Off Beat: Sea-Tac's security: Are they serious?

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

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Via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

[snip]

Greg Alderete has more than a passing interest in homeland security. A
retired lieutenant colonel in the Army, he has devoted most of his life to
it.

So when he realized he had driven a van onto a runway tarmac at Sea-Tac
airport — and that no one had asked his name, checked his ID or searched
his vehicle — well, he just about lost it."I was appalled," Alderete
says. "If you go in the airport's front door, they take away your tube of
toothpaste. But the back door? That's the weakest security of any critical
facility I've ever seen."

He's talking about the corporate jet area, on the airport's south tip.
Business and government bigwigs fly in and out of there.

Alderete and Chris Clodfelter, a former senior master sergeant in the U.S.
Air Force, arrived there Thursday, May 8, to pick up a two-star general
flying in from Portland.

What happened floored them. When they said they were picking up an Army
official, the gate opened and they were invited to drive onto the airfield.

"We were sitting there, the engine idling, nobody around, when all of a
sudden I realized: We're out on the goddamn runway," Alderete recalled.
"We're in a gassed-up, seven-passenger van, and no one really knows who we
are. We have an unobstructed path to the main runways, the commercial
gates, the whole place. It was unbelievable."

No one asked their names or screened them or the van. Both were in civilian
clothes.

"Within 30 seconds we could have been flooring it down the runway,"
Clodfelter says. "They couldn't have stopped us."

"With a van full of weapons we could have shut down the entire aviation
system," Alderete said.

Now when I first heard this story, I figured they were exaggerating. Or
maybe there was a lot more security than they realized.

Nope. Not really. It all happened pretty much as they say.

Both the Port of Seattle and the federal Transportation Safety
Administration reviewed the incident, including videotapes, and concluded
their security system is sound.

[snip]

More:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2004422114_danny18.html

Righto.

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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