Comments on: Oops! Unredacted TSA manual released; “full review” underway by agency

By: TSA security breach according to the Daily Show

TSA security breach according to the Daily Show — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:21:14 +0000

[...] we have already reported, bloggers discovered a major TSA security breach earlier this week. There is a lot of posturing going on in Washington with Senators, [...]

By: Hapgood

Hapgood — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:17:45 +0000

Yet another entry on the list of TSA screwups. Yet another reason to seriously doubt whether we’re getting anything useful for what the TSA is costing us in inconvenience, lost liberty, lost privacy, and of course too many dollars.

And of course, the TSA’s spin-meisters react by telling us to pay no attention to the breach because the document is out of date. And any harm that does come from the mistake is entirely the fault of the bloggers and media who trumpeted it to the public, not the TSA! I don’t believe that any more than I believe anything else that comes from the TSA’s PR department. But it probably doesn’t damage security very much. Whatever the actual rules are, by the time they’re inconsistently flowed down to the screeners for inconsistent implementation, it’s all pretty much up to the whims of the screeners. If, as the TSA continually insists, complete unpredictability and inconsistency at checkpoints is what provides highly effective protection from the terrorist threat, aviation is just as safe as it was before the latest embarrassment.

I can only hope this latest TSA “incident” finally goads Congress into imposing oversight and accountability on an agency that for too long has been allowed to run unconstrained behind a shroud of secrecy. But I’m not holding my breath on that.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:56:20 +0000

Hey being a frequent flyer, i’ve seen a whole load of worse things that the TSA has done.

For example: in April I found that I had been travelling with a folding box cutter forgotten in my carry on bag for 4 months.
(No one caught that one. US TSA, Canadian CATSA, Swiss and Dannish Airport Security) and that included manual searches of the bag.

(i’m kinda glad I was the one who found it, cause had it been found while at the airport i’m sure I would have had a bad time of it)

All in all accidentaly posting a training manual online doesn’t seem all that bad. (of course i’m sure there are sensitive portions of the file that shouldn’t have been released)
I figure that if enough people read this then maybe the general public will know what the heck to do once they get to a security screening point so they can stop wasting time for everyone who does know the procedure.

-Jeff in Canada
IT Consultant and Frequent Flyer

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:52:47 +0000

Of course TSA is going to back off and say it’s out of date and has been revised. The fact is that there is information in there that should never be made public.

Now they have to have a full security review of their procedures and documents. If there are images of federal credentials as DrBob suggests above or forms that should be secret, they now have to go to the trouble and expense of revising credentials, documents, revise their procedures.

It’s truly unbelievable.

By: Eaglelover

Eaglelover — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:34:01 +0000

These are the same folks who routinely “wand” my white-headed 76 year-old 80-pound sister every trip we take. Also the same ones who confiscated my expensive gel-filled prescription orthotics without which I can hardly walk. They are “careful” to the extent of absurdity when exercising their power over individual travelers but criminally foolish in their lack of care in revealing a document that gives potential terrorists much inside information about how to get around TSA procedures.

By: DrBob

DrBob — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:50:31 +0000

Anything interesting? Yes.

Attachment 4-4 contains images of various federal credentials.

Uh-oh.

(I leave it to the reader to figure out how to see them. I am not going to say how I did it.)

By: SpotLight

SpotLight — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:27:23 +0000

Another easy way to see it all – open with Adobe reader, and File, Save as Text. Open the TXT file with your word processor, Notepad, or WordPad.

By: Lumis

Lumis — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:10:50 +0000

I dont know if they know this but if you get the one they have released and just select all and paste into note book you can read everything…..nice job guys.