Airline Pilots Allowed To Dodge Security Screening

OverTheGeicoE writes "Wired has a story about TSA's known crewmember program, which allows airline pilots to bypass traditional airport security on their way to the cockpit. Pilots will be verified using a system known as CrewPASS that relies on uniforms, identity cards, fingerprints, and possibly other biometrics to authenticate flight deck crews. Once they are authenticated, they can enter secure areas in airports without any further screening. Participation at present is voluntary, and applies at Baltimore/Washington (BWI), Pittsburg (PIT), Columbia (CAE) and now Chicago O'Hare (ORD) airports. TSA is hoping to expand the program nationally. Bruce Schneier thinks this program is 'a really bad idea.' Pilots are already avoiding scanners and patdowns at security checkpoints (video). Is the new program just a way for TSA to hide this fact from the flying public?"

Also avoiding radiation

[__aazsst3756]

Airline crews are limited to flight hours as a means to limit the radiation they receive to stay under OSHA limits. It is one of the careers that receive relatively high doses over their careers. Doses are cumulative (think about how people develop skin cancer supposedly from sun burns as a child).

For these reasons pilots try to avoid even small doses of radiation where they can, and walking through a body scanner several times every day they work over several years would add up.

Examples of industries with significant occupational radiation exposure:

• - Airline crew (the most exposed population)
• - Industrial radiography
• - Medical radiology and nuclear medicine
• - Uranium mining
• - Nuclear power plant and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant workers
• - Research laboratories (government, university and private)

http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/53939/radiation-exposure/ [theenergycollective.com]

Re:How is this a problem?

[Opportunist]

Captains don't tend to be dumb. Keep the door shut, stewardess dies. Open the door, everyone dies. Either way the stewardess dies. You can't really blackmail someone if you don't have anything to offer.

Re:How is this a problem?

[element-o.p.]

Lucky you.

My wife and my step-daughter have BOTH been fondled at airports. I have had to boot laptops. My step-daughter was asked to go through the electronic nudie-scope on her last flight, and told TSA no.

Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it isn't happening, and it definitely doesn't mean people shouldn't be incensed about TSA's abusive, degrading, demeaning security theater. If that makes me a "malcontent", so be it.