You can test the catch rate of illegal or dangerous materials, but this is a measure more of the chance of catching someone once an attack is already in progress. Basically, it just measures if its security theatre or not. To know if its effective at preventing attacks, we’d also need to know the number who wanted to attack and decided against it because TSA existed.
But you could test the system by trying to violate the rules and documenting the catch rate. Surely, they are already doing it to measure its effectiveness.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
They are, and the TSA failure rate is astronomical.
Failing 95% of tests in 2015
Failing more than half the time back in 2017
I’m having trouble finding anything more recent, which doesn’t seem to suggest that they have i proved significantly or they would be bragging about it. But even a 90% success rate would be preatty terrible due to the volume of travelers they screen. They should be failing either one or zero out of dozens of tests at the most bmto be considered reliable.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
Well, at at least they were able to catch something, rather than nothing. Now terrorists know that you can’t just walk through with an RPG on your shoulder. However, with rates like that, you could probably sneak through just about anything through as long as you try to hide it even a little bit.