The Transportation Security Agency has failed to respond to a security consultant’s research which showed that destructive devices could be constructed using everyday items found in shops beyond checkpoints.
Last year, with a little ingenuity, software consultant Evan Booth was successfully able to show that virtually anything could be used to construct potentially lethal makeshift weaponry.
“As it turns out, even a marginally ‘MacGyver-esque’ attacker can breeze through terminal gift shops, restaurants, magazine stands and duty-free shops to find everything needed to wage war on an airplane,” Booth wrote on his website TerminalCornucopia.com last year.
Utilizing souvenirs, trinkets and other random objects, Booth demonstrated how a determined attacker armed with nothing but knowledge could rather easily assemble blowguns, firearms and even incendiary devices, rendering TSA screening checkpoints essentially ineffective.
“[A]nything in the airport you’d get yelled at for taking or messing with is off limits,” Booth said of his criteria for securing building materials.
One such improvised device, nicknamed the FRAGGuccino, can be assembled using a stainless steel coffee mug, a AA battery, a condom and Axe Body Spray, among other materials, the explosion from which could cause serious bodily injury.
“I’ve sent them all the documentation and have heard no response back,” Booth told KOMO 4 news. “’So why are we ok with that?,’ is a question I would hope people would ask after looking at my research.”
Booth says the agency’s lack of concern highlights how airport screenings are largely futile and hugely expensive, costing taxpayers upwards of $7 billion a year.
“I want it to be effective and as it stands — it’s just not,” Booth said.
In the past, Infowars has exposed how airport security is more preoccupied with searching through loved ones’ cremated remains, policing cakes and pies, paperweights and even miniature cartoon dolls, rather than confronting actual threats.
Their uselessness was also proven earlier this year when a 16-year-old boy was able to sneak onto a plane and hide within its landing gear, hopping a ride from San Jose, California, to Maui, Hawaii.
Also last year, a 9-year-old boy was able to bypass TSA and hop aboard a flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to Las Vegas where he intended to meet a friend whom he played video games with.
While ignoring Booth’s research, the TSA responded to KOMO News’ request for comment stating that, “TSA employs multiple layers of security to protect the traveling public, both seen and unseen by the public.”
Booth says those measures are basically just meaningless security theater if they won’t take his research seriously.
“TSA has a lot of procedures in place right now, but the ends don’t justify the means,” Booth says. “I just want people to look at my research and judge for themselves.”
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