The TSA's $160 million airport security system can't even detect metal

It turns out we were baring all for nothing. The TSA's controversial "naked" X-ray scanners — and their replacements now in place in national airports — cost $160 million, according to figures obtained by Politico. Which would be fine, perhaps, if they worked: In a recent security audit, the TSA failed to find fake explosives and weapons in 96 percent of their tests.

"These things weren't even catching metal," the top Democrat on the House's Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told Politico.

"If you really want to keep using those, and I'm not saying we shouldn't, at a minimum we should put a metal detector on the other side," Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Howard agreed. "Why not go through two? You've just gotta use common sense."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

While the super expensive machines are reportedly far from 100 percent accurate, at least some of the failings of the detectors are being chalked up to human error. That is, not all TSA agents actually know what they're doing.

"Most of them are really good, very polite, very efficient, very professional," a security expert and former top Pentagon official, Steve Bucci, told Politico. "But there are a lot of them that aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer."