photo id ?!?!

Mats Wichmann mats at laplaza.org
Thu Feb 14 12:14:31 EST 2002


On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 02:31:45 -0500, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

:It's curious that the FAA doesn't require photo ids (see
:http://www/faa.gov/).  I've read that the airlines made up that rule, not
:for security, but to make it harder for person A to use a cheap ticket
:obtained by person B.  Is that true?  Beats me, but my cynical half can't
:not believe it <wink>.


There are more than a few FAA regulations/guidelines that the airlines
choose to enforce a particular way because it benefits their
operations.  Prior to Sept 11, your take was essentially true.


And as to the whole ID-at-conference question, I believe it's mostly
CYA on the part of organizers.  It's not "payment verification" alone,
I was in New York for the Linux World Expo the week before and while
security was much less tight than we had been warned, even
exhibitor/speaker passes needed an ID to obtain (I had someone
standing there who knew me, didn't help).  On the other hand, security
all over New York has gone a bit haywire.  Some of you know that I do
some teaching for Learning Tree for time to time, I went to drop by
their NY center and the combination of photo ID plus company badge
(non-photo variety) was not sufficient, someone had to come down to
escort me since I wasn't on the list of instructors for that week.  Of
course, that's not Learning Tree's own building.  Goes by the name of
the "CBS Building" (although there are many other tenants) so the
anthrax scare probably has something to do with it.


I suspect we're not going to have much luck with this for a while, at
least not for conferences held in places like NY and DC.  You're
welcome to head out my way (Taos, NM) for future conferences; I might
even be able to attend!


Mats

Mats Wichmann




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