Flutterby™! : Boarding Pass Silliness

Boarding pass bar codes contain unencrypted information about which security screening a passenger will receive:

“If you have a team of four people [planning an attack], the day before the operation when you print the boarding passes, whichever guy is going to have the least screening is going to be the one who’ll take potentially problematic items through security,” said Soghoian, now a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you know who’s getting screened before you walk into the airport, you can make sure the right guy is carrying the right bags.

“The entire security system depends on the randomness,” he said. “If people can do these dry runs, the system is vulnerable. We at the ACLU are not fans of profiling — we think it doesn’t work and has civil liberties issues. The watch-list approach doesn’t ensure security.”

Via How the TSA has, again, failed on simple technology.