Boarding Pass Dude’s Computers Seized, Public Service Praised

By consumerist.com October 30, 2006

BoingBoing is really your one-stop shop but:

• The FBI seized Chris Soghoian’s computers and ransacked his house.
• The congressman who called for Soghoian’s arrest essentially retracted his comments and praised Soghoian for performing a public good, though he called it, “a lousy way of doing it.”
• A TSA spokeswoman said, “Does this pose a threat to security? No.”
• A Northwest spokesman said, “If someone were to print a fraudulent boarding pass with a first-class seat that was unassigned, they would quickly be discovered by our flight attendants.”
• You can still mod your NWA boarding pass by hand-editing the HTML. Unless you’re a noob.

So it looks like that website wasn’t a danger, didn’t aid terrorists, and was basically useless except for one thing: pointing out a big ol’ security hole. Awesome, glad we got that one figured out.

Previously: Fake NWA Boarding Pass Site Removed, Creator Visited By FBI

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Comments

  1. John Stracke says:
    October 30, 2006 at 1:52 pm

    He would’ve done better to print up a bunch of fake passes for reporters, and mail them to those reporters.

  2. Triteon says:
    October 30, 2006 at 3:02 pm

    He would’ve done better to print up a bunch of fake passes for reporters, and mail them to those reporters.
    And, may I add, the President and his Cabinet, and each member of the Senate and Congress. Make sure the officials know that the press was also contacted.

  3. acambras says:
    October 30, 2006 at 3:09 pm

    Looks like the government is a tad defensive about Homeland Security’s incompetence.

  4. Trai_Dep says:
    October 30, 2006 at 4:25 pm

    Happy happy joy joy. It’s good to see that Rep Markey realized the context of Soghoian’s actions, realized he erred then courageously did a 180. Awesome!
    Hey out of curiosity, how many of you campers wrote Markey asking him to reconsider?
    I did (nicely!!). Curious to see if any Consumeristas got involved too.

  5. CalyopiNYC says:
    October 30, 2006 at 5:58 pm

    Stuff like this really makes me want to vomit. They better give him his equipment back.

  6. orielbean says:
    October 30, 2006 at 6:14 pm

    Markey is one of the true progressives in the Congress, Marty Meehan is another (pushed for true net neutrality vs the lobby-funded crap, as well as fought like a demon for term limits.)

  7. Solo says:
    October 31, 2006 at 6:13 am

    “You can still mod your NWA boarding pass by hand-editing the HTML.”

    Now I guess all there is left to do for the FBI is to ransack every household where those so called hands are used for that illegal hand-editing of the HTML. Also MS Frontpage.

    Wow. We are becoming a police state.