Access to a restricted area.

I originally posted this as a comment, so this is the cut and paste. I accomplished it immediately following last Thursdays class. My task was, basically, to gain access to a restricted area.

I immediately figured I would use the fact that all summer I have been a regular fixture at some of the the behavioral labs at MIT, taking part in various studies as a subject. The last one I did ended in September. I had no specific plan of where to end up. Yet, the door was locked today. I lurked a bit and was rewarded - out came an academic, and in I went. Nobody was in the locked lab. A janitor was wheeling down the hall, talking on the phone. I followed him through a locked door and....found myself in the basement! I wandered a bit. It went under several buildings. I passed a number of grad students walking through with data that they were pouring over, wearing badges, so I took out my badge holder (with my T pass and bank card and BHCC ID in it), and let it dangle from my necklace. Professor types passed me as well, and this time I was acknowledged - but not questioned. Various janitors walked past me. They even saw me taking pictures, but said nothing. I wandered into the front area of an occupied mail room, and snapped some pics (mind you, packages in reach that I could easily have taken or messed with if I had been malicious)...I wandered out to the shipping and receiving bay, and there was the ONLY place that I was stopped and sent back...I claimed I couldn't find the mailroom and was shown the way. I took pics of various piles of junk, like stripped computers, in a few side areas, and some creepy basement corners. Eventually I wandered out of a totally different building than I entered, apparently one of the clinical research areas. I also wandered out WITH someone...I had started a conversation with a random person walking by when it seemed I was spotted by security after all, about the book he was carrying (The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature, for the curious)...and made a show of gestures that might be mistaken for familiarity from a distance, and it worked. I walked out with the gentleman.

One thing that seemed very, very common - many, many people were on phones. Mostly using it visually - texts and data - only two people chatting (shipping dock guy and janitor). This made it VERY EASY to do this task.

here are the pictures! Nothing more than quick snaps, some are blurry, but you get the idea. :)

https://plus.google.com/photos/115946097789758291346/albums/5665928144813762033