TSA fails internal test, lets fake bombs through
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) failed to find fake explosives and weapons in internal tests at almost all of America’s busiest airports, according to a Monday report from ABC news.
TSA employees failed 67 of 70 tests, where undercover agents tried to pass through security while carrying fake prohibited items. The news prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to meet with officials at TSA headquarters last week, according to the network.
“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 agency told ABC in a statement. The statement did not identify those fixes.
At least one test showed failures by agents to find a fake bomb even after the undercover agent set off a magnetometer. The screener reportedly let the agent through with the fake bomb taped to his back, despite a pat down.
The undercover agents, called the Red Team, have publicly exposed TSA weaknesses in the past. A 2013 test where an agent also made it through a metal detector with a fake bomb prompted then-TSA Sdministrator John Pistole to refer to the testers as “super terrorists” for their ability to use their knowledge of TSA policies to exploit weaknesses.
“They know exactly what the technology’s capabilities are of detection. They know exactly what our protocols are,” he said.
“They can create and devise and conceal items that only the best terrorist in the world would be able — not even the best terrorists would be able to do.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tsa-fails-internal-test-lets-fake-bombs-through/ar-BBkukY7
TSA is nothing more that another government sham employment program. Generally 3 or 4 TSA personnel share an IQ. These people used to be ushers in movie theaters, or door men.
Sounds like the same quality folks that will be the new air traffic controllers. Thank God for TCAS.
Howz aboot dis……….. A citizens group of ordinary people gets a special card that shows they are security testers authorized by DHS/TSA (so they don’t get shot and sent to the gulag) and these people, using no special insider knowledge, attempt to get through security with faked explosives, guns and prohibited items. I bet they fail 70/70. Hell, make all of them look like mooslim terrorists and I bet the failure rate increases to 75/70. 🙂
We just returned from the Beltway where we dropped our son off at his summer internship at a Men in Black type of facility (I shudder to think what he will be like at the end of the summer). While we were there, Nick and I took in a few sites, especially the World War II Memorial, since my father’s passing last November made this Memorial Day a special one for me. (He was a POW in Japan)
Anyway, we found a great spot downtown just across from the soon to be completed African American History Museum and made our way toward the National Mall. We decided to “visit” the ladies and mens room at the nearest place and that just happened to be the Smithsonian Museum across from the IRS. Well, of course, you have to have your bags scanned and poked through by one of these highly intelligent people and the man on duty seemed to have it in for my friend’s 13 year old daughter. She sat her bag onto the table in front of him where he could look into it and then send it through the scanner and walked through the metal detector. But he kept making her come back to unzip yet another tiny pocket on her purse or unsnap another pocket on her purse until every flap and opening was open… I was trying to prepare mine as I was behind her and guess what?
He glanced into my bag and Waved. Me. On. Through.
He was just picking on her. Intimidating the kid. Training her not to question authority perhaps?
Hey Dutchman, don’t forget about al the former Elevator Operators…
So their real purpose is to intimidate, harass, and as Maggie said, train us to not question authority.
I “opt” out, once or twice a week. TSA have all been nice enough, albeit not whiz kids, follow their inane script, and generally get my stuff and get me on my way 5 minutes after those who irradiate themselves.
Except one time last year, in Logan Airport. Had waited for a “male assist” long enough that I surmised it would be a race to my gate. I yelled, LOUDLY, “male assist.” One of the drones appeared, and told me, snarkily, “that won’t make someone help you any faster.” Smiled, a rather sardonic smile, and replied, “I know that, but it made me happy.”
Assist showed up quickly, asked me if I knew the drill, and hammered me through in time. If I had been delayed, so be it. If I had been arrested, accosted or put in a Black Site, I was ready for it. Matter of fact, I truly feel that way about the otherwise wonderful remainder of my life. Like Elsa the lion cub, I was born free. Well, perhaps the operative words would be, “with more freedom.”
