Transportation Security Administration
The federal government improperly posted an internal guide to its airport passenger screening procedures on the Internet in a way that could offer insight into how to sidestep security.
The document outlines who is exempt from certain additional screening measures, including members of the U.S. armed forces, governors and lieutenant governors, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and their immediate families.
The Transportation Security Administration plans to test a new anti-terrorist measure at airports: encrypted bar codes on boarding passes.
Tests could begin at a few airports this year. A Jan. 27 notice said the TSA may buy 2,300 boarding-pass scanners -- equal to one for each airport checkpoint in the U.S.
Depending on how the test goes, the agency will decide whether to require every airline to issue the new passes, aimed at preventing terrorists from forging their own boarding papers.
Travelers lugging laptop computers worry about losing them -- with good reason. The hardware is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and lost or stolen data could be priceless.
But safeguarding your machine is no cinch.
Just ask Luke M. Ford, founder and chief executive of My Computer Works Inc., a tech-support company in Scotts-dale, Ariz.
On a recent jaunt to San Diego, he stashed his $1,400 laptop under a desk in his hotel room. When he returned 30 minutes later, it was gone. His traveling companion had left the door open.
Last year, the government posed a question for scientists: Could a computer program show how bombs might rip through jets?
Today, that question is answered. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque have created the first computer model that simulates a bomb blowing up a passenger plane. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is hoping that it will be an improvement from the traditional method of testing airplanes by blowing up actual bombs in retired jets.
The company trying to speed travelers through airport security lines said it found its laptop containing the personal information of 33,000 people about a week after reporting it stolen.
But the Transportation Security Administration suspended any new enrollments in the fast-growing program because of the failure of Verified Identity Pass to encrypt customer data stored on its computers.
The New York-based company said a software fix will take a matter of days and it sought to ensure customers the missing computer didn't contain any data such as credit card or Social Security numbers.