And TSA wants us to think taking our shoes off for airport screening is making us safe.
Hidden camera video shows gaping holes in Sea-Tac security
By Tracy Vedder
SEATAC, Wash. -- Every day, tens of thousands of passengers travel through Sea-Tac Airport. They throw away their liquids, take off their shoes, pull out their laptops, and generally, don't complain. They know it's the price of safety in the skies.
That's what happens at Sea-Tac's front door. But the Problem Solvers have discovered that the back door is virtually wide open. We went undercover with hidden cameras and found holes in how Sea-Tac keeps the people on its planes safe.
"Traveling is not as safe as you think it is," said a Sea-Tac worker who was so concerned about security that the worker agreed to carry a hidden camera into the airport.
Over several days at different times, the video shows that once through an employee entrance, a person can go absolutely anywhere: into the baggage area, onto the flightline near planes, and into the secure terminal where passengers are ready to board.
Our whistleblower describes it this way: "It's scary."
We went to Cleveland, Ohio, to show aviation security expert Andrew Thomas what we found. His conclusion? "It's disturbing. They have unfettered access to the entire infrastructure of the aviation system by getting through those gates."
Not only can they go anywhere, they can take virtually anything in with them. We saw worker after worker going through the checkpoints carrying backpacks, purses, and bags of all shapes and sizes. And none of it was checked.
"Shocking," says our whistleblower, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "knowing that you can go right underneath and not be screened; carry whatever you want."
Our whistleblower walked right out to the tarmac, a place this person does not work, carrying a hidden camera. The worker could have been carrying a bomb or a gun, anything really. No one stopped or ever questioned the whistleblower.
Mark Reis, Sea-Tac's managing director, was not worried about what our camera found.
"Being able to carry a camera into a secure area is not, by itself, anything that I'm particularly concerned about from a security perspective," he said.
Airport Security Director Wendy Reiter was also not worried. "We want to feel safe when we come to work," Reiter said, "and I believe we do, I really do."
Sea-Tac and the Transportation Security Administration said they use a layered approach to keep tabs on their workers. It includes surveillance cameras, criminal background checks that go back ten years, and employees must have a badge and have their fingerprint scanned to get into secure areas.
Finally, TSA and Sea-Tac rely on what they call random screening to keep employees honest about what they're bringing through in all those backpacks.
But our whistleblower sees it differently. "From when I've been hired there, I've been screened once, but how many times have I gone into the airport? Gone in many, many times."
The day Sea-Tac officials showed us their security system, those TSA screeners were on the job. Airport officials say they do this all the time.
"We screen 4,000 people, four or 5,000 people a week," Reiter said. "TSA does their screening."
But our whistleblower made several trips inside and never worried that the hidden camera would be detected.
One employee gave us permission to videotape while the TSA screened him. It was so noisy at the time, we couldn't hear the conversation. But when we watched our tape we were surprised when the TSA screener asked him if he'd been through this before, and the worker said "no." The screener repeats with a question, "No?" and then proceeds to explain the process to the worker. Again, the worker had never been screened before.
"They say they do that almost every day," says our whistleblower, "but I'm almost everywhere on the airport every day." When KOMO asked again how many times the whistleblower had been screened, the answer was "once."
Security expert Andrew Thomas says it's a big security gap.
"There's no question about it," he said. Thomas has written several books on aviation security and was interviewed by the 9-11 commission and looked at every bit of our hidden camera video. "This is unnerving," he said.
Thomas watched employees bringing in unscreened bags and commented, "If the guy would have walked through that door with a bomb, he could have put it in that bag, that bag's going to get on a plane and that bag's going to blow up."
"This is what's interesting," Thomas said while watching video of the gate where outside vendors bring deliveries into the airport. He is particularly concerned about deliveries getting a 10 to 20 second once-over by security before being waved, unaccompanied, into the secure area.
"So many items are going through there, and if you look at the one door that opens up the FedEx or UPS guy is taking in huge amounts of cargo unscreened into that area," Thomas said. "Not even checking what's in there, that is really disconcerting to me."
It was much different on our public walk-through. That time, Sea-Tac security spent well over a minute with every vendor, writing down their information, checking the boxes thoroughly.
Thomas was appalled. "We have no idea what's in those boxes, absolutely no idea we know what's in those boxes, this is what's the scariest part of the entire video here."
Sea-Tac officials say all the vendors must have photo ID and are checked before they drive onto airport property, but no cargo is screened -- it's only a visual inspection.
When asked if that's enough, Reiter said, "I believe as a layered approach we are very comfortable feeling that we are safe and secure."
Thomas says complacency is the enemy.
"These people are very patient, they're going to game the system, they're going to wait us out and they're going to look for the biggest vulnerability and hit," he said. "And this is certainly one of them."
The layered approach Sea-Tac and the TSA rely on includes background checks, photo ID and the use of a fingerprint to access secure areas. About 16,000 Sea-Tac employees currently have that access.
Reis said there is a national debate over whether all employees should be completely screened every time they go into a secure area. In addition to being very expensive, he says, many airport directors believe it would be so time consuming that airport operations would become significantly congested.
The TSA would not agree to an interview with KOMO, but did send a written statement which says, "TSA and the airport operator determine the level of access provided to each employee based on that employee's job requirements. Access to non-public areas obligates these employees to adhere to very specific regulations which the airport, the airlines and the TSA strictly enforce. Failure to do so results in the employee's termination.
"In addition, TSA has implemented the Aviation Direct Access Screening Program that provides random screening of employees who work in the secure areas. This program, along with other security enforcement tactics to constantly monitor sterile areas serve as deterrents and effective tools in our multi-layered approach to security. While we appreciate their vigilance, TSA believes that the agency, together with the airport operator, is more qualified than KOMO-TV to determine which employees should be accessing secure areas of the airport."
Our whistleblower, however, was not as upbeat as the TSA about security at the airport and said nobody cares what you bring into the secure areas. "TSA doesn't, otherwise they'd be screening right now."
Thomas said that once someone gets into the secure area, they basically have unfettered access to planes.
"There's not even any baseline security measures going on here," he said. "They're just assuming 'well, he's got a uniform on, he has a badge, I know him, therefore it must be okay.'"
"I think that's still the glaring vulnerability with regards to air travel today," Thomas said. "We've spent so much time and so much effort ratcheting up the security at checkpoints for the passengers before they board the plane we have to ask ourselves, what about all these other people?"
Thomas said the video from the hidden camera shows that access to the airport's secure operations area is one of the biggest security vulnerabilities at Sea-Tac.
"We check thousands of passengers every day, why not check employees?" |