I can not live in a mechanized, socialized, homogenized world. I like my culture, because…diversity sucks. I would rather fly with slight flight risks, than have each of us anally probed and exposed to enough micro-curries to sterilize pasture eggs. I no longer accept any debts, obligations, illicit treaties, or anything else our federal government PR machines slides up my peers unlubricated orifices.
Has been a really good life, but before it becomes illegal, I need to renounce a citizenship that had me tattoo our flag on three limbs, and hold timber over my head for six hour stints.
If ever it were time for we who hold this Stygian shit pile aloft to shrug, the optimal moment is close. Let it fall, we can always rebuild.
@Bob: And let’s not forget wash room attendants, and car valets.
Come on….this is coming out now? Right after Rand Paul made such a valiant stand against the Patriot Act?
Shitstain Mckain says…”Oh, my oh my, it is just too dangerous out there folks.”
67 out of 70 is a failure rate of 96%.
Remind me again why we federalized these goons? More importantly, how can they justify their existence with a failure rate of 96%?
Reminds me of that scene from Airplane! when the the arab lookin’ guy pushes a gigantic bomb right through the security checkpoint and nobody says shit…
Maggie, I haven’t flown since pre-TSA days (just refuse to),
so I don’t know what they look like, but is there any chance he was waving her
back and forth through one of those
pornofull body imaging scanners?EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEE….. that is just creepy. :O… I dunno. I doubt it. I think that Julia looked unhappy from having scraped her arm on the driveway the day before playing tag with her cousins (no kidding… a REAL game of tag). It was right at the underarm, so in a very tender spot where it hurt. She really was being a champ by coming along without complaining but we should have stopped at a gas station somewhere imho, but my friend said that isn’t done in that part of the country. Sigh… I really think he was just picking on the kid…
Think a sloppy Morgan Freeman who’d not had his uniform washed/pressed in a day or so and needed a shave. And imagine him letting her walk through and then in a stern voice saying, “Get. Back. Here. NOW.” at least six times that I counted. I would never have stood for it in “the olden days…”
It made me think of the day when I was coming onto the Air Force base shortly after getting out and the rent a cop gate guard told me that I needed to STOP my car at the gate until they finished playing TAPS. Well, I dressed him down and informed him that I’d spent ten years in uniform so that people who weren’t wearing one, as I was NOT, did not have to do any such thing and that by the way, that was To the Colors and no one died, so he could just check people’s id cards and let them through without decided that he needed to put himself in charge of military gate protocol.
I would NEVER do that now… sad to think about.
By the way… this is To the Colors, which is a short Flag Salute song played at End of Day when a full ceremony isn’t planned. Military personnel still are required to salute, but there isn’t a formal lowering of the flag by honor guard necessarily. Only a routine lowering and folding. I may be wrong, but we didn’t always take ours down at our squadron. Sometimes, we played the song, saluted and left the flag up. It has been a few years. Um, decades.
Just another clue the “war on terror” is a farce. The American people have been played and played over & over again, since at least Pearl Harbor. Prediction: Nothing will change because of this report.
Mohammedan crazies are taking notice.
On the up side, they scored 100% on the “violate the 4th Amendment rights of millions of people every day’ test, so they have that going for them.
Maybe they’d do their job better with a little more concentration ON the job and a little less attention paid to tits and ass.
The TSA (Thousands Standing Around) is a union make-work program meant to buy votes from the low end of the IQ bell curve.
While the Red Team has sown up the Bible thumpers, the Blue Team has cornered the market on perverts, tree-huggers, and the FSA. Throw in the illegals getting amnesty, and I’d say the Blue Team has the inside track on the 2016 race.
Whatever team wins, we lose.
Big Ay Yep..To Steve Hogan…He Nailed It…mike
2015-06-01 15:52 by Karl Denninger
TSA: Worthless
So now we find out…
Homeland Security officials confirmed to Fox News that TSA screeners failed 67 out of 70 tests — or 96 percent — carried out by special investigators known as “red teams.”
In one case, an undercover agent with a fake bomb strapped to his back set off a magnetometer — but the screener still failed to find it.
