There was no security lapse in that incident. A student was allowed to
pre-flight an airplane unescorted, shortly before the student was to be
signed off to solo anyway. Preventing such access would have been completely
pointless. Even under some of the more draconian new restrictions (at BED
now, we need to undergo a fingerprint background check in order to have
unescorted access to the ramp), that student would still have had the same
access privileges!

Of course TSA's alien training rule would not have had anything to say
about
that moron, Charles J. Bishop, who was a US citizen...
Speaking of morons, AOPA has some statements on its website about
TSA's chief who seems to be rather clueless about his department; or
maybe he was still recovering from TSA's $500,000 2-year-anniversary
party.

Nevertheless I think stealing GA aircrafts and using them for either
fly-by shootings or in combination with explosives is a real threat
(and even harder to counter than your Oklahoma-bombing truck). Making
sure that airports are properly fenced in and have a metal
detector/x-ray machine could be a reasonable deterrent.

- Marco