The US House Aviation Subcommittee yesterday heard how congressional investigators used false IDs to gain access to a series of federal buildings and two commercial airports, and how a copy of the report detailing their success was later found in an al-Qaida cave in Afghanistan. The investigators were 100 per cent successful in getting past security, but apparently less so in the case of their own report's security. Subcommittee Chairman John Mica told a hearing on biometric ID in aviation that the deployment of more secure ID needed to be accelerated, given that terrorists are interested in gaining access to restricted airport areas. The congressional investigators had made their fake IDs using software downloaded from the Internet, and apparently this passed muster. |