In this thread about imposter Frank Abagnale the laxity of airplane and hospital security were being discussed.
Let’s look at the big changes in the world since ye olde days before metal detectors and photo ids. In so many cases if you just dressed the part nobody would question you. In the other thread I pointed out the lax computer security:
“Through the 90s computer security was lax all over the place. I had no desire to steal or be destructive, but I could get deep into computer systems all over the place because on so many machines nobody ever changed the default manager’s password. They’d give me a password with limited access and never considered I might know the password that let me own the machine.”
It was only recently anybody began watching the maternity wards in hospitals, there were cases where people just walked in, picked up a baby and sometimes got out of the hospital before being caught. Numerous scams involved phony service and maintenance workers putting on a blue jump suit with a sewn on name tag and being allowed in almost anywhere. People didn’t carry any official ID all that often, and a faded Xerox copy of an alleged work order would get you through most inquiries.
So fellow Dopers of a certain age, tell us about your experiences in the good old days of naivety.
Building security prior to 9/11 was extremely lax. If you just walked into a place acting like you belonged there, normally people wouldn’t even think about questioning why you were there.
After business hours, even when there was miniscule level of security in a large high rise office building, you could walk past security and take the elevators up to the top floors. Normally the office doors would be open because the cleaning crews were there. You could roam around and into executives offices without being questioned because the office employees would be gone, and the only people there would be the cleaners. If you looked like you belonged, no one was going to question you.
There were no card readers or security codes to get in.
I had a plane ticket to fly to visit my parents & grandparents after the semester was over. Departure was from the small Islip / Macarthur airport on Long Island.
I had some kind of brainfart from partying too much and went to the airport a day early.
It went down like this:
“Hey there, good afternoon, you flying today?”
“Yep, I’m on an American Airlines to Atlanta”
“Oh, that must be flight 2027, it’s on time, you’ll be at gate three, over there”
…
“Hey mister, your plane is pulling up now. We’ll call boarding in just a moment”
…
person glances at my ticket, it’s the same flight number and time from one day to the next, waves me on*
I land in Atlanta and there’s nobody there to meet me. It’s an hour before I notice that the ticket was for the following day. Airport folks never noticed and let me fly on a flight for which I did not have a ticket.
In my office jobs in the '80s and '90s, we had security people behind a desk at the front door, but no key cards, no photo IDs, etc. I imagine that it would have been very easy to get past them, and into the building, if you acted like you belonged there, or followed along behind a group of employees who were entering. And, computers at desks often didn’t have passwords or logins.
Prior to 9/11, it was, of course, possible to proceed past security and to the gate area without a ticket; this was commonly done as people either accompanied loved ones to their planes, or met arriving passengers as they got off the plane.
And, I remember going through airport security for a flight in '85 or '86, and the guy in front of me set off the metal detector. He pulled a pretty beefy folding knife out of his pocket, which probably had a 4" blade. The security person nodded, and let the guy pass, carrying that knife with him onto the plane.
How easy did it used to be to sneak on cruise ships? My primary knowledge of the boarding process came from watching “The Love Boat”, but that made it seem like it would be pretty easy to just wander onto the ship.
Literally the day before the 9/11 hijackings, I accompanied someone through security and as far as the doorway to the passenger boarding bridge. And on my keychain was my Swiss Army knife, although it was (and is) the smallest one with the little two-inch blade.
In the mid 50s, I was working as a lab tech in a lab that happened to be located in the university hospital. Now the hospital had very restrictive visiting hours, something like 2-4 in the afternoon and 7-9 in the evening. Still I was always able to get past the desk at the entry by mumbling something incomprehensible. Eventually, I suppose they recognized me and I didn’t have to mumble anything. For a few days, me grandmother was in the hospital just two floors below the lab. I was able to grab a lab coat and visit her any time I wanted. I bet I couldn’t do that now.
My son says you can get on any construction site by wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard.
BTW, there is a woman named Marilyn Hartman who has stowed away on a couple dozen flights in this and the previous decade, so well after the post 9/11 security changes. She’s been caught and arrested multiple times and yet still seems to get away with it, which goes to show that security is not as airtight as the authorities would like.
When I was about 5 in the mid 70’s, my dad and I were at a small airport, the kind you walked to the planes, we were waiting to pick up my grandparents. My dad took me to the small control tower there, rang a number on a phone, and we were taken up into the tower. I think there would be just a bit more security today.
