FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER 9/11 – UNBELIEVABLE – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  Yeah, yawn, maybe it really is time for us to get truly serious about security at airports, yawn.  From the Boston Herald. 

The Transportation Security Administration is going “back to the drawing board” to design new safety protocols after airports around the country failed to find weapons brought through screening in an undercover sting operation, U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch told Herald Radio today.

The South Boston Democrat said Peter Neffenger, the new TSA administrator, is beginning the process of rethinking what passengers will have to do before boarding a plane.

“The new administrator is going back to the drawing board,” Lynch said. “He is going to come up with a new set of recommendations and reteach the entire workforce a new procedure to hopefully screen out some of these weapons.”

As we said, this is 14 years after 9/11.  What've they been doing?

The look into TSA protocol comes after an undercover sting operation during which staffers from the Inspector General’s office covertly went through security at eight airports and, in many cases, were able to sneak in weapons.

“They have failed miserably,” Lynch said, describing the classified results of the operation. “They would strap a gun on their ankle, one of them had an ace bandage with a weapon inside. They walk through the screeners and, with a very high instance, they are getting through. So there are some major problems.”

Testifying before a House Oversight Subcommittee on Tuesday, Neffenger said passengers may be “on the cusp of a very different looking checkpoint experience in the next five years.” In his written testimony to the committee, he advocated increasing the number of vetted passengers, or “trusted travelers,” and compared processing those people in a way similar to flight crews. He also expressed concern over the cost and effectiveness of certain existing programs - such as using behavior detection to examine whether a passenger may be experiencing “stress, fear, or detection.”

COMMENT:  Other countries seem to have been more successful at this.  We seem to have botched it, given the disasters revealed in the undercover sting operation.

It's a delicate subject, but I do hope they do an honest analysis – no political correctness – of personnel policies.  Who are we hiring to do the inspections at airports? How do our personnel standards rank against those of other countries?

November 6, 2015