TSA's Failure Rate in Detecting Bombs and Weapons? Ninety Five Percent; Chief Merely Gets Reassigned, Because Catastrophic, Stinking Failure Is Plenty Good Enough for Government Work

Bad Security Theater-- are you not entertained?

Department of Homeland Security said Monday that the acting administrator for the Transportation Security Administration would be reassigned, following a report that airport screeners failed to detect explosives and weapons in nearly every test that an undercover team conducted at dozens of airports.

According to a report based on an internal investigation, "red teams" with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General were able to get banned items through the screening process in 67 out of 70 tests it conducted across the nation.

The test results were first reported by ABC News, and government officials confirmed them to CNN. Mark Hatfield, acting deputy director, will take over for Melvin Carraway until a new acting administrator is appointed. It was not immediately clear Tuesday where Carraway would be reassigned.

Late Monday, Johnson issued a statement announcing Carraway's reassignment.

...

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called the failure rate "deeply alarming."

"Over the past six years, we have seen TSA consume an enormous amount of government resources, but I'm not convinced we have much to show for it," he said in a statement. "After spending over $540 million on baggage screening equipment and millions more on training, the failure rate today is higher than it was in 2007. Something is not working."

"I have long been a proponent of using low-tech bomb-sniffing dogs to detect weapons and explosives," he said. "Government needs to recognize that the most effective solution is not always the most expensive one."

TSA Agents say, get this, that it's not their fault and they need "better training," which sounds suspiciously like "more money."

They must have learned that from the Teachers Union.

Members of a Facebook group for TSA employees said that the overwhelming failure rate--the TSA failed 67 of the 70 tests carried out by undercover agents--was "expected" and cited poor training, ineffective procedures and faulty equipment. One employee said that his coworkers had followed "procedures that were taught to them by their training department, only to find out their training department taught them wrong." A TSA supervisor added that she and her officers don’t even have time to manage their teams because of constant pressure to achieve certain quotas.

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Meanwhile, other members blamed the TSA's own hiring practices, as one member reported that "at my airport at least, it has felt like a jobs program where anybody with a pulse can get hired and promoted."

Well that certainly doesn't sound like the US government that I know.

Just a few months ago, the TSA was bragging about their effectiveness in finding contraband guns.

This week’s report that the Transportation Security Agency failed to spot 95 percent of contraband weapons snuck through in tests of airport screeners comes just a few months after the agency bragged about the good job it was doing in sniffing out guns and other weapons.

More than 2,000 guns -- an average of six a day -- were discovered by TSA screeners in 2014, the agency said in a post declaring the seizures "a great year." But the failure rate in the new classified report suggests that the rate of those that got through could be much higher.

If this sounds like a story you heard before, you did hear it before -- you heard it five hundred and fifty one million dollars ago.

In addition, the review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.

posted by Ace at 07:11 PM

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