security – Page 2 – Thiefhunters in Paradise

Hotel room security lapses

When you check into a hotel and are handed a key to a room that turns out to be already occupied, you have to wonder about the hotel’s security. You definitely come to a conclusion about its competence. This is no small mistake, in my book.

When we checked into the Delta Bessborough in Saskatoon, we were given a room key, as usual. We hauled our luggage up to find that the room had not been cleaned. Down we went. Got a new key. Back up to another floor. Opened the door and found a woman inside! One more time down and up and we got a third room, this one a keeper.

I’m not terribly irked by the first mistake, but I find the second inexcusable. It makes me wonder who might barge into my room later. Will I be inside at the time? Just how confused is the front desk, anyway? How much responsibility will they take for potential repercussions?

Bob and I were surprised at how insignificant the front desk people seemed to deem the error. “I know, I know you got the wrong room, sir, we apologized!” a staffer said, as if we were harassing him. Inconvenience seemed to be the complaint he was addressing; not insecurity. And—he was busy with front desk things.

Contrast that with an incident the next day at a Crown Plaza. Our checkout time was 4 p.m. We returned to the room at 3 p.m. in a rush to pack, but couldn’t get in. Our two keys no longer worked. Hearing our distress at not being able to get in, a nearby service staffer came along with his master key and let us in, no questions asked. While we were irritated that our access had been wrongly cut off, we were grateful that someone was there to let us in, and we took advantage of his empathy. On the other hand, he was someone we’d never seen, and who had never seen us. Technically, he shouldn’t have let us in. That sort of behavior compromises the safety of guests and their belongings.

At checkout, I related the matter to the front desk staff because our keys should not have been cut off. “Wait,” the front desk man said. “Would you mind repeating that for our manager? He should be aware of this.” He got it. He understood the security ramifications. I have no doubt that the entire housekeeping staff got a refresher in security protocol.

A few days before, in another hotel, we actually entered the wrong room. Housekeeping was there and let us walk on in. We saw other people’s stuff and realized we were on the wrong floor. But we could have done anything. “Oh, I just wanted to grab my computer…”

I’ve already written about hotel security in the hands of housekeeping staff.

… the security of our belongings is in the hands of the maids. How well are they trained? How much discretion do they have? When should they break the rules in order to be nice? When should they bend the rules in anticipation of a nice gratuity? What about temporary workers during the hotel’s high season, do they receive as thorough training? How many of us have approached our room only to find that we forgot our key, or the key doesn’t work, and a nice service staff member volunteers to let us in?

Hotel policy is one thing; compliance is another. How do you react when you find that your key doesn’t work (for the third time), the front desk is far away (giant hotel), your feet hurt and your arms are full and you’re dead tired, and the maid with a master key says “I’m sorry. It’s for your own security.”?

At the Campanile hotel in Paris, we got a replacement key from reception just by asking for it, giving the room number only. They didn’t even ask for a name. The staff on duty were the morning shift; they were not there at our check-in late the night before. They simply had no security procedures in place whatsoever.

Bob and I have just stayed at 15 different Canadian hotels over the past 20 days. Without even looking, we found security lapses in three of them. Hotels: take note. Guests: beware. Hotel security: is there a workable protocol?

Masked man “swapped boarding pass”?

No reports expand on the claim that this ballsy Asian impostor “swapped boarding passes with a U.S. citizen and passenger who was born in 1955.”

What 55-year-old U.S. citizen would agree to swap boarding passes with a stranger? Unless the early-20s Asian wasn’t a stranger… Then why isn’t the 55-year-old accomplice mentioned as a suspect, along with the impostor?

Or was the “swap” accomplished by picking the pocket of the other guy? Couldn’t be easier to slip a boarding pass out of a pocket and replace it with another. But then what? The other guy passes through the gate agent’s boarding-pass-scan while neither he, nor the gate agent, realize the boarding pass isn’t his; he boards the plane, looks at the (swapped) boarding pass to see his seat number, and even now fails to notice someone else’s name on the pass?

