TSA screening standards leaked

Posted on: Tue, 12/08/2009 - 10:02 By: Tom Swiss

Ever wonder just what the rules were for the security theater that the TSA treats us to every time we fly? Now you can find out! Their super-secret "Screening Management Standard Operating Procedure" is published on the internet. They planned to block out the super-secret parts. But...

So the decision to publish it on the Internet is probably a questionable one. On top of that, however, is where the real idiocy shines. They chose to publish a redacted version of the document, hiding all the super-important stuff from the public. But they apparently don’t understand how redaction works in the electronic document world. See, rather than actually removing the offending text from the document they just drew a black box on top of it. Turns out that PDF documents don’t really care about the black box like that and the actual content of the document is still in the file.

Get yourself a copy of the cleared up document here (ZIPped PDF file).