TSA can’t win it seems

The TSA really can’t win a shot. From acknowledging that print-at-home boarding passes are a huge airport risk to missing 20 out of 22 hidden weapons at the metal detectors during a Newark security drill – they just can’t win.

Now its apparently happened again when the TSA was instructed to release their security screening proceedures on the internet.  Recongising it was risky they redacted the sensitive parts – sounds sensible. Problem is they redacted them poorly by simply putting black boxes all over the PDF – which can be easily removed.  So now we have a sitaution where basically the screening procedures used in US airports are available to pretty much anyone who wants to find out.

It may not seem like a major drama to some but consider that apparently there’s a list of 12 countries where if you have those passports you’re automatically selected for additional screening. As these are now known all someone has to do is make sure they carry (or forge) a different passport. There are also sections on how instruments are calibrated and also what kind of credentials someone would have to present to get exemptions from screening.

The big problem of course also is that there’s limited capacity for the TSA to recover from this because many of the policies wouldn’t be easy to change without compromising their effectiveness further.

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