MSNBC has posted a PDF of an alleged Intelligence Alert issued by the Canada Border Services Agency. The alert states “It is believed that the subject and the actual United States Citizen passenger … performed a boarding pass swap…” which to me implies that the U.S. passenger was a complicit performer of the swap. But who is this “actual United States Citizen passenger,” anyway? Something’s missing.

Something’s fishy.
No one’s saying yet…

pickpocket planes security travel

Hotel room security check

How to do a hotel room security check

[dropcap letter=”B”]ob and I sleep more nights in hotels than in our own home and, to date, we have never been ripped off in a hotel room. True, we use a certain amount of care, but our laptops are usually left out and sometimes valuables are more hidden than locked. We stay in hotels ranked from six stars to no stars, depending on our sponsors and our intentions. In each hotel room, we make a quick and automatic assessment of risks and adjust our behavior to correspond. We have never walked out of a hotel* because of hotel room security issues; we simply adopt the necessary precautions.

The room key: we prefer electronic card keys. Old-fashioned metal keys can be copied, and where might copies be floating around? Electronic locks are usually recoded after each guest. Most electronic locks save records of whose keys have recently gained entry. Authorized keys are registered to their users. So if a guest reports a problem, security can tap into records stored in the lock’s mechanism and see the last ten or so entries, be they housekeeping, an engineer, a minibar man, or the guest himself.

Hotel room security: In 2007, Tokyo's Disneyland Hilton issued paper keys with room numbers printed on them. — In 2007, Tokyo’s Disneyland Hilton issued paper keys with room numbers printed on them.

Electronic key cards should not be marked with a room number. They’re usually given in a folder which identifies the room. Leave the folder in the room when you go out and carry just the un-numbered magnetic card. If you lose the key, the safety of your room won’t be compromised.

Some hotels still use metal keys attached to a big fat ornament and expect guests to leave keys at the front desk when going out. I’m not fond of this method for several reasons. First, I prefer privacy and anonymity rather than announcing my comings and goings. In some hotels, anyone can look at the hooks or pigeonholes behind the desk and know if a room is occupied or empty. Second, I don’t care for the delay entailed in asking for the key on returning. I could just take the thing with me, but its design discourages that. So third, I don’t want to haul around a chunk of brass the size of a doorknocker. And finally, these keys are usually well identified with the name of the hotel and room number. Losing it would expose one to substantial risk. When possible, Bob and I remove the key from its chunk and just carry it, re-attaching it before check-out. At other times, we go traditional and turn in the key as the hotel suggests.

Deadbolts and door latches: we like these for hotel room security during the night, but they aren’t universal. In Paris once, two men entered our room in the dead of night. Luckily, we woke up and Bob dramatically commanded them to get out. “Pardon,” they said, “c’est une erreur,” it is a mistake. The strange thing was that they had been standing there whispering for a moment. If it had truly been a mistake, wouldn’t they immediately back out of an occupied room? We should have placed a chair in front of the door beneath the knob.

Peephole in the door: I always look out at who’s knocking on the door, and if there’s no peephole, I ask through the closed door. Minibar? No thanks. Window cleaner? Wait til I check out. Engineer? I’ll call the front desk and find out who and why.

Connecting doors to adjoining rooms: I always double check to make sure they’re locked. They always are.

Windows: this is what I look at first, mostly because I hope they open. If they do open, I need to know about outside access. Is there a balcony? If so, there’s probably access to mine from a neighboring balcony. I’ve spoken enough with Frank Black, a career burglar, to never leave a room with an open balcony door. Frank specialized in burglarizing high-rise apartment buildings, but 21 years in prison has, apparently, retired him from that business. He’s now a respected tattoo artist and children’s book author.

In Florida (and I presume elsewhere, too), a certain subset of cat burglar is called a pants burglar. These creep in at night through open lanai doors, while the occupants are sleeping. They’re named for their beeline to men’s trousers, where they hope to find a wallet. They also visit the dresser top hoping to find, perhaps, a woman’s ring taken off for the night.

