First up, a shake-up at the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This is a part of the department of Homeland Security. The TSA is responsible for protecting America’s transportation systems, and its acting administrator, Melvin Carraway, has been reassigned to another job. Why? 

 

Undercover agents recently tried to smuggle illegal items, like fake explosives, at TSA checkpoints. In almost all of the tests, TSA failed to find them. It’s since been directed to take a number of steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. A Homeland Security spokesperson says these reports never look good out of context, but that they are important in the continual evolution of airline security.  

 

The Department of the Homeland Security discovered TSA officers failed 95% of the time during undercover operations. The officers fail in the 67 out of 70 tests to detect mock explosives and weapons at airport security checkpoints. 

 

“These are anomalies that TSA screeners and/or their equipment should locate and at least flagged for additional screening.”

 

The Department’s Red Team posed as passengers, attempting to pass through the checkpoint with the mock weapons. “I put a detonator and put the plastic explosive.” Back to 2008, CNN was there for similar covert operations. That time, it was TSA testing its own officers.” “You can’t see it in there?” “Yeah, you can check.”

 

At the checkpoint, the tester wandered and padded down right where the fake explosive device was concealed, but the screener missed it. It was not until the tester lifted up his shirt. “Oh, I see it now.”

 

In response to the troubling failures, Secretary Johnson said in a statement that he is immediately directing the TSA to revise its screening procedures, conduct training, and re-evaluate their screening equipment. 

 

“This is grown completely out of control. It isn’t doing the job we need to. What we need to do is to be able to connect the dots, get intelligence information, go after people who pose a risk; and they can’t do it with the current system.” 

 

The deadline came and went, and on Sunday night the Patriot Act expired. The law was initially passed a month after Sep 11th, 2011 terrorists attacks on the US. Its goal — to prevent terrorism. One method that it used to collect certain phone data of millions of Americans was controversial. You can get a sense of that among the Senator Republicans. 

 

“Even the authors of the Patriot Act say that the Patriot Act in no way gives authority to the president to collect all of your phone records all of the time.” 

“We shouldn’t be disarming unilaterally, as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive.” 

 

“Isn’t this program as critical as it’s even been since its inception, given the fact that the Middle East is literally is on fire and we are losing everywhere.” 

 

There is new legislation tied to data collection, though. It’s called the US Freedom Act. The House passed it weeks ago. The Senate did last night. President Obama is expected to sign it. Under the new law, telecommunications companies would keep the data on American’s phone records, and the federal government can get it if it has a targeted warrant. Because the law gives the government six months to transition from the old system to the new, its telephone data collection could continue during that time.