Posted on 07/01/2002 5:33:21 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Airport security screeners are still missing too much.
USA Today reports a Transportation Security Administration test last month found that the carry-on baggage checkers didn't detect fake weapons, such as guns, dynamite or bombs, in almost one-fourth of the cases.
The TSA agents were instructed to do little to try to conceal the items.
The tests were conducted at 32 of the country's largest airports. Cincinnati fared worst, missing 58 percent of the dangerous items, followed by Las Vegas and Jacksonville, both at 50 percent.
Best in the undercover security tests were Miami, at 6 percent and Newark at 9 percent.
Overall, the figure was 24 percent.
"There is no short way to put in the sort of airport security that's required in the United States," said Chris Yates, an airport security expert with Janes Transport in London. "We are not going to see fundamental, solid change in airport security for several years hence yet."
Yates said under the pre-Sept. 11 system in the U.S., airport security was up to the airlines and for-profit companies, and wasn't a big priority.
"Security costs and in a culture where the shareholder is of paramount importance, security was often compromised," he told CBS News Correspondent Sam Litzinger.
But Yates isn't impressed with the results from the government so far.
"There's an awful lot of promise but not an awful lot of substance at this moment in time," he said.
The newspaper reported that even when metal-detector alarms sounded, the screeners often failed to find simulated weapons on the agents.
The tests are set to conclude today. USA Today obtained TSA memoranda and documents marked "security sensitive information."
"We have issues to correct," admitted an agency spokeswoman, while pointing out the TSA is looking for such problems so it can correct them.
The screeners who were tested were trained by the security companies that worked directly for the airlines before the federal takeover. Many of them will become federal employees by November.
"What they're doing effectively is federalizing the workforce at airports," said Yates.
More than half the tests involved screeners operating X-ray machines, and the failure rate was 16 percent.
Before the Transportation Security Administration took over screening at airports, investigators for the Transportation Department's Inspector General's office found failure rates of nearly 50 percent at 32 airports tested. However, those tests were conducted differently, emulating would-be terrorists. The TSA agents were told to pack "consistent with how a typical passenger in air transportation might pack a bag."
I suppose, when some entrepreneurial madman makes use of the data they are so eagerly furnishing, the media will demand investigations into how terrorists were able to access such sensitive data...
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