Should we be alarmed that mock weapons and explosives got past airport screeners?

Think your airport is secure from terrorists?  Think again. It’s apparently not difficult to smuggle weapons past TSA airport screeners.

According to a new Transportation Security Administration internal security report that’s been only partially made public, undercover agents were able to sneak past checkpoints with mock weapons, and even a bomb in a backpack. 

Not just once or twice, mind you. TSA agents reportedly failed 67 out of 70 times to detect the fake weapons.

The findings are seen as having prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to reassign the current director of the TSA and to order additional training for airport security staff, and more covert testing at US airports.

Covert testing of airport security is nothing new, says Barbara Peterson, aviation editor for Conde Nast Traveler. In 2007, Peterson went undercover as an investigative reporter and wrote about the experience in “Inside Job: My Life as an Airport Screener.” But she says airport security nowadays is much trickier.

“Right after 9/11, they were still focused on the old methods of taking over a plane and hijacking," she says. "They’ve taken care of the low-hanging fruit. They can detect pretty accurately guns and knives. What’s tricky now is that the current scenario imagines that terrorists would come aboard carrying parts of bombs in flight to be assembled, and a lot of these items look very innocent.”

Peterson says the covert testers may be very good at hiding weapons, and they work very hard to stump the screeners. That’s as it should be, but “they have to be really more nimble about keeping up with the current intelligence and being able to translate that into actual procedures.”

She says the field of behavioral profiling is evolving very rapidly and that “most screeners are pretty well trained in it, but maybe they need to be getting more training that keeps up with the changing scenarios in today's world.” But Peterson cautions, “there is no silver bullet.”

For its part, the Homeland Security chief has directed TSA to take several steps, including: Revise its standard procedures for screening, put in place new training for all supervisors, re-evaluate the electronic screening equipment now in use at US airports, and carry out more random covert testing with mock explosives and weapons.