I remember in the late sixties my grandmother was flying somewhere, she was rather frail so my father, who was not going with her, was allowed to walk her out to the plane, help her up the stairs and into her seat then leave the plane
I’ll also add that the fence which kept people from accessing the apron area was just a waist high garden type fence that anyone could have got over
Security was lax at Air Force bases (at least the ones I was stationed at) in the 80s.
When first assigned to the base and processing in, folks were given a decal to put on the front bumper to get through the gate. No need to show ID unless it was night time. And if you were in uniform you simply had to to dim your headlights so the guard could see the decal.
It made life easy for everyone (especially the guard at the gate). But I often wondered about someone stealing a service member’s car and just driving onto the base and doing damage or something
At small airports today that’s still the norm. Less so at major hubs just due to the workload.
I had the same thoughts during my time in in USAF, also in the '80s. OTOH, the amount of damage any one team of bad guys could do at any one base would still be a pinprick at the scale of USAF. To be traded off against the cost of more elaborate security (and staffing) everywhere all the time.
AIUI DoD has since transitioned to a much tighter security profile. But it’s been the work of decades to move most of the dependent services like BX, hospital, family housing, etc., outside the gates and install serious counter-terrorist barriers and such at all the entrances. And even now, 20+ years later the work of hardening bases is far from done. It’s unclear that all that spending has foiled or deterred even a single would-be attack.
Any kind of uniform or special purpose clothing is likely to get you in somewhere. Unless someone’s job is to check any person trying to enter a location, and they are doing their job, then people just don’t get their suspicions aroused when they see something that looks normal.
Even today, security at private companies tends to be somewhat lax. I’ve worked at places where you have to scan your employee badge to open employee-only doors. The rule is that door-holding is not allowed, and that every person must scan his badge to get in. But unless the rule is VERY strictly enforced, it will be broken routinely. You see, people in general like to be helpful.
Yes even now security can be lax, even when taken very seriously for very important matters. Only a few years ago I had to connect by phone with the DOD to work on a software issue. No one with security clearance was available to access the system directly, if that was even allowed on this one, so all I could do was talk on the phone to a guy sitting at a terminal who would type in anything I told him to and read me back whatever popped up on the screen. He had no idea what any of it was about. I was sooooo tempted to tell him to type in WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME?
Mid 80s as a teenager I flew by myself from the west coast to the east coast. I had to change planes in Chicago. It was only when they did the “welcome to the flight to Baltimore”, did I realize I was on the wrong plane. The gate attendant had looked at my boarding pass.
Fortunately they had not even closed the doors yet, so I was able to get off and catch my correct flight, which had been moved to a different gate at the last minute.
!990s I worked at a military base which had an outer gate and an inner gate for the really secure stuff. The security for the inner gate was always strict, but the security for the outer gate was rather lax. Most of the time there was no one at the gate house. When there was a security alert, they would close the other outer gates, and every one had to go through the main gate. You were supposed to hold up your ID card, when was a laminated manila card, approximately the color of toast. Allegedly some people used other cards, and one person swore they got in by holding up a piece of toast cut to the correct size.
Current company in 2000, when we moved here, did not have security on the building doors. It was possible for people to walk in off the street directly in the offices, and family members would come to visit. This changed soon afterwards, but people can still walk through the campus, even if they are not employees, as the gates are open during during normal working hours and Saturdays. I still find this weird.
It was common well into the 90s and really only ended with the security measures after 9/11. When my son was much younger he got to visit the flight deck several times just by asking. Sometimes they even had souvenirs for him.
Depends a bit on the country. In the USA cockpit visits in flight pretty well ended with the spate of hijackings in the 1970s. I suppose Canada, being a more civilized place, kept up that tradition awhile longer.
We still have plastic kiddie wings to give out although not everybody bothers to carry a supply. And we often have kids in the cockpit during boarding & deboarding. Nowadays Mom or Dad are much more interested in getting pictures with their phone than in a souvenir. The kids are as wide-eyed and adorable as ever.
Indeed – employees at the ad agency where I work have to take a bunch of annual training/refresher video courses on various things, including security measures. “Do not hold security doors open for people, no matter how nice they seem” is one of the specific topics, but you’re right, it’s asking people go against human nature.