Hotel room security: One morning I woke to see a perfect convergence of wires out the window. Only the view from my pillow created this lovely, serendipitous intersection of three unconnected and discrete (phone? electric?) lines. — One morning I woke to see a perfect convergence of wires out the window. Only the view from my pillow created this lovely, serendipitous intersection of three unconnected and discrete (phone? electric?) lines.

I love an open window, but before I sleep with a breeze, I need to analyze window access. If my room is on the ground floor, on an atrium floor, or if it has a rooftop out the window, I won’t sleep with it open. If there are nearby balconies, forget it. Of course it also depends on the overall ambiance and character of the property. At a safari lodge in Tanzania I’ll worry more about baboons. In a thatched-roof teak tree-house in Bali, I figure I’ve paid enough to expect good security. At an all-inclusive beach resort with rooms that don’t lock—well? I planned for that when I packed.

After a quick appraisal of the hotel room security combined with its overall quality, we know how careful we want to be. In truth, we leave our laptops out in full view in about eighty-five percent of the rooms we stay in. Small valuables? Never. Wallets and jewelry? In the safe.

Some travelers believe in using duct tape to fasten their valuables to the underside of a bedside table, or other furniture. I can’t endorse that practice, unless it’s a last resort.

“During peak travel seasons hotels tend to use a lot of transient help,” Bob Arno says, “and sometimes the screening of these temporary employees is not as high as it could be. So yes, one always has to be concerned about hotel room theft.” The only way to protect your small valuables is to lock them in the hotel room safe.

But is the safe safe? We generally feel secure with electronic safes that allow us to key in our own code or swipe our own magnetic strip. For a magnetic strip, we use an airline or telephone card, not a credit card. The old-fashioned type of safe that takes a regular metal key we do not consider safe and do not use. We’ve surveyed police officers, hotel security, and FBI agents on this issue, and they agree with this reasoning.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Four: Hotels—Have a Nice Stay

*Once, during a short stay in a Greek hotel, we felt it unwise to leave the things in our room unattended. Had our visit been longer than overnight, we would have relocated.

Much more on hotel room security:
Hotel security in the hands of housekeeping staff
Hotel security: room door left open by housekeeping
Hotel room security lapses
Hotel room theft
Hotel room theft by doorpushers
Hotel Front Desk Safe Theft
Hotel lobby luggage theft
Hotel lobby luggage theft #2
Hotel room safe thefts
Beware hotel phone scam

hotel key security

Police, security, challenge photographers despite public right

Is it legal to take photos at airport security checkpoints, or not?

Occasionally I’ll politely ask a TSA officer if I may take a picture. Usually, they say no. You know, “for security reasons.”

But not always. A few times they’ve said yes, but don’t take pictures of the X-ray machines. That always leaves me a little puzzled: which X-ray machines? Which part of them? But the TSOs didn’t seem to care and left me unsupervised.

Turns out that many police and security officers, TSA included, aren’t exactly aware of what’s allowed and what isn’t. Believing photography is prohibited, or erring on the “side of security,” or just exercising their authority, no photos is the default reaction.

And many of us, meek and obedient citizens that we are, we accept that. Or we choose not to challenge the uniform. We don’t know what’s legal and what isn’t, either. We tend to have, in the back of our minds, that it’s illegal to photograph bridges, airports, even police officers.

But yes, it is perfectly legal to take pictures at TSA checkpoints, with a few minor limitations (not the X-ray monitors, not if you interfere with the screening process). You can even videotape if you like—yes, you can film the officers, too. You might be challenged. You might be delayed by the officers. You might even miss your flight.

In fact, pretty much anything can be legally photographed from a public place (again, with a few exceptions), including crimes in progress, police officers, federal buildings, the New York subway, and security checkpoints. Yep, if you can see it, you can shoot it. Pretty much. I’m talking strictly about the U.S. here.

