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Bombs Sneak Past Airport Security? Shocking!
A GAO report released today shows that current TSA restrictions on liquids and gels are just shy of completely ineffective in preventing a terrorist attack.
Really? You don't say.
Earlier this year undercover GAO agents (as opposed to those who run around wearing uniforms and nametags) tested 21 airports nationwide, and managed to get liquids and detonators that can be combined to create IEDs and (another acronym we don't all want to come to know), Improvised Incendiary Devices (IIDs), past airport screeners.
They were universally successful (and this frightening finding comes just before the busiest travel week of the year). In one case, a TSA agent didn't allow the GAO a "small, unlabeled bottle of medicated shampoo" because he said the bottle "could contain acid." The same TSAer permitted a prohibited, liquid IID component to sail through untouched.
The screeners are hardly the ones to blame, though. The GAO found that "in most cases transportation security officers appeared to follow TSA procedures and used technology appropriately." The fault lay in nationwide TSA policies and standard-operating procedures that "increases the risk of a terrorist successfully bringing an IED, an IID, or both onto an aircraft undetected."
Reform maven Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) found the GAO's report "mind-boggling," but I'm not so surprised. The TSA failed to find similar components during a test run on Thanksgiving weekend in 2004 and it failed again in 2006.
For more tidbits, like how the GAO got IED parts (which run about $150), the full report can be read here. The TSA's totally unconvincing response to the report, in which they say you shouldn't worry because the failed security checkpoint is really just part of a larger tapestry of inspections, is here. Happy trails.
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Posted by Jennifer Phillips on 11/15/07 at 3:51 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |
Comments
Of course this is no surprise. When have we NOT been disappointed when we've relied on the state to overstep their bounds?
Posted by: tmb on 11/16/07 at 3:55 PM Respond
The State was protecting us on Nyna Leven.
The State was protecting us the first time terrorists tried to take down a WTC tower.
The State was protecting us in Oklahoma City.
The State is protecting every victim of a mugging, rape or murder from San Fran to DC, and Minneapolis to Miami.
Gawd, aren't we Grateful to The State?!
Posted by: State Security on 11/16/07 at 4:29 PM Respond
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