Re: Credentials without Identity--Race Bits

At 09:34 AM 12/20/96 -0800, Tim wrote:
>At 1:22 AM -0800 12/20/96, Vangelis wrote:
> >Umm.. tried to get on a flight without having ID lately?  Doesn't work -
> >against policy.  Anti-terrorism policy and all.. it's for your own
> >safety, of course.
>At the risk of undercutting Bill's facetiousness, this was of course
>precisely his point.

Yeah.

I've spent most of this year going around North America on airplanes a 
couple of times a month.  Sometimes they insist on government ID, claiming
(falsely) that it's a government regulation.  Other times they insist
on photo ID (probably correctly) claiming it's a government regulation
(usually I fly electronic-ticket, which they ask for photo-ID for,
and I don't mind that.)  United is almost always satisfied with my 
employee-ID and the credit card I used to buy the ticket with,
except that they don't bother telling curbside baggage-handlers that.
And that's not even counting the "You must turn on your laptop" crap.

And it's PRO-terrorism policy "Be afraid!  Be very afraid!"
It's just not something a civilized place would do.

(Of course now that Ted "Accused Unabomber" Kaczynski is in jail,
the Olympics are over and it's pretty obvious that TWA 800 exploded due to
bad design//////////natural causes, they really _ought_ to either
give our civil rights back or else find some other excuse for it,
like "heavy Christmas traffic is an attractive target".  But instead
they've got announcements about "suspicious packages should be reported
to security checkpoints immediately" and "cars parked in the Red Zone
will be towed away and detonated".)

At least they weren't doing most of this paranoia when I visited my
sister earlier this summer, bringing a couple pounds of Silly Putty
in my luggage as presents for her kids, packed near the alarm clock....


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)

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In article <1.5.4.32.19961221065041.003d70c8@popd.ix.netcom.com>,
Bill Stewart  <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>And that's not even counting the "You must turn on your laptop" crap.

I just took my first flight with a laptop (USair), and, having heard
stories like the above, was wondering how "on" the laptop would have to
be (past the powerup password check?  I hope they're not expecting
Windoze...).

My laptop was in my backpack, which I had oriented so that the large
face of the laptop was vertical.  It thus presented a very small cross
section to their X-ray machine, and they didn't even ask me about it.

   - Ian

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