On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Craig Holland wrote:
Is this some new trend or have I just gotten lucky in the past? Wouldn't someone like AT&T be better served by giving their employees some company issued ID that they can submit to secure facilities? I know it wouldn't be government issued, but would at least be a step in the right direction. Or, they ask the unions to amend their policies considering it is a requirement of the job to do these kinds of installs to present a government ID.
Every AT&T employee on company business is issued an official company employee card with the employee's name and photograph. Employees must show the card while working on company business. It is up to the co-location facility operator whether to accept the company issued ID card or not. Although it varies by person, and sometimes the security guard is on a powertrip and the telephone person will suddenly become stickler on the rules, the LECs and USPS tend to the most resististant to most landlord special rules. I've heard similar complaints from government agents that some facilities wouldn't accept their government issued law enfocement badge, and wanted to see their state issued driver's license or state ID card. Part of the problem is there are thousands of different official IDs, and minimum wage security guards can barely detect forgeries of common state ID cards and have no experience with credentials issued by other groups. On the other hand, some state ID cards have a lot of the information someone could use for identity theft, and you don't always know what the guard or the facility will do with the information. The US NSTAC group has been studying the issue of Trusted Access to telecommunications facilities, and whether we need a better method to credential people for co-location access. http://www.ncs.gov/nstac/reports/2005/Final%20TATF%20Report%2004-25-05.pdf