… or so you would infer from a statistic reported on the Threat Level blog.

Threat Level reports on a new policy that has the Transportation Security Administration doing deep dives into people’s public-record dossiers when they arrive at airports without government-issued ID: “The new rules went into effect June 21, and in the first five days, 1705 people out of 10 million attempted to fly without identification and 59 of those were denied access to the plane.”

Fifty-nine refuseniks in five days works out to more than 11 terrorist attacks thwarted per day.

Of course, these weren’t actually terrorists. These were people whose papers weren’t in order. When this happens, TSA employees at its operations center in Virginia dig into public records databases and relay questions to screeners at the airports. If a traveler passes the test, he or she can fly. If the database information is wrong, or if the traveler is forgetful, he or she is stranded.

We were already quite a long way from getting any actual security benefit out of these programs, but as Threat Level suggests, all one need do to impersonate another is memorize the information about them in public records. I think this will happen most often among siblings and family members, who already know such info. But we’re talking about public records. They are collected, packaged, and sold by services like Lexis-Nexis. Sophisticated criminals and terrorists could get them just like anyone else.

Or they could present government-issued ID, having adopted the “clean-skin terrorist” technique that was recently reported to Capitol Hill by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.