We’ve spent a lot of time criticizing the TSA, but no one has suggested that they have done anything quite this foolish. Slovakian security forces decided to test their bomb-detection protocols by planting plastic explosives on nine unsuspecting passengers, and find out whether they could detect them before they got on planes. The Slovaks managed to catch eight of the nine, but what happened to the ninth passenger? The Slovaks apparently forgot to ask:
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Give the Slovaks credit for some creative thinking. After all, if the West adopts the Israeli screening process, then terrorists may have to rely on unwitting travelers to carry bombs onto planes, and it’s worth knowing whether that can be stopped. However, once the security teams planted the explosives, they needed to track the passengers to get the explosives back before they got onto planes. And if they failed at that, then the Slovaks should have immediately informed the Irish — and given them all of the relevant information before the Irish conducted a counterterrorist raid on a man who had no idea what was going on.
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