...but this is an interesting report.
TSA fails most tests in latest undercover operation at US airports
I accept the fact that if someone wants to bring down a plane, they will given enough time to plan and money to make it happen, provided they shut the hell up about their scheme. Now back to the topic thread.
First: The study above is the norm, not an outlier. Over and over, when tested by other government agencies, the TSA consistently fails to find 90-100% of the test devices (fake weapons, fake explosives). This is not a one-off survey that could have been manipulated, it is the consistent reality. By any measure (including their own) the TSA is an abject failure. They do not and can not keep prohibited objects off commercial aircraft.
(As a personal anecdote, my wife had traveled on many domestic flights for a couple years using a small daypack that she also uses for carrying her lunch to work. Turns out she had forgotten a 6-inch "switchblade" type knife and left it in a pocket of that pack (she used it to slice fruit at work). That knife was in her pack for about two years, had gone through TSA inspections dozens of times, and they never once noticed it. It was eventually found by Japan's airport authorities in Tokyo as we were going through security there on our way home - they found it immediately - and they were polite, courteous, even apologetic and helpful - they gave it to the flight crew to carry for us and a flight attendant handed it to her as she exited the plane when we landed back in the US...imagine the TSA or a US airline doing that.)
Like generals practicing how to fight the last war, the TSA seems fixated on the 9/11 events (and the underwear bomber), unable to adapt and evolve, and seem completely unable to just get it right with their narrow focus on what happened back in 2001. Worse, their approach utterly ignores the root cause of those events. The 9/11 attacks succeed because of two conditions that existed at the time: 1) aircraft cockpits were easily accessed by anyone, and 2) nobody could imagine that an attack on an airliner might be a suicide-attack - everyone thought that a "hijacking" might mean a short diversion to Cuba or some other nonsense destination, a delay and inconvenience at worst.
Those two conditions are no longer present. 1) Cockpit doors have been secured, and it's no longer easy to access the cockpit. 2) People have become painfully aware that they should not just be passive observers if someone is trying to destroy the plane - any terrorists are going to have to fight off the passengers before they get to the flight crew or controls. This means that a 9/11-type event will never occur again.
I'd argue that the TSA as it currently operates is no longer needed. Virtually 100% of what it does is just for show - "security theater" as they say. I fly quite a bit. While I do think there is some value in having a security mechanism in place when flying, given the terrible cost of the current farce (not just in $$, a cost in time, lost productivity, freedom, and a lot more) I would gladly go with no TSA at all rather than continue the current setup. In a reality-based world, the existing TSA operations do more harm than good.