The Washington Post’s interesting July 26 article, Freedom of photography: Police, security often clamp down despite public right reports that photographers are challenging unwarranted restrictions and posting disallowed photos online (usually after being forced to delete them, then recovering them).

…rules don’t always filter down to police officers and security guards who continue to restrict photographers, often citing authority they don’t have. Almost nine years after the terrorist attacks, which ratcheted up security at government properties and transportation hubs, anyone photographing federal buildings, bridges, trains or airports runs the risk of being seen as a potential terrorist.

Portland Oregon attorney Bert P. Krages II has posted a useful, printable document, The Photographer’s Right: Your Rights and Remedies When Stopped or Confronted for Photography, which should be in every photographer’s camera bag. On his website, Mr. Krages says:

The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.

This issue is pertinent to Bob and me in our thiefhunting exploits. We often feel on thin ice when shooting thieves in the wild, especially abroad. And perhaps sometimes we are. We’ve been challenged and chastised many times. Once we had a videotape seized, but we’d seen it coming and swapped the tape for a blank, pocketing the valuable footage we’d just shot.

I was admonished, not too long ago, for taking a few shots of a pair of armed and uniformed police officers drinking whiskey at an airport bar. Okay, it was in Trieste, Italy, not in the U.S.; I have no idea what my legal rights were. The officers leisurely sauntered over, after they’d finished their drinks, and said no photos. Okay. Then they left. Much later, when I left, they made a beeline for me and made me delete the photos. Had they been lying in wait? Anyway, I couldn’t recover the images.

airport Photography photos security TSA video

Hotel oddity #6

The useless chain latch in my room at Miami's Radisson Mart Plaza Hotel.

See anything wrong with the chain lock on this door at Miami’s Radisson Mart Plaza Hotel? It’s mounted backwards! Upside-down. It’s useless this way and, worse, gives a false sense of security. Another serious security risk.

Do all the rooms have useless chain latches, or only our room, 612? A polite letter to management brought only a generic “We appreciate your recent message.”

hotel key odd security

Hotel room safe thefts

How safe is the safe in your hotel room? Not safe at all, it turns out, unless you factor in the odds. Odds are, your safe won’t be broken into. But the fact is, the crackin’s easy. Of course it is—hotels must be able to rescue valuables from faulty memories (forgotten codes, departed guests who forgot to empty their safes), lost keys, dead batteries, and power outages.

Hotel management and/or security can always access room safes. But how? Depends on the kind of safe. Does it open with a metal key? By swiping a magnetic card, or punching in a code? Does it use a plastic key card with a pattern of holes punched in it?

Is the safe safe?

Bob and I have long endorsed the use of safes in hotel rooms, as long as they are electronic. We’ve shied away from metal- and plastic-key safes, concerned about how many copies float around. But there are other ways to enter safes, and an untold number of people who have access, authorized or otherwise.

A deluge of thefts from hotel room safes in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, led to an investigative report by Burkhard Kress for Extra, a news show on German RTL TV (unfortunately not online).

Kress booked a room there and mounted a hidden camera, then called hotel management for help opening his safe. The hidden camera footage captured the code that management punched into the safe’s keypad, which ended with the room number. With the permission of the guest in the room next to his, Kress tried the same code appended with the other room number. The neighbor’s safe opened. Anyone with the master code could open every safe in the hotel.

And anyone with a hidden camera could capture the master code.

Kress had his cameraman stake out a different room for a week, waiting for a safe break-in. Alas, he was never hit. Eventually, Kress found out why. The thefts occur in rooms booked by two or more friends staying together. When a theft is reported, front desk staff insist the theft was committed by one of the “friends.”

Guests are required to pay a fee for the use of the safe. This, along with the fact that the only rooms hit are booked by two or more friends, leads me to suspect that these safe thefts are inside jobs. Who but front desk staff know both those facts? Of course the thieves might also be former employees, or individuals in cahoots with an employee.

