorities learned of this and it had not been reported, they would have kept the affair to themselves and carried on as if nothing had happened, not wishing to “rock the boat” of passenger confidence or spend money on increased vigilance on classified information.
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=645
March 25th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Scary Seth, and the dems want to unionize the TSA folk, make them as usless as boobs on a long horned steer! (and not as tasty when bar-b-qued!)
March 25th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
GM –
As multitask challenged as it is now, the TSA will be a real mess if they ever let their people unionize. I’ve seen first hand, on a smaller scale even, what kind of integrity destruction occurs when any security force goes union.
BBQ, hmmm. There is this 1 lb T-bone sitting in my fridge that needs to be dealt with in the next day or two, as I’ll be relocating in the middle of the week, and we have here what is known as summer weather….
March 25th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
I liked the quote at the end of the article:
It seems to me that at some level in the chain, the
personnel employed in securing our vital facilities
(including airports) really don’t act as those they
perceive a real threat; they just seem to go through
the motions on their way to receiving a paycheck.
Our jihadist enemies, however, are deadly serious;
if we don’t wake up, we’re going to pay the price in terms
of lives lost, blame shifting, and angry debates between
appeasers and patriots, with the MSM sure to give the
finger to their favorite objects of derision.
March 26th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Civil Truth –
Being a security professional entails taking every threat and potential threat very seriously, basically requiring the mindset of one who is paid to be paranoid for everybody else, so that the rest are able to go about their jobs in the knowledge that they are secure and protected, and in the case of airlines and airports, passengers as well.
Anyone in the protection industry who does not possess this state of mind and belief belongs in a different career field. In short, security is one of those businesses that requires unerring dedication.
On the rare occasions that I am asked by clients to train their security patrol forces, one of the things I impart is that, “even if that one room is all the way down there at the end of a long hallway, nobody ever goes there and the door is always locked, take the extra time and effort to walk all the way down that hall and check the room. The one time you don’t may be the one time that something happens down there”. The same applies to every aspect of security, it is not a field in which corners can be cut or gambles can be taken. There is zero room for complacency.
This is where the problem lies: Too many people who don’t belong in the field, especially in responsible charge positions, are there.
Security management at airports, even five and a half years after 9/11, has been nothing short of a parade of gross inadequacies, every instance a potential opportunity for a terrorist act and all we see at the TSA is a lot of indecisive hot air and PC-laced floundering — partly due to having idiots in charge, partly due to budgetary stupidity and partly due to political and litigious interference by Democrats, the ACLU, CAIR and other disruptive influences that have anything but our best interests at heart.
The only reason I can think of, given all the holes that keep turning up, that we haven’t endured any major airline terrorism events over the last five years is that the excuses for security managers at our airports and those running the TSA have been a hell of a lot luckier than one could have hoped for in ones wildest dreams. That kind of luck doesn’t hold forever.
As for the appeasers and the MSM, neither will wake up to the truth until it is too late, and they learn that their obstructions and lies have opened them up to the same horrors they will have brought on the rest of us.
March 26th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
In retail stores it is a common tactic to drop merchandise that an employee intends to steal into the trash and take it out to the dumpster for later recovery. Retail managers are often taught to frequently check dumpsters as well as trash being removed. I remember in a mall where I was a store manager and saw a brand new, very expensive, still in the box camera just waiting. I alerted the manager of the camera shop who recovered it and fired an employee at once. I thought of that immediately as I read about those plans. There is no maybe. That is what they were for, but it could have been a planned burglary or a terrorist attack. always assume the worst when dealing with security.
March 26th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Shoprat –
I actually put that pilferage method in my report in the past when doing a loss prevention survey for a retail chain, and this applies equally to the paragraph in my post:
What if an employee placed those documents in the dumpster so they could be retrieved later by someone else, and the young man that found them simply beat the intended “finder” to the punch?
The question is, will the Orlando airport security people involved, or the TSA, be astute enough to think along those lines, conduct an investigation and actually learn who put the papers in the dumpster, then take appropriate action? Given what we’ve seen so far, and given that security at the airport in question seems to be as porous as that of Athens airport preceeding the 1970s Entebbe debacle, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
March 26th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
We’ve had the auditors give the airports up here a failing grade as well last week. like you, I fly a lot, and can’t believe some of the most basic of rules that get overlooked. If I did that in my business, I’d be locked up for 10 years, and they’d make a huge example out of me.
March 26th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
AB –
A lot of this has to do with the fact that career bureaucrats only hire or appoint fellow career REMFs, and the lot of them invest most of their time and effort looking after their own asses and very little time taking care of the front-line business they’re supposed to be dealing with. Seasoned security people with hands-on experience are not their cup of tea, as worker bees who’ve been around the block are more interested in getting the job done for real rather than playing office politics and PC games. We would rock the boat, and that might lead to the exposure of these weasels for what they are.
March 27th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Worse than a bad movie!
Why the hell do we play Russian roulette with our national security and personal safety?
The inmates are running the asylum!
March 27th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
AOW –
LOL!
Actually, the fact is that hands-on experience and real ability these days, at least in government circles, play second fiddle to political considerations. The best and most dedicated people are passed over or pushed out to make room for those who pass muster at the party line.