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US Airport Screeners Missed 95% of Weapons, Explosives In Undercover Tests

Posted by samzenpus on from the security-theater dept.

An anonymous reader writes: An internal investigation by the TSA found that 95% of agents testing airport checkpoints were able to bring weapons through. In one case, an alarm sounded, but during the pat down, the screener failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to the undercover agent's back. ABC reports: "Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was apparently so frustrated by the findings he sought a detailed briefing on them last week at TSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, according to sources. U.S. officials insisted changes have already been made at airports to address vulnerabilities identified by the latest tests. 'Upon learning the initial findings of the Office of Inspector General's report, Secretary Johnson immediately directed TSA to implement a series of actions, several of which are now in place, to address the issues raised in the report,' the DHS said in a written statement to ABC News."

30 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Security theatre. by Shaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sometimes I think the governments are simply trying to spend themselves into the kind of debt that breaks the banking system. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

    --
    ...Steve
    1. Re:Security theatre. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      If they would stop testing it, then it would be better security theater. For example, when I went to the theater over the weekend to see a movie, the theater people didn't notice I had a small pocket knife in my pocket. This is exactly how the security theater at airports work. They don't notice either. Several trips recently I forgot to take my 1 quart baggie of liquids (small hairspray, small shampoo, etc.) out of my carry on. Did they notice, despite their warning signs? Nope. My wife doesn't travel much and she went through the scanner with stuff in her pocket. The signs say you can't do that. Do they notice or care? Nope. It is theater. Theater doesn't have to catch stuff, it just has to make dummies feel safer and make other dummies think twice before bringing weapons and explosives on board.

    2. Re:Security theatre. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... breaks the banking system.

      That's adorable. Banks don't break; they just pat themselves on the back with another bonus pass the failures along to us common folk.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    3. Re:Security theatre. by boristdog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Try China. They have x-ray machines and wands at every subway station and, of course, airports. I sent my bags through dozens of times traveling around Beijing, I got 'wanded' dozens more times.

      It was very obvious that almost all of the machines and wands were turned off. Camera in my pocket? Wand doesn't even beep. Dark screens on the x-ray machines, staff not even looking the few times when the screens were actually on, they never stopped or questioned anyone. They obviously didn't care, either.

      I kind of liked their "we don't give a crap" attitude. It was very...China. Made me like the place even more.

    4. Re:Security theatre. by Maxwell · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's only in Beijing and only during times of 'unrest'. Most of the year there is nothing, not even theater, so when they are ordered to dig out the wands, the batteries are dead and no one can remember how they work. Saudi Arabia is the best - do not wake the sleeping guards, it annoys them. Please walk around the detector with your luggage to prevent it from beeping. Thanks.

    5. Re:Security theatre. by TheCarp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You miss the real point. Those gaurds are not there to stop a real threat, they are not really even there to make people feel safe. They are there because making people feel safe is an easy way to justify jobs.

      Jobs redistribute wealth which, granted, several countries could use some more mechanisms for, as the concentrations are a bit scary, but in this case, do it without providing any other benefit other than the redistribution.

      However its very popular because its easy to justify and the only people who can point out it doesn't work have to openly admit they took contraband on the train. Basically the same is done here.

      In Boston, the MBTA have a theater troupe which setups up at one station each day and insists on swabbing bags for explosives, but of course, if you don't want to be swabbed, you can just walk out and walk the 15 minutes (if that) to the next station.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    6. Re:Security theatre. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      I kind of liked their "we don't give a crap" attitude. It was very...China.

      If you look like a Uyghur you will be checked much more thoroughly. The Chinese don't have the same problems with "ethnic profiling" that we do. I am white. My wife is Chinese. My half-breed kids are occasionally mistaken for Uyghurs, and hassled by security personnel. They have learned to always carry a photocopy of their American passport.

    7. Re:Security theatre. by Required+Snark · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The real name of the Department of Homeland Security: the Department of Homeland Pork

      The TSA clowns at airports are not government employees, they are private contractors. It the last resort for someone who wants to wear a uniform and have a badge but is too incompetent to be a mall cop. So it's no surprise that they have a 95% failure rate.

      A huge chunk of taxpayer money gets wasted and there is little real world payoff. Make no mistake, the real big bucks go to the upper management, political insiders who grease the wheels for lucrative contracts. Just a division of the military industrial complex.

      Another example: the Air Force just signed the very first contract with Boeing for commercial manned flights to the International Space Station. The Boeing crew vehicle hasn't even flown yet, unlike the SpaceX capsule which is now going through it's manned launch escape testing. Boeing is in bed with the AF, SpaceX isn't. All the AF guys know that they will just slide over to high paying jobs at Boeing when they retire, and there are lots of Congress Critters who get campaign contribution from Boeing, and want to protect defense jobs in their state.

      Saving money? Competition? Innovation? Not even on the table. It's government of, by and for the insiders. And you are paying for it.

      --
      Why is Snark Required?
  2. DHS was never about Homeland Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was about creating another welfare program.

