How I Got Through Airport Security with
How I Got Through Airport Security with No I.D.Thanks to Google Earth and puzzling new TSA rules, all you need to know to get on a plane these days is the color of your house.
Traveling for the holidays? No need to fear missing your plane because you’ve lost your government issued I.D.! You can fly without it—as long as you know the color of your house.
A few weeks ago I lost my wallet, or maybe it was stolen. But I had to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and I didn’t have a single piece of identification—no passport, driver’s license, credit card, work I.D., nothing.
When I got to LAX, I approached the uniformed Transportation Security Administration agent nearest the entrance to the security screening area. She had the power to ruin my day, and we both knew it. But I was sweet, and she was only slightly superior in return.
“Do you have anything?” she asked. “A library card? A bill addressed to you at your home?”
I shook my head from side to side, pitifully.
The agent summoned the supervisor. He carried a clipboard and something that looked like a cross between a World War II-era walkie-talkie and a 1990s cellphone.
“Please write your name and address on this form,” he said. “Then I have to make a call. The gentleman I call will ask you a series of questions to help us verify your identify.”
I filled out the form super-neatly, so I wouldn’t seem like a nervous terrorist, and the supervisor placed a call on his phone-a-ma-jig to an intentionally unidentified person who I came to think of as the Voice.
The Voice spoke to me directly. “Have you ever lived in the Washington, D.C., area?” the Voice inquired. “Yes, a number of years ago,” I said. “Do you now live in a gated community?” asked the Voice. My neighborhood isn’t technically gated, but there’s only one road in and out, so I answered, “Yes.” That was the right answer.
The final question from the Voice, the one that got me through the backscatter machine, past the shoe swipe-o-meter and onto the plane, was a stunning surprise: “What color is your house?”
“Green,” I told the Voice, who then asked me to hand the phone back to the supervisor. The supervisor and the Voice then began chatting about how nice my house was.
By chance, when I got back home, I had an email waiting for me from Mr. Peter E. Sand, director of privacy technology at the US Department of Homeland Security in Washington. He was inquiring about a book I’d written. I quickly emailed him back about my experience at LAX. How did they know the color of my house? Why did they ask me that? Sand volunteered to put my questions to someone who might know the answer.
That person turned out to be Peter Pietra, the director of privacy policy and compliance at TSA. This was Pietra’s exact reply: “ou are not allowed to fly unless you can present acceptable I.D. to match up with your boarding pass. Because we know this can be a problem for people who've lost/forgotten I.D. or may not have acceptable I.D., we developed a process to help passengers who want help by using a variety of ways to try to verify that the person standing at the checkpoint without I.D. is actually the person on the boarding pass. While this typically involves asking questions from commercial databases like Lexis-Nexis or Choicepoint, sometimes they will try to look the address up on Google Earth and see if there are questions they can ask that someone at that address should be able to know. To get the house color I assume the house must have a photo on Google Earth or some similar website.”
The idea that an airport official can tell me the color of my house as a favor to me when I lose my wallet is a bit disconcerting. I was really happy to get on that plane that day. But I wasn’t thrilled to learn that instant access to satellite images is a government tool of airport identification. It feels invasive. And does knowing the color of my house really prove that I am me, anyway?
I could almost accept government use of invasive-feeling technologies if such technology were used consistently, by all levels of government, without infringing on civil liberties. But although the government sometimes makes scarily efficient use of technology, it sometimes does the opposite by failing to make use of technology, with terrible consequences for personal freedom.
Here is a case in point. Last month, my nephew’s house was robbed. The thief stole electronic toys, computers, and televisions. My frantic nephew called the police to report the crime. When they arrived, they asked my nephew his name, and of course he told them. They placed him under arrest.
The police claimed my nephew was wanted in Tennessee for drug offenses. My nephew has a fairly common name, and when they heard it, the police arrested him and dragged him to jail, leaving his wife and four children behind in a state of shocked disbelief.
One would have thought that big-city police would have electronic access to arrest records, photographs, fingerprints, and other information. They should be able to clear up a case of mistaken identity speedily. But my nephew sat in the Fulton County jail for two days. It took two whole days for a judge to order him set free.
Get the irony? It took two minutes for TSA to determine to its satisfaction that I was the lady who lived in the green house in Pennsylvania. But it took two days for a big-city police department to determine that a man, a crime victim, found inside his own family home was in fact who he said he was, and not some guy with a similar name from Ohio wanted for selling dope in Tennessee
Proof again that technology is only as good as the people who use it—or refuse to use it.
没有身份证，飞机照样坐
多亏了谷歌地球和美国运输安全局令人费解的新规定，现在要想登上飞机，只要说得出你家房子的颜色就可以了。
假日旅行?不用担心因为丢证件而上不了飞机啦。只要知道你家房子的颜色,就算没有它们飞机也照坐不误!
