"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Roger Long wrote:

I actually agree 100% that pilots should have photo ID's. It's taking
it
out of the homeland security pot and calling it an anti-terrorist
measure
that is silly. We should have had them years ago. It's for protection
of
our aircraft and avionics, not the homeland.

I guess if some terrorist steals an airplane and flies it on a suicide
mission
we can arrest him for not having a picture ID....

Here's another scenario that makes the picture ID seem REALLY worthless::

Some foreigner comes here on a mission (his own mission from "allah"),
gets
a legit Visa, is fully checked out, plays by all the rules, goes to flight
school,
gets his license with a nice little picture on it. Waits patiently and
follows
all the rules then after he has his nice pictureID pilot license goes on
his
terror flight with a rented airplane.

But... he had a valid picture ID! I don't know about you but I feel
safer...



Picture IDs do 2 things:

1. They make it more convenient for you, the pilot. You can identify
yourself more easily when renting, or when crossing a controlled gate to get
to your plane, and stuff like that. If you are a pilot with a "mission",
well...., it will be more convenient.

2. They make it somewhat more difficult to operate on a borrowed or purely
stolen licence. This might make it harder for the odd failed-medical to get
in the air. It might also subvert that very rare joyrider/terrorist who
wants to steal a plane by openly walking onto the ramp without real
credentials.

As you have stated, I am sure that any serious terrorist will have those
bases covered.

But you guys really should listen to yourselves once in a while:

"Some foreigner comes here on a mission....". No-where is it carved in
stone that a terrorist has to be foreign... as in McVeigh, for example. The
current voter-apathy is some western societies might be a serious symptom
that a significant segment of the population no longer gives a real damn
about their country. (Hell, it can be argued that some significant number
of corporations don't give a real damn for their country, either, but I
digress.) Of that segment, some tiny deranged portion may harbour real
enmity.

Some are caught in the 8th grade:

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=2343204

I expect that many are not.