CNN reports that US screeners lost a fake bomb too, today. They did a bit better than the french, in that they detected the fake bomb, however they then lost it. It turned up on a plane to Amsterdam and was recovered when that plane landed. Pretty sad that they managed to detect it, yet the system still failed. They pulled off the really hard part, yet were unable to prevent it from getting on board a plane…which is the ultimate end point of the whole security process.

I’m sure the remedy that the airport will take is disciplinary action against the screeners who were responsible for losing the bag and not actually trying to see if there is a problem with the process. It is just more proof that there is far more to things than “just” finding the bombs. There are multiple pitfalls in the process and they need to have fail safes instead of fail to failure.