Standard Mischief

Yup, seems Chris Soghoian has made something that lets anyone generate a fake boarding pass, a pass that should allow you access through the secure area and right up to the gate. (Update: looks like Chris has a blog too)

It’s not really a feat of HTML wizardry by itself, but the idea is brilliant.

It’s useful for:

1. To meet your elderly grandparents at the gate
2. To ‘upgrade’ yourself once on the airplane – by printing another boarding pass for a ticket you’re already purchased, only this time, in Business Class.
3. Just to demonstrate that the TSA Boarding Pass/ID check is useless.

I, of course, love it. There’s also some tips to circumvent teh “No Fly” list, (although I can’t personally vouch for them). This might be useful because an innocent party who has their name on the ?No Fly? list usually enjoy a steady diet of extra scrutiny. There seems to be no way to appeal the fact that you are on said list, and I understand the very best you can do is apply and get a TSA “I’m not a terrorist” super secret ID card. However, it seems that even with that ID card, you can’t check-in online or by using a kiosk, you still need to check in in person. (Thanks for the tip, Paul)

Update: I took a second look at the boarding pass code and found that the barcode is a static picture, and is not generated on the fly. So this likely won’t pass a barcode scanner test. Just FYI. Chris says the TSA check is just to see that whatever you printed out matches what your government issued ID says, and they don’t do a barcode check at that spot.

Update 2: Slate, from last year.

Finally, I’d like to point you to Scott Adam’s Blog, where he discusses a recent trip through security.

[Boarding pass tip via Feministe.us]