According to Eric Fischer, a tour leader interviewed by Kress, these thefts have been going on for years at this and other hotels in Palma. He’s kept a log of them. He himself had â‚¬14,500 stolen from the safe in his room. When the Spanish police investigated the theft without much interest, Fischer suggested that they take fingerprints. “The police responded no,” he said, “you must be watching too much German TV—we don’t do that.”

What about those plastic key cards with a pattern of holes punched in them? They can be copied onto cardboard by anyone with a pencil and a hole punch. Safes that open with a keypad or your own magnetic card (credit card, grocery store card, or anything swipeable) often have a visible keyhole for a tool held by hotel management or security. Or, the safe may have an innocuous-looking panel that simply snaps off to reveal the keyhole. Whose got that key?

Bob and I have also come across safes screwed to loose shelves in closets.

In our book, we wrote:

Safe-cracks are extremely rare, although a man was recently arrested in Palma de Mallorca and charged with a spate of hotel safe robberies. Somehow, he had come into possession of a master tool which hotel security uses to open certain jammed electronic safes. (Other electronic safes can be opened by security using numerical bypass codes.) Presumably then, the man also had the tools to get into the hotel room itself. The burglar posted his female accessory at the elevator. They each had a cellphone and kept an open connection between them. When people came to the elevator, the woman would delay them for one minute. The burglar would hear the conversation, tidy up, and get out of the room.

Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Scams While Traveling
Chapter Four, Hotels: Have a Nice Stay

The “international conman” captured last September social-engineered his way into guest rooms and tricked hotel staff into opening safes. Hotel management, meanwhile, walks a fine line, compromising somewhere between providing real security and reluctance to inconvenience guests.

So how does Mr. International Conman get into your safe? Or—maybe not your safe because, obviously, he’s going to target a “whale,” or some other affluent hotel guest. First, he needs to get into your room—when you’re not there. Like any good con artist, he knows that front desk staff at most hotels will ask for ID, so he’s prepared. Here’s how. First, he follows you to learn your room number. Later, he goes to the front desk and, giving your room number, asks for a printout of “his” charges to date. Bingo. He’s now got your name and address. Next job is to whip out a fake ID, right in his car in the parking lot. Sounds like a lot of trouble, doesn’t it? But look at the payout.

Halliburtons for luggage security; hotel safe theft — Our usual set of old, beat-up Halliburtons.

What should you do, then, with your million-dollar bauble? Carry the stuff and get pickpocketed or mugged? Leave it in the hotel safe for the safe-cracker to burgle? Put it in the front office safe? Often, Bob and I choose to lock our stuff into our largest hardsided (aluminum) luggage.

This is a good moment for intuition, or at least for some conscious reasoning. Bob and I stay some 200 or more nights a year in hotels and, though we don’t always use the safe, we’ve never had a problem with one. YMMV. The practical danger in using the hotel safe is remembering to empty it before you check out. When I expect a hurried or groggy, pre-dawn check-out, I scrawl a bedside note to myself.

What kind of joints do you stay in? What do you carry?

hotel safe security social engineer spain travel

Hotel oddity #5

If your room number is printed on your key, complain.

The Hilton Tokyo-Bay, aka Japan’s Disneyland Hilton, was shockingly behind the times when we visited. Our paper electronic room keys had our room number printed right on them, instead of on an envelope. That’s a serious security risk. This was two years ago. Anyone know what their keys look like today?

hotel key odd security

Hotel Oddity #4

We checked into a hotel last month and plodded through the tedious check-in procedure in a daze. It was a Millennium Hotel, but I won’t say in what city.

I liked our room right away because it had an open window. Then I thought: isn’t it strange that the window is already open? And the tv was on and tuned to CNN—also unusual. It wasn’t until all our bags were settled in that I noticed a man’s jacket sprawled on a chair. The room was already occupied.

I tried calling the front desk, but in ten minutes of trying, they never picked up the phone. Then I noticed that the room number printed on the phone didn’t match the number of the room I was in. Sloppy.

