Earlier this week Newark Liberty International Airport was shut down for something like six hours when some random guy walked the wrong way (“in the out door,” so to speak) through a security checkpoint and into the “sterile area.”

I don’t know how many of you have been to Newark Airport, but the security screening checkpoints there are set up the same way as they are at many other airports–three to five “lanes” alongside one “exit lane” where arriving passengers can leave. (You can see the exit lane in this photo–it’s from the New York Daily News story above.)  This exit lane is generally unobstructed and may be observed by a TSA agent, though sometimes it is not.  Some, but not all, of these lanes are also closed off by doors that are locked from the inside, but if a big flock of passengers are all headed to baggage claim, those doors can be held open indiscriminately.

These wrong-way security breaches could be stemmed entirely with just a little bit of design know-how.  What about an automated high-capacity revolving door, for example?  Or perhaps an “airlock” type of design with one set of doors on either side?  They could be set to let people out, not in, and be locked down automatically if necessary.

This kind of breach just strikes me as a big waste of everyone’s time and money.  Perhaps that’s stating the obvious.  But it should be equally obvious that preventing these breaches is almost ludicrously simple.