Originally Posted by eyecue

Care to disclose your source or are you just parroting stats on tests?

Originally Posted by ABC News

An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.

Originally Posted by WOFL

Congressman John Mica, R-Winter Park, says the agency isn't doing well at security either based on a recent internal test.

"Screening is not that effective unfortunately. The media has revealed through some leaks that 95 percent of the time failed to detect items going through. That's up from 75 percent of the time."

Originally Posted by WaPo

This week, the acting head of the Transportation Security Administration got bounced from his job because in 95 percent of test cases, real guns or fake bombs made it past the TSA.

That left some travelers asking whether it’s safe to fly and others wondering whether security measures they often find strict and intrusive are as lax as those test results suggest.

“The bottom line remains that it’s just completely unacceptable to have such a high failure rate,” said John S. Pistole, who led the TSA for four years before resigning six months ago to become president of Anderson University in Indiana.

Originally Posted by Reuters

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Monday he reassigned the acting administrator for the Transportation Security Administration after earlier ordering improved security at U.S. airports.

The moves follow media reports that checkpoint screeners failed to detect mock explosives and weapons in 95 percent of tests carried out by undercover agents.

Originally Posted by RadioGirl

...However, TSA has not come forward with anything to refute the 95% score.

This suggests, to me, one of three possibilities:
a) They have far more "Red Team" results than the 70 reported here, and the larger sample size also shows 95% (or worse ) failure. (Because if they had, say, a few thousand "Red Team" results that showed a 10% or 30% or even 80% failure rate, they'd have jumped in to correct the story.) Or:

b) TSA management is so statistically clueless that they believe 70 tests (in whatever time period) is sufficient to evaluate the performance of the entire agency, or,

c) TSA management is so incredibly statistically clueless that they can't figure out that the folder labeled "8000 Red Team Tests - 40% failure" would paint a better picture than the "95% failure in 70 tests" headlines.

None of those options make the TSA look any more competent than the "95% failure rate" meme.
...
Secondly, missing 95% of Bad Things is not much of a deterrent. If, as the TSA would like you to believe, there are a huge number of determined Bad Guys probing the system day after day, by now they would have figured out they have a 95% chance of success.