Bob took the elevator down to the lobby, leaving me alone in the room to face the jacket-man when he returned, or emerged from under the bed. We changed rooms without incident—just inconvenience.

Who's jacket is in my hotel room? Or, whose room am I in?

I wonder now how many times other people have entered our various hotel rooms while we’ve been out. It happened once while we were in—in bed. It was in Paris. Two men entered our room in the dead of night. Luckily, we woke up and Bob dramatically commanded them to get out. “Pardon,” they said, “c’est une erreur,” it is a mistake. The strange thing was that they had been standing there whispering for a moment. If it had truly been a mistake, wouldn’t they immediately back out of an occupied room?

How are hotel rooms assigned to multiple parties? The most basic computer system shouldn’t allow it.

hotel key odd security travel

When TSA confiscates your pocket knife…

Brother-in-law, though a frequent flyer, forgot to move his pocket knife from his carry-on to his checked bag. He groaned when TSA discovered it. The knife was a gift from us, a gorgeous little oval less than two inches long, but heavy and well-made. Bob and I found it on a trip to Germany, and bought one for ourselves, too. A Mammut MicroTool, it’s called.

B-I-L, the self-proclaimed Swedish Okie and country bumpkin, was on his way back to Sweden. When the TSA officer dangled the contraband with its dangerous half-inch blade, B-I-L recognized a glint of proud ownership in the eye of the new beholder. The officer beheld a prize. B-I-L is a sore loser.

B-I-L snatched the knife away, determined that it should not slip beneath the crumpled handkerchief in the warm pocket of the TSO. He could not bear the thought of his fine knife snug among the unmentionables, in pilled cotton intimacy under an overhanging gut. B-I-L intended to destroy the little tool.

He hadn’t counted on the strength of the precision German instrument. He ripped, he stomped, he tried to bend. It took him fifteen minutes to render the tool unusable, the stubborn vengeful bumpkin.

I know a man in Las Vegas who makes his living on the forgetfulness of travelers. He buys great lots of TSA’s confiscated pocket knives for pittance at auction, and sells them one by one on eBay. (The profit, they say, is in the “shipping and handling” fee.) He’s never seen a fine little tool like the exotic Mammut MicroTool. He must get an, um, filtered selection.

What we call “confiscated items,” TSA refers to as “voluntary abandoned property.” [sic] If I were a TSO, I’d protest the extra work involved in providing envelopes to passengers. I’d say it’s a bad idea. It would mean I’d have to hand over an envelope, wait for the passenger to address it, then collect a fat fee and provide a receipt. All that work! No more perks!

airport brother-in-law claes security TSA

Hotel safe theft

What would you do if you opened the safe behind the hotel manager’s desk and found your passports gone? One woman took creative action.

Mary from Michigan and her two adult children just quit their jobs and sold or stored everything. They’re taking a year to travel the world. Oh, what a plan!

After seeing our show, Mary told us about her recent visit to Laos. She and her son and daughter stored their stuff in Bangkok and took a boat down the Mekong to Laos. There, Mary put her few valuables into the hotel lobby safe: the family’s three passports bundled with $2,000 folded into an envelope, and some very large camera lenses.

When she went to retrieve her things, only the lenses remained. Mary quickly discovered that one key opened all twenty safe deposit boxes, and her interrogation of the hotel manager led her to suspect an employee (rather than a guest).

Mary channeled her fear and anger and made a plan. She and her kids fanned out among the alleys surrounding the hotel and shouted into the darkness with volume and authority. “I’ll pay $200 for the stolen passports!” Within half an hour, Mary was lightly tapped on her shoulder, the passports, still bundled, proffered.

And Mary paid up. She told me that people think she was crazy to pay, but she’d promised. The thieves hadn’t discovered the $2,000.

PICKPOCKETS, CON ARTISTS, GANGSTERS, THIEVES, AND TRAVEL