I was looking for some more information on the lighter ban when I saw this frightening link on Yahoo News: "Security firm accused of cheating on SFO test." A misprint? Unfortunately not, according to the
San Francisco Chronicle.
The private firm in charge of security at San Francisco International Airport cheated to pass tests aimed at ensuring it could stop terrorists from smuggling weapons onto flights, a former employee contends.
The allegations have prompted a federal probe into security at SFO, a spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said.
In a wrongful-firing lawsuit filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, Gene Bencomo, 39, a former supervisor for Covenant Aviation Security, said the company devised an elaborate system to alert security checkpoints when undercover federal auditors, called decoys, arrived at the airport last year to conduct unannounced tests.
(...)
In the suit, Bencomo said he was demoted, and then labeled unstable, because he repeatedly complained to company officials about the systematic cheating on the security tests. He said he was fired in December.
Unbelievable. The second-busiest airport on the West Coast, and the firm in charge of security might be cheating--and compromising millions of people in the process.
This cannot stand. The TSA is already investigating it, but something needs to be done to ensure this isn't a whitewash.