Airline Screeners Fail Government Bomb Tests

21 airports nationwide don’t detect bomb-making materials

24 March 2006

Investigators for the U.S. Government conducted tests between October 2005 and January 2006, at the request of Congress to determine how vulnerable U.S. airlines are to a suicide bomber using cheap, readily available materials.

In all 21 airports tested, no machine, no swab, no screener anywhere stopped the bomb materials from getting through.

Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening of bags, no one discovered the materials.
Absent a screening process which incorporates terrorist methods of operation, technology is bound to fail.  The TSA and their screeners will start to succeed when they stop thinking only about machine operation, and start thinking about terrorist methods of operation.

Back