TSA Software Bug Creates Airport Bomb Scare 276
192939495969798999 writes "An article at CNN's website reports on a serious software bug at the Atlanta airport." From the article: "TSA screeners are given tests around the clock to check their alertness. Images of bombs and other suspicious devices that are hard to detect are put up on the X-ray machine, followed after a brief delay by an alert that reads, 'This is a test.' After reviewing a tape of the images, Hawley said the software failed to alert the screener of the test."
Re:ROFL! (Score:4, Informative)
"Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport is the world's busiest passenger airport, with 77,939,536 arrivals, departures, and transfers in 1999. Atlanta bypassed #2 Chicago-O'Hare in 1998 to become the world's busiest."
Re:Fun with false images (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Fun with false images (Score:4, Informative)
The fake bomb images are there to IMPROVE performance.
The DHS & TSA fund research into optimizing human search. This implementation is a practical application of very recent research.
I refer you to
http://search.bwh.harvard.edu/pdf/WolfePrevalence
which is part of the research of Jeremy Wolfe's lab
http://search.bwh.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu]
Just read the first the first few paragraphs of the Nature paper I linked to understand the point.