“The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operation Procedures were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.”?

You didn’t say.

The SOP is a large 3 ring binder that sits in the office and is seldom seen by the front line screeners. If you bother to read it, you will see that it gives enormous discretion to the FSD’s. That is why screening procedures are rarely the same from one airport to another.

When I started early in the life of TSA, they had many intelligent smart people who wanted to do a good job. But it quickly became apparent that promotions were limited to the’politically’ connected and daily life was managed by often unhappy, unsophisticated, and sometimes dumb managers, who were more interested in whether the screener’s uniform was correct than actual security. Morale quickly plummeted. Any one with any intelligence or ambition, quickly left for real jobs. Both managers and screeners.

The frequently quoted 20% figure was a minimum standard for airports without baggage scanners. Most class A and B airports scan 100% of checked luggage using CT scanners (like cat-scan machines in the hospital). Only luggage that ‘alarms’ in the scanner is opened and checked.

Yeah, it is out there and control is totally lost, but while I know that and you know that, some faceless bureaucrat doesn’t and collecting a few scalps here and there might make his bosses feel better. Be Careful with this — unless you like endless discussions with creepy guys in suits.

Amd will this kill any hope of a “bill of rights” for the flying public? Maybe that was the plan, all along. The TSA, doing the dirty work of the Airline industry. Who’da thunk it?

I don’t believe that they couldn’t have redacted the manual pages, in some better way. Like with photo editing software. MS Paint could have done it. Just black rectangle out the inappropriate lines and paragraphs. But my guess is that they already had this PDF file made up of it. And didn’t want to take the time to go back to the original source material or file. And physically redact the old fashion way. So they only added masking code to the existing PDF document. At least that’s the excuse they want us to buy.