This excerpt from a San Francisco Cronicle article gives a little insight into the problem with assuming that any badge is good one:
<<<"This is about American Airlines confirming that an armed individual is indeed who he says he is," Whitcomb said. He noted that once the agent's identity was confirmed, he flew on American Airlines the next day to Dallas to guard the president, who is vacationing at his West Texas ranch.
"In this time of heightened security, absolutely no one is above approved security procedures," Whitcomb said.
FAKE CREDENTIALS
A federal probe conducted last year shows that concern about bogus law enforcement credentials is justified. Undercover inspectors using fake law enforcement credentials and badges "readily available" on the Internet were able to declare themselves "armed law enforcement officers" and skirt security checkpoints at 19 federal agencies -- including the CIA, FBI and Pentagon -- and two airports, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress which conducted the operation.
"At no time time during the undercover visits were our agents' bogus credentials or badges challenged by anyone," Robert Hast, the GAO'S special investigations chief, told Congress last year. Working in teams of two or three, the agents were able to get minivans and satchels that could have been packed with explosives and biological agents past checkpoints.
The agents were waved around metal detectors at Washington's Reagan National Airport and Orlando (Florida) Airport after presenting tickets issued in their undercover aliases and fake credentials.
"Our agents could thus have carried weapons, explosives, chemical/biological agents, or other dangerous objects onto aircraft," GAO manager Gerald Dillingham warned a Senate committee on Sept. 20, nine days after the terrorist attacks in New York and on the Pentagon.
The number of law enforcement officers who fly while armed is unknown because neither the FAA nor airlines systematically collect this information. But a GAO study found nearly 10,000 armed law enforcement officers flew on US Airways during a three-month period in 2000.>>>