Footage Shows JFK Airport workers entering Secured Areas without Security Checks, Identity Verification


While many Americans are afraid to travel abroad these days because of poor airport security and overseas terror threats, that fear might be equally justified in our country’s own airports.  CBS New York obtained surveillance footage of workers at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport leaving and entering “secured” areas without ever being inspected — or even having their identities verified.

John F. Kennedy International Airport workers have been able to enter a restricted area of the airport without being checked.

CBS News obtained cellphone camera video showing workers over several days entering a restricted area at the airport by walking through a turnstile after scanning a security card and entering a PIN number. The workers’ identities were not verified and their bags were not checked.

“I’m horrified, but I’m not surprised,” Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told CBS News. “I think one of the main threats is employees of the airport getting on carrying contraband, possibly weapons. There you have the potential for disaster.”

After airport workers complete a background check and their names are run through criminal and terror databases, they are given key cards, which some workers call “the key to the city.”

A Homeland Security inspector general’s office report in 2015 found that the “TSA did not identify 73 individuals with terrorism-related category codes.”

In 2014, a Delta employee was able to smuggle more than 100 guns through Atlanta’s airport security and hand them off to a passenger who was heading to New York.

This comes as the TSA was recently described as an agency in crisis, as the agency is failing 95% of its explosives detection drills and workers are quitting at an astonishing rate.

 

Source: CBS New York

 



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