    1. Re:DHS was never about Homeland Security by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's never 'welfare' if it involves defense spending: the spending doesn't have to actually increase security, or deliver a product that actually works(it's even acceptable to putz along for a decade or two until the project becomes so hopeless that it is quietly killed without ever delivering a product); but so long as it's for 'defense' and involves some sort of visible business, it's not welfare.

      Since this is bullshit, we simply treat it as axiomatically true, which sidesteps what would otherwise be a tedious and difficult matter of 'proof'.

    2. Re:DHS was never about Homeland Security by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It was a lot of things to a lot of opportunists, but the main driver in the creation of the TSA was the fear after 9/11. This was an irrational response, since airport security did not "break down" and allow 9/11 to occur - box cutters were allowed on planes because it never occurred to anyone that someone would be able to hijack an airplane with a razor blade.

      On the bright side we have another example of how expensive and incompetent the government is at doing a straightforward task. I'm not saying that the private sector would be more competent, but they sure would be cheaper.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:DHS was never about Homeland Security by ahodgson · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since 95% of the tests failed, it's pretty obvious that there is in fact pretty much no one trying to take weapons on board planes in order to take them down; they would have succeeded multiple times since 9/11 otherwise.

  3. We need you people to multitask... by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Security theatre is now being asked to be aesthetic andeffective...

    Cheese and rice!

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  4. Wait a second guys! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    All this means is that they failed to find FAKE plastic explosives and the like, not that they wouldn't find real stuff.

    Do a real test!

  5. Grandmas and Toddlers by sycodon · · Score: 4, Informative

    But they did manage to grope 8 out of 10 Grandmas and 5 out of 10 toddlers.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:Grandmas and Toddlers by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not to mention keeping our airplanes safe from containers of liquid larger than 3.4 ounces. Who knows what a terrorist might do if he smuggled 4 ounces of shampoo aboard a plane!

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    2. Re:Grandmas and Toddlers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah. This is important! If you have a gallon bottle of dangerous explosive liquids you must dump it to the trashcan at the checkpoint. Yes, the one that is by the long queue of people waiting to get through the check. That trashcan is made of superplastic than neutralizes all dangerous substances. Watch out citizen! Have your passport ready! Don't have too much liquids ready! (unless you keep it in your pocket, hand, or anywhere the security won't notice)

    3. Re:Grandmas and Toddlers by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

      About 3 beers. ;-)

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:Grandmas and Toddlers by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to mention keeping our airplanes safe from containers of liquid larger than 3.4 ounces. Who knows what a terrorist might do if he smuggled 4 ounces of shampoo aboard a plane!

      That could be a bomb, throw it in the garbage over there!

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  6. This makes me feel safe by GoddersUK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've seen various comments/analysis on other sites about how unsafe this makes people feel. My response was completely the opposite: security is completely ineffective yet it's quite rare for terrorists to blow up airliners. Conclusion: terrorists don't pose a massive threat to our safety and we can do away with all the infringements of our liberties made in the name of safety from terrorists.

    Although, no doubt, the government will see it as an excuse to make airport security fondle your bollocks for a minimum of 30 seconds; after all, we've got to stop all those terrorists that aren't blowing up planes from blowing up planes!

    1. Re:This makes me feel safe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      the government will see it as an excuse to make airport security fondle your bollocks for a minimum of 30 seconds;

      If you train them properly, you can even help reduce the healthcare budget.

    2. Re:This makes me feel safe by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They already knew that TSA screenings are security theater. It takes only a bit of casual observation, from the waiting lounge, to see which security personnel at which airport are competent or most overwhelmed. The 9/11 terrorists and any modern counterparts have opportunities to visit or travel through airports with _real_ security, like Egypt, Arabia, Pakistan, and Israel, and see the trade-offs between cost and security at all of them. There were compelling reasons that the 9/11 attackers chose Boston to fly from: one of the reasons was doubtless the very lax security at Logan Airport.

      Doing a "lot of attempts" winds up getting one attempt noticed and tightening up security at that airport and possibly others, so "do a lot of attempts" breaks down quickly. What a lot of attempts could do is drain the budget of the TSA and of airlines: overwhelming the staff with hundreds or thousands of false positives over a day or a week would cost the TSA and the airlines many millions of dollars, Simply wiping or spraying enough nitrate residues on a an escalator handrail would expose hundreds, even thousands of people in a day to explosive detection and wipe out the resources and budget of many TSA offices.

    3. Re:This makes me feel safe by SumDog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Terrorism...yea... that thing.

      Look carefully at the "underwear bomber." He was let onto the plan by an still unidentified Indian man. There are many who believe this was an FBI op. Shoe-bomber? Same shady situation. Even going back to the Pan-Am bombing, the CIA gave that man the explosives. They were suppose to give him non-functioning explosives. They actively sought to radicalize someone; making a criminal out of someone who wouldn't have been on their own. This is the definition of entrapment.

      EVERY SINGLE AIRPORT related "attack" was directly caused by the US. Every security precaution is "security theatre." Those rape-a-scanners? Keep in mind that people who have repeated CAT scans for medical purposes have a higher risk for cancer. The effects build over time for continual exposure. In 20 years, we're gong to see frequent flyers with cancers directly related to body scanners.

