After a two-year wait for the Transportation Security Administration to release data on how many weapons and dangerous items it had confiscated, the Salt Lake Tribune got the data and discovered “huge holes in that TSA data that raise questions about the information’s value in charting the effectiveness of airport security.”
The data for 2005-2010 showed signifcant fluctuations in what was — and wasn’t — counted from year to year, including guns for three years.
Net net? Likely a case of garbage-in, garbage-out if one is trying to find trends. From the Tribune’s story:
“The hit-and-miss data show TSA does not know how many total prohibited items are surrendered, so it cannot accurately track rates of such activity nationwide or at specific airports.
” “If TSA is continually changing the parameters of how they test, truly they have no idea of how they are doing,” said Douglas Laird, head of an aviation-security consulting firm. He is the former security director of Northwest Airlines and a former Secret Service agent.”
SOURCE: Salt Lake Tribune