I don’t think