unbelievable!!!---Bombs get past airport security

[AR182]

this is unbelievable, with all of the money spent to upgrade the security systems in the us airports & this still happens. i find this alarming!!


Bombs' get past airport security
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Los Angeles Times
May. 11, 2003 12:00 AM


WASHINGTON - Under- cover agents continue regularly to sneak mock bombs and weapons past federal airport security screeners, despite the $5 billion a year taxpayers are spending to safeguard aviation, government and industry officials say.

The Transportation Security Administration refused to discuss specific undercover testing results and methods, but said the inspections are much tougher than those conducted before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"In the old days, the test items consisted of things you might see in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon," administration spokesman Robert Johnson. The agents' "job now is to go out and break the system, so we can improve the system."

The failures have alarmed lawmakers overseeing the agency, who point out that al-Qaida operatives also would be expected to use sophisticated subterfuge to get weapons and explosives aboard an airliner.

"If the tests are tougher and the screeners are still failing, then we've got a problem," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House aviation subcommittee. "The feedback I'm getting is that results aren't much different than when we had a private workforce."

Mica has asked Congress' watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office, to evaluate the performance of Transportation Security Administration screeners and its undercover testing program.

Several federal screeners said the problem is insufficient training.

"It's real easy to spot scissors, but people who want to get weapons on board are going to be more clever," a screener at Los Angeles International Airport said. "We are not getting familiar with the stuff I think we need to get familiar with, particularly explosives."

Some screeners also said that the agency took on some screeners who don't take the job seriously.

 

[TORONTO-VIGILANTE]

i thought this one was quite funny....

in regards to security:
_______________________________________

Ontario boy, 7, crosses border unnoticed
'I turned around and he was gone'

U.S. police pick up young visitor

MARY NERSESSIAN
STAFF REPORTER

A 7-year-old Canadian boy wandered unnoticed over the Whirlpool Bridge into the United States this weekend despite heightened border security.

Mitchel Hernder, of Niagara Falls, Ont., was found two hours after he went missing Saturday afternoon.

"Thank God he wasn't a terrorist," said Lieutenant Sal Pino of the Niagara Falls, N.Y. police. "It was a security violation, a 7-year-old should not have been allowed into the country."

Police officer John Conte found the boy several kilometres from the border, standing in the middle of a six-lane street, after getting a call from a motorist.

Mitchel, who is mildly autistic, had his name, address and phone number memorized.

"It's not often you pick up a missing child from another country," Conte told CFTO.

The boy's parents had earlier locked his bike in their garage as a punishment for wandering off without telling them.

Mitchel took his sister's bike out at about 3:45 p.m., and rode about 2 1/2 kilometres to the border crossing.

The boy told police that when he saw a "No Bicycles Allowed" sign at the border, he threw the bike over the bridge and continued on foot.

Pino said there are three ways of getting through the border at that site, "but he should have been noticed no matter how he got across."

When the Hernders discovered Mitchel was missing, they started looking in neighbours' backyards and called the police.

They were especially concerned because the boy had a habit of befriending everyone, said his father Mark Hernder.

"He has to be watched constantly," Hernder said in a telephone interview. "I turned around and he was gone, we were going nuts."

When he arrived at the police station, his son was happily playing on the computer and sipping a pop. "It was a great adventure as far as (Mitchel) was concerned."