Regardless of how much or how little this TSA Agent makes... I could care less 
if he works for $1 an hour or if he makes $100k a year....  it has zero bearing 
to this conversation...
  he is still "airport police" and should at the very least know that the 
District of Columbia is the capitol of the united states.... AND he should be 
very well aware of ALL the US drivers licenses... it is, after all, HIS JOB TO 
KNOW THIS.... no excuses, I'm sorry...  with that said, he still did the right 
thing after not recognizing the license by asking for help...

An intern working for me, or a "fresh newbie" IT tech/security person, may not 
know what the autoconfig address is off the top of his head... Just like a TSA 
agent may not know that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is where the president lives...  
But that new tech better damn well know that Microsoft makes windows and Apple 
makes OSX... 

Michael P. Blanchard
Principal Security Engineer, CISSP, GCIH, CCSA-NGX, MCSE
Cyber Security Services
EMC ² Corporation
32 Coslin Drive
Southboro, MA 01772


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Terwilliger [mailto:sideshowt...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2014 12:28 PM
To: Blanchard, Michael (InfoSec)
Cc: valdis.kletni...@vt.edu; funsec@linuxbox.org; rmsl...@shaw.ca
Subject: Re: [funsec] US capitol not in US, according to TSA

The average TSA worker earns $12-$17/hour.  In Florida, where this guy was 
from, he was probably closer to the $12 end of the scale.  This agent is 
probably in his early 20s and is only making slightly more than someone working 
at a fast food restaurant.  That is about as "most people" as you can get.  And 
given that most Americans don't understand confusing status of The District of 
Columbia, I stand by my assertion that it is completely reasonable for someone 
not to trust a license from some place that is not an state.

This whole situation reminds me of countless experiences I've had working with 
entry level IT/security people.  Entry level people are generally very 
passionate about their jobs, probably like this TSA guy is, but they are still 
filling in knowledge gaps, so it is reasonable to expect silly mistakes.  For 
instance, how many of us have been told that that a client connecting to a 
server has an IP address of 169.254.1.2 but they are *certain* that the issue 
is with the server?  It would be easy to criticize an over zealous newbie but 
that doesn't help anyone in the long run.  And that is why I feel that this 
reporter is making a mountain out of a molehill.  Does he reasonably believe 
that no one at the TSA knows that the District of Columbia issues their own 
licenses?  If not, then shouldn't the story should be "1 TSA employee out of 
50,000 doesn't know that District of Columbia issues their own licenses."

-bill

On Jul 18, 2014, at 11:25 AM, Blanchard, Michael (InfoSec) 
<michael.blanch...@emc.com> wrote:

> Sorry, this guy is supposedly a trained professional....  he's not "most 
> people" he should have known that DC issues their own license...


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