That’s impressive.
So now we know what the truth is, although you won’t hear anyone in the media say it:
There is nobody — literally nobody — who has tried to blow up a plane or get a gun on one for nefarious purpose since 9/11.
Nobody.
Got that folks?
The count of people willing to die to blow up a civilian aircraft in this country numbers zero.
Zip.
Nada.
Bupkis.
Period.
If there had been a mere 10 said people in this country (out of 330,000,000 people in the nation) nine planes would have been blown up and the 10th guy would have detonated himself when he got caught, blowing up the airport instead.
But there have been….. zero.
The TSA is worthless.
Billions spent for one purpose and one only: To remove liability from the airlines if someone tries to blow up a plane or otherwise bring a weapon on one for nefarious purpose in the future, which I remind you, was retroactively removed from the airlines after 9/11.
And in exchange for removing that liability we became less safe — the only reason we haven’t had terrorism in the sky since is that there are no terrorists in this country willing and able to commit such an act.
But you’ve been groped, old ladies with leukemia have been assaulted and you still put up with it instead of demanding that this crap stop right here, right now, today and everyone responsible for it in Congress and otherwise go find food in a dumpster instead of collecting a salary, pension or both.
And that, my friends, is a fact.
TSA Agents Failed To Catch 95% Of Mock Bombs And Weapons
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/02/2015 08:03 -0400
The reason why “investing” in the economy in the form of government spending always, without fail, leads to adverse results and negative returns, is because unlike the private sector, there are neither checks and balances, nor punishment if one fails at their job. Case in point, the much maligned Transportation Security Administration, aka the TSA, best known for groping women and infants at airport checkpoints is about to be even more maligned because according to an exclusive report from ABC, TSA screeners failed ailed to detect mock explosives and weapons in 95% of tests carried out by undercover agents.
From ABC:
According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.
In one test an undercover agent was stopped after setting off an alarm at a magnetometer, but TSA screeners failed to detect a fake explosive device that was taped to his back during a follow-on pat down.
Officials would not divulge the exact time period of the testing other than to say it concluded recently.
Not surprisingly for the world’s most transparent administration, even the utmost failure of government has to be kept a total secret. Or rather “especially”
Johnson issued a statement on Monday saying the results of the security checks were classified but that he had directed the TSA to revise screening procedures “to address specific vulnerabilities identified” in the undercover operation. He also ordered training for all TSA officers and supervisors across the country and testing of airports’ screening equipment.
So, “we can’t tell you what the vulnerabilities are, but make sure you address them.” Ok then.
The result was so shocking to a government worker, he could not possibly fathom how other government workers could be so utterly worthless.
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.
He also unleashed a stern talking down of TSA agents because what is he going to do: fire them? Gotta keep that artificial GDP elevated somehow; take away billions in “sunk” government funds to keep Personal Consumption high and next come the triple seasonal-adjustments.
Well, unlike previous occasions during which the TSA fared just as poorly, this time there a consequence: the acting administrator for the Transportation Security Administration was reassigned.
“The numbers in these reports never look good out of context but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation security,” Johnson said. “We take these findings very seriously in our continued effort to test, measure and enhance our capabilities and techniques as threats evolve.”
Johnson noted that President Barack Obama had nominated Coast Guard Vice Admiral Pete Neffenger to be the next TSA administrator, and urged the U.S. Senate to confirm his nomination as quickly as possible.
And just like that, with that single act of “punishment” in which a government worker will continue to collect a government pay if at a diffent part of the government, all the incompetence, corruption and smothering bureaucracy in the government sector will be promptly fixed. Just like Greece.
Greetings,
You get one go-around on this beautiful spinning blue marble and I would hate to think that I wasted it – wasted my time in heaven as a TSA Agent. To think that the only thing that I could do of any use was to molest travelers while in the pay of sociopaths leaves me feeling sick.
Being here on this Earth means that you’ve won the lottery and to waste that gift by being a pathetic POS TSA scumbag is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around.