TSA fails 95% of the time in tests to smuggle guns explosives onto planes

[HassleCat]

2. Interesting

When I worked for TSA, the red team tried three times to get stuff past me, and I caught them all three times. How did I beat the odds so spectacularly? If the overall success rate is only 5 percent, how did I achieve 100 percent? Yes, the red teams were sometimes able to get prohibited items through 100 percent of the time, because the detection methods we used were not designed to detect the threat chosen by the red team. I would like to know what they're doing now to fool the screeners 95 percent of the time. They could do it by presenting threats the equipment and procedures are not capable of detecting. They used to do that all the time, and they would sometimes get the same threat past the screeners time after time after time.

I realize people like to make fun of TSA officers, with comments about minimum wage dropouts and such, but the real problems lie elsewhere. The training is poor. The tests do not always relate to the real threats. The detection equipment is not capable of picking up certain things. Morale is low, and turnover is high. There are too many managers and supervisors who should not be managing or supervising anything. The high failure rate is exactly what one would expect from a poorly trained workforce, using ineffective equipment.