      The American media is not free. We live in a propaganda state. Oh brave new world, with such people in it.

    4. Re:This makes me feel safe by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure, you might get a few hundred casulties and the loss of a plane and possible some casulties on the ground.. there are far worse things they could do. Black Friday at a Wal-mart? Sporting events, train stations..

      Yes, this is the obvious thing. I recall after 9/11 when people were actually freaked out by such possibilities. I had a couple friends who didn't even want to go to shopping malls for a few months, because there was fear that any large congregation of people could be a target.

      And then what happened?? Nothing.

      And people stopped worrying about all those other possibilities....

      Also, a fun stat on that "sure you might get a few hundred casualties" with a loss of a plane. Keep in mind that TSA is not free either. And I'm not just talking about cost or special scanners (whether they have medical consequences or not) or groping.

      I'm talking about how everyone was saddened after 9/11 about how much of a waste it was -- that so many people had "lost their lives" in their prime.

      Well, guess what? Run the math on the 600,000,000 passengers who board flights in the U.S. every year or so. For every minute/person the TSA wastes, that equates to roughly 1000 years of people's lifespans wasted cumulatively.

      If the TSA wastes 5 minutes on average for people standing in line and going through extra security crap, that's 5000 years of lifespans "lost" every year when people could be doing something else, being productive in their own lives. (And that doesn't even take into account how much time is wasted because people arrive early at airports just in case of a long security delay.)

      This may sound like a silly analysis, but it's time we're all forced to give out of our lives for no apparent reason just to board a plane.

      One could thus argue that the TSA is already wasting "hundreds of lives" every year, even if a plane doesn't go down... we don't need the terrorists to do it.

  7. from my limited experience by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Long time ago i served as a conscript in the Greek Special Forces: part of our training was to do infiltration inside (Greek) "regular" forces' bases - that was for us (S.F.) a training in missions we may do in a real war situation AND a test for the bases' security (on behalf of the regular army/navy/air force command)... while we (S.F.) almost always succeed (so, "regular" forces "failed"), i can guarantee the good status of Greek "regular" forces' base security.

    My point is that the methods (and level of "fake enemy") on those "friendly" security checks are very different from what most people (most "bad guys" included) will ever use.

    --
    Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
  8. Re:Of course they failed 95% of the time by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Informative

    The testers also are just devising the hardest tests they can, ...

    Hmm... Hardest tests? From TFS:

    In one case, an alarm sounded, but during the pat down, the screener failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to the undercover agent's back.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  9. More like 57% effective by pr0t0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    According to this poll http://www.harrisinteractive.c..., about 57% of frequent flyers believe the current TSA procedures are making it safer to fly. The other 43% recognize them for the theatrics that they are.

    Sure, they find their fair share of fake novelty hand grenades and medieval weaponry in checked baggage. They even once saved a plane from the pudding cup my daughter left in her backpack (which naturally earned her a pat-down). But what the TSA was really doing was keeping a major mode of transportation operational for a brief time of uncertainty. As with all things government, the project's scope began to creep and pockets got lined while we stood in a line to have our pockets felt by a creep.

    57% think the TSA is money well spent. That is the metric by which the TSA measures itself.

    --
    I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
  10. This is what we get for $7.3B? by schwit1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    In billions. Total=$61B
    Departmental Operations 748,024
    Analysis and Operations(A&O) 302,268
    Office of the Inspector General (OIG) 145,457
    U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) 12,764,835
    U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) 5,359,065
    Transportation Security Administration(TSA) 7,305,098
    U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) 9,796,995
    U.S. Secret Service (USSS) 1,895,905
    National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) 2,857,666
    Office of Health Affairs (OHA) 125,767
    Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 12,496,517
    FEMA: Grant Programs 2,225,469
    U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) 3,259,885
    Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) 259,595
    Science &Technology Directorate (S&T) 1,071,818
    Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) 304,423

    https://www.dhs.gov/sites/defa...

  11. They don't do anything but annoy by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They don't scare the terrorists.

    If a terrorist wants to blow up a plane, they use a Surface to Air Missile from just outside the airport.

    If they want to hijack a plane, it won't work anymore because the doors are heavily locked - any explosive capable of opening the cockpit door will crash the plane.

    The routinely miss liquids - water, suntan lotion, etc. I traveled with someone that packed suntan lotion in a carry on bag and they missed it. They found and took the blade out of his safety razor, but missed the suntan lotion.

    Even their own original studies claim that any benefit is far exceeded by the cost. The basic rule for MOST government agencies is if the cost exceeds $1 million per life saved, don't bother - smoke detectors cost $210,000 per life saved. http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/UCSBpf/readings/interventions.pdf

    But the TSA argues they should be allowed to spend $10 million per life saved - and admit they actually cost $180 million per life saved. https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

    Their budget should be cut to 1% of what it currently is, that way we will only be spending twice what we spend on other industries to save lives.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  12. Re:Government union workers by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So do CEOs and politicians.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.