HawaiiTrvlr

The stat that stuck out to me is that 95% of the testers were able to get mock explosives and banned weapons through. Not that it surprises me. Further in the article, the former TSA Administrator Pistole blamed previous results on the Red Teams knew how to exploit weaknesses (talking about previous test, not this latest round of tests).

http://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/exclus...ry?id=31434881

saizai

Um… isn't that the whole point of a red team?

If your system is not secure against someone who knows how it works, it's not secure.

Boggie Dog

Now we know the 75% failure rate is no longer valid. Must be hard to get worse at ones job.

spd476

Those red team tests are really tricky. It's a good thing terrorists don't know how to tape bombs to their backs.

chollie

I blame poor training (and assorted reasons why some people delight in putting their hands on unwilling victims). TSOs have been taught to focus on breasts, breasts, crotches, breasts, buttocks, African-American hair, breasts, crotches.

All that groping of privates and now you tell us something might be on someone's back?

It's not fair. It's like a teacher asking a question on a test that wasn't covered in class!

chollie

+1

A responsible administrator would have recognized the opportunity to review and update training that is clearly lacking - and would have reminded his FSDs that yes, TSA really does have a mission, to look for a needle in a haystack as well as to look for expensive perfume bottles, two-inch sock monkey guns and cupcakes.

Aren't they PAID to be constantly vigilant and alert to new threats?

Or are they still chasing the elusive crotch bomb, buttocks blaster or bra machine gun?

I wonder if the rising failure rate could have anything to do with the rising number of checkpoint TSOs actively involved with their cellphones while on the job. Perhaps some enterprising TSO will develop a 'Red Team Alert' app to clue fellow TSOs in that it's time to put the cellphone down and look for a real threat, not personal gratifcation.

goalie

So what many of us already knew is now public information but a show of hands-how many think anything will actually be done to rectify the problem?

chollie

The 'leaker' will be found and force to undergo 'enhanced screening' for 40 continuous hours.

Seriously, I think TSA will try to clamp down on the release of this information. They'll find a way to massage the numbers or....they'll 'dumb down' the test and start hiding large and obvious perfume bottles or nitro pills or sock monkey weapons between their buttock cheeks or breasts or in their crotch or their 'big' African-American hair. Screeners will be given multiple opportunities to pass, checkpoints will be given advance warning and TSO cellphone use will be prohibited at checkpoints being tested.

You know, so the fantasy threat scenarios match up to the shen

petaluma1

Unfortunately, I don't think it's numbers that will be "massaged" rather they will find more reason to "massage" more passengers more thoroughly.

WillCAD

95% failure rate. So for every gun, knife, or bomb TSA finds, it misses 19. Does anyone else find some irony in the number 19?

Let's see what Bob's response will be. I'm thinking that it may be something like, "But there were only 60 failures, out of several million people who flew on the days those tests took place, so 60 out of several million is actually a HUGE success rate!"

I'd really, really like to know what the failure rate is with innocuous prohibited items like bottles of water and snow globes. It's long been postulated on FT that one of the reasons for such a high failure rate in the Red Team tests is that TSOs are expending so much of their limited attention looking for those innocuous prohibited items that they literally forget sometimes to look for the truly dangerous ones - like pairs of 2.5lb blocks of unhidden, undisguised plastic explosive in government wrappers labeled "C4 HIGH EXPLOSIVE" in big capital letters.

I think about these things sometimes. They make me go, "Hmmm..."

saizai

Also FWIW: only 70 tests over some unspecified (probably multi-year) time period?

Something like this ought to be getting tested at least once a week (on average — in a random distribution, of course) in every airport. That's what big companies do for secret shoppers. If TSA's supposed to be on their game all the time with such supposedly huge risks, surely they should be kept to a higher standard than whether some fast food branch is friendly?

Boggie Dog

I think TSA is more interested in doing things that look like security but really add very little to the overall process.

FliesWay2Much

This would imply that this Red Team guy went through the ExtortionCheck line because he set off the metal detector If Mel wanted to kill E-Check, he just had an excuse drop in his lap.

Superguy

Fox picked it up as well:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...a-checkpoints/

I gotta say though, after coming off a long LHR-CLT flight and finding my onward segment couldn't get pre-check to work, the TSA massage was actually quite relaxing.

LEONIDES

Clearly, the solution will be for more people to sign up for PreCheck. If all of us forked over our $85 to sign up for this, all of TSA's problems will be solved! We all know that throwing more money at a problem is the universal solution.

I am sure that everyone in this forum can fail at our jobs 96% of the time, and we can keep our jobs for life.

Disgusting.