几周前我丢了钱包——也许是被偷了。我得从洛山矶赶赴旧金山,然而手头却没有护照、驾照、信用卡或是工作证——连一张证件都没有。
在洛杉矶国际机场，我找到离安检处最近的一位身着制服的运输安全局工作人员。只要她愿意,准能叫我这一天行程泡汤——对这点我们彼此都心知肚明。然而由于我态度恭谦礼数周到，她对我还算得上客气。
“那你有什么能证明身份的东西吗?”她问,“例如借书证?或是寄到家里的单据?”
我沉痛地摇摇头。
于是她叫来了监管。那位监管先生拿着块书写板以及一部手提电话,式样介于二战时期的步话机以及上世纪九十年代的大哥大。
“请在这张表里写下你的姓名和住址”，他说,“然后我会打个电话。接电话的先生会问你一些问题,以帮助我们确认你的身份。”
我工工整整地填好表格,免得自己看起来像个心怀鬼胎的恐怖份子。监管拨通了手上那个东西。电话那头的身份当然是不会让我知道的，所以就姑且称其为“那个声音”吧。
那个声音直接向着我发话了:“您以前在华盛顿住过吗?”“许多年以前住过”，我答道。“您现在住的社区是封闭式的吗?”他又问。我现在住的小区并没有什么专门的封闭设施，不过倒是只有一个出入口,所以我回答“是”。看来是答对了。
那个声音问的最后一个问题令我得以通过行李扫描以及脱鞋检查并最终登上飞机。然而这问题真出人意料:“你家房子是什么颜色的?”
“绿色”，我答道。然后那个声音要我把电话还给监管。接着两人就开始聊起我的房子是多么的好。
正巧回到家我后收到了一封邮件，来自华盛顿美国国土安全局的隐私保护技术处主任皮特·E·桑德先生。他想打听我写的一本书。于是我马上给他回了信,叙述了我在洛杉矶国际机场的遭遇，并问起他们是如何知道我家房子的颜色，以及为什么要问我这个?桑德先生便把我的问题转给了相关知情人士。
而那位知情人士便是运输安全局隐私保护政策与执行主任皮特·皮耶特拉先生。以下就是他的回答:“不出示与登机证相吻合的身份证明便无法登机,的确这对于一些遗失或忘带证件、或是无法出具有效证件的乘客来说十分不便。所以我们就想出一套办法，通过不同途径来证明在登记检查口的人是否就是登机证上的本人。为此我们常常要咨询像律商联讯、ChoicePoint这些商业数据库，有时就在谷歌地球上查到那人的住址，看看是否能提出一些本人应当能够答得上的问题。。既然能知道房子的颜色，想必在谷歌地球或别的类似网站应该上能找到你家房子的照片吧。”
连一位机场工作人员都能知道自家房子的颜色，一想到这点总令人感到有些不自在,哪怕这在我丢钱包时帮了大忙。那一天我得以登上飞机的确令人欣慰，然而得知政府能随时获取卫星图象并将其用于登机身份确认，可就不那么让人高兴了，甚至还有种隐私遭到侵犯的感觉。话说回来,知道我家房子是什么颜色，真的就能证明我是本人吗?
不过要是各级政府能够在不妨碍公民人身自由的前提下善始善终地运用这类技术的话，那怕有侵犯隐私之嫌，我也并不十分反对。可惜政府尽管有时运用起技术来利落得惊人，有时情形却恰恰相反——他们因为没能好好利用技术，而给个人的人身自由带来了灾难性的后果。
例子抓现行。上个月我侄子家被盗了。盗贼偷走了电动玩具、电脑及电视。惊慌的侄子报了警。警察赶到后问我侄子叫什么名字，他当然说了，结果就被他们给逮了起来。
警方声称他正因为一桩涉及毒品的案子而在田纳西遭到通辑。我侄子的名字挺普通，然而警察一听他的名字就把他投进了监狱，留下他的妻子及四个孩子吓呆在屋子里。
或许你会以为在大城市,靠着辑拿档案、相片、指纹以及其它许多电子资料，警察很快就能知道抓错了人。然而我的侄子在富尔顿县立监狱里被关了两天——法官花了整整两天才断定他应当被无罪释放。
够讽剌的，不是么？运输安全局只需要两分钟就足以断定我就是住在宾夕法尼亚某幢绿色房子里的那位女士。而大城市的警察局花了两天才能确定，站在自家屋里的一位犯罪受害者,的确就是他所自称的那个人，而不是那个有着相同名字、来自俄亥俄州并因贩毒而在田纳西被通辑的家伙。
事实再次证明，技术的好坏取决于谁在用，又或者，谁不用。
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