[EGPWS]

A college student who allegedly hid box cutters and other banned items on four airliners to expose weaknesses in U.S. security was charged with a federal crime Monday, and a prosecutor said he committed a "very serious and foolish action."

Yea, sooo serious that they forced a release upon him!

[SerpentDove]

Now they can go back to doing cavity searches on Grandma.

[sourcery]

"Amateur testing of our systems do not show us in any way our flaws," McHale said. "We know where the vulnerabilities are and we are testing them. ... This does not help."

Of course it doesn't help. The bureacrats want the public to think that it's now extremely difficult to smuggle weapons/bombs onto an airliner, thanks to their new police powers and federal airport SS. Heatwole has publicly exposed the lie--and for that, they will never forgive him.

[ambrose]

prosecutor said he committed a "very serious and foolish action."

Yup - he embarassed the federales.

[Ichneumon]

"Amateur testing of our systems do not show us in any way our flaws," McHale said.

Funny, it sure looks that way to me.

[bert]

......It was not a test. It was not a civil action. It was a very serious and foolish action." ................


It was a very serious test that is pointing out the foolishness of a US Attorney.

[suijuris]

However, DiBiagio said Heatwole's conduct "was not a prank. This was not poor judgment. ... It was not a test. It was not a civil action. It was a very serious and foolish action." Deputy TSA Administrator Stephen McHale said Monday's court action "makes clear that renegade acts to probe airport security for whatever reason will not be tolerated, pure and simple." "Amateur testing of our systems do not show us in any way our flaws," McHale said. "We know where the vulnerabilities are and we are testing them. ... This does not help."

Unbelievable! What a--holes!

[from occupied ga]

and a prosecutor said he committed a "very serious and foolish action."

Yep he sure did. He showed TSA and the government as a flock of fools. Being pompous self-important fools, they are naturally very sensitive about this.

[Cboldt]

"Amateur testing of our systems do not show us in any way our flaws," McHale said. "We know where the vulnerabilities are and we are testing them. ... This does not help."

A quick timeline -- kid puts items on plane on day 1, kid e-mails TSA on day 1 and tells them which flights were compromised, and in what way -- SWA employees find items on day 40 (more or less) -- TSA forwards e-mails to FBI on day 41.

Now, tell me about the bureaucratic vulnerability. The test isn't only that something got by the screener. The test is also how the TSA reacts to information. Bureaucratic behavior is predictable, inefficient, and defensive in nature.

[wideminded]

I have to say that I am really impressed that no one in this thread has yet taken the narrow-minded authoritarian side espoused by the prosecutor.

[tdadams]

"Amateur testing of our systems do not show us in any way our flaws," McHale said. "We know where the vulnerabilities are and we are testing them. ... This does not help."

While I don't condone this guy's freelance security analyst work, the above statement is hogwash. An embarassing high-profile breach of security isn't going to help clamp down on the holes? When ABC News shipped uranium from Indonesia, that didn't get someone's attention at homeland security?

I can understand the feds' foul mood over this. They got a big black eye. I can understand their terse response to try to discourage this kind of thing from happening again. But don't tell me what this kid did hasn't put some heat on the TSA to fix some problems.