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MBTA Admits Master Keys Tough to Track

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

Jul. 25--While transit systems focus on spotting suspicious people and packages to thwart terrorists, the MBTA says it is trying to fix another vulnerability in Boston's subways: thousands of master keys that provide access to all subway stations, which are locked overnight.

T officials say that the existence of so many keys is a problem and that it is difficult to track who has them. The keys open all exterior doors and gates at subway stations, plus men's restrooms inside, but do not allow access to "safety sensitive" areas such as control rooms.

The "P keys," which look like regular house keys stamped with a P, are in the hands of more than 5,000 operations employees, including bus drivers and others who rarely work underground. Since the keys aren't numbered, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officials aren't sure whether any unauthorized people have them.

Security specialists say preventing unauthorized access to the system is essential to stopping terrorism.

"You don't want people being able to come in to meddle with the trains or the tracks," said David Schanzer, head of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and a former Democratic staff director of the US House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

"Your first order of Security 101 is to secure the perimeter of your facilities, so there's a very strong deterrent to infiltration," he said. "You want to know who is authorized to come in and out. You want that to be a finite number of people, and you want to know who those people are. You need to have an accounting, a way to keep track of them."

The T's key system falls short of Federal Transit Administration guidelines issued in November, which recommend: numbering keys, keeping a record of every employee who has a certain key, noting unaccounted keys, conducting a semiannual inspection and inventory, stamping "Do not duplicate" on keys, and periodically changing locks to prevent unauthorized people from gaining entrance.

Daniel A. Grabauskas, the MBTA general manager, said the agency acknowledges problems with how it controls the keys. The T plans to replace traditional locks with an electronic entry system by early 2007 as part of a broad station security initiative.

"If there's an interim step before we get to electronic key access, things we can do to further enhance the tracking of the keys, it would make sense for us to do that," said Grabauskas, who took charge of the T in May.

"A lot of our employees do have those keys," said Jeff Parker, MBTA director of subway operations. "To get into any station, it's a single key. Otherwise we'd have about 5,000 employees walking around with a keychain of about 100 keys."

Grabauskas said focusing on the keys is "a distraction from many more important issues" and "not something the public should be worried about."

He stressed that the threat of somebody sneaking into a station and planting a bomb or sabotaging the tracks in the middle of the night is not as high as someone with a bomb in a bag simply paying the fare and boarding a crowded train during rush hour. Investigators say that's what happened in the July 7 London attacks that killed at least 56 and in last year's bombings of commuter trains in Madrid that killed 191 people.

"They were not looking to blow up a bathroom or a broom closet," said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. "They didn't need a pass key. They just needed to buy a token."

The T, like all other transit systems in America, has been at a higher security level since the London subway and bus bombings and the attempted bombings there last week. Transit police in Boston are working extra shifts, bomb-sniffing dogs are prowling commuter trains, and riders are constantly reminded, "If you see something, say something."

The subway system has about 544,000 boardings each workday. All 60 MBTA subway stations close for about four hours each night, between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., when trains stop running and stations are not staffed. None of the stations have security guards posted, but the T says transit police make regular patrols.

Under the heightened Code Orange alert, an undisclosed number of special "observation trains," with police on board, also run on all lines overnight to monitor the tracks and stations. Maintenance personnel and cleaning crews are also at work, Pesaturo said.

"There's still a lot of activity taking place," Pesaturo said. "It's not a ghost town."

Still, some former employees interviewed by the Globe said they fear the widely circulated master keys are a security risk.

"They do fall into the hands of people that shouldn't have them," said Mike Flaherty of Weymouth, who retired last year after two decades as a supervisor on the Green Line. "I've closed Arlington Station some nights, and by the time I'd close one part and got in my truck to go close the second half, I'd view the homeless people from the Public Garden opening the doors and going into the stations.

"Where they obtain these keys, I don't know."

Pesaturo responded, "Transit police report very few instances in which a trespasser has been found in a station overnight, and none where the person was found in possession of an MBTA key."

But a retired Green Line operator, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said unauthorized keys are commonplace.

"If the homeless can get in there, how hard do you think it would be for somebody else?" the retiree asked. "I never turned any of my keys in when I left. I don't think anybody ever turned their keys in. I have three sets of keys from a girl who retired and went to Florida."

The T says it requires employees to turn in keys when they leave their jobs. But the authority can't do much if the key isn't returned. For instance, the T says it does not have the authority to dock pensions.

But Flaherty said T management has never paid much attention to controlling access to keys. When new supervisors came on the job, he'd often lend them his key so they could make a copy, he said.

"Believe it or not, the new inspectors, that is how they would get their keys," Flaherty said. "They'd take it to a hardware store near Canal Street. That's where most of the keys were made."

Parker said that after the Sept. 11 attacks, the T did a vulnerability analysis that included a look at its key policy. As a result, until a more high-tech system is installed, some locks to areas inside stations were changed so a separate key is needed to open them.

The T is building a computer network within the subway system to enhance security. Surveillance cameras, one of the network's first components, have been installed at about 20 stations. Personnel at the subway operations center downtown and at security booths set up in three stations so far can view the images remotely and call police if they spot something unusual.

This computer network could also detect intruders and allow some form of electronically controlled lock. That might include having doors opened remotely by the control center when an employee requests access or installing an identification card system that opens doors.

A former employee who didn't return an ID badge would be denied access because the card reader would not recognize the employee number as valid. Badges could not be easily duplicated, and those that are lost would be deleted from the system, T officials said.

"We wouldn't have this tremendous task of having to re-key and reissue thousands and thousands of keys every time somebody loses a key," Parker said. "Right now there is not a practical way of managing that."

Transit agencies in other cities face the same problem.

"You have to keep in mind our system was designed for ease of access," said Brian Dolan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York. "So now the system has to be recast."

The MTA has already installed ID badge swipers in place of key locks in some facilities, Dolan said, and the plan is to make that upgrade across the transit system.

By Lucas Wall and Mac Daniel

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Boston Globe

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Source: The Boston Globe

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