>> Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time The system for gun/bomb detection is only as good

>> Last year, undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle concealed guns and bombs past security 96% of the time The system for gun/bomb detection is only as good as the agents responsible for it. For example, I saw my friend accidentally sneak a knife onto an plane two years ago. The metal detector flagged him, and he confidently told the official present: "Oh, it's my belt!" and after taking it off he walked through, with no further probing. He literally forgot about his EDC knife and wound up with it on the flight. It must be noted that this was in South Africa, but having travelled to both the USA and Europe, I know it could have happened there too. The current system is not robust to human error, and this is its fundamental flaw. Con artists and psychologists know how to systematically induce human error [1, 2]. It is conceivable that malicious actors (or TSA people pretending to be) can do exactly that and reliably subvert a human detection system. As an aside, it would be interesting to see TSA people try sneak weapons onto an El-Al flight [see 3, 4, 5 for why]. A humorous anecdote: once when returning from Israel, I had my bag full of dirty clothes thoroughly man-handled by an irate woman from El-Al security. I had two books inside, each with a metal inset in the spine. As soon as this was found out, I went from being treated like a terrorist to a non-threat in a few seconds. It was remarkably efficient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias [3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001458258397595640 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/ http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.securit... [5] http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers http://www.tabletmag.com/the-roll/102229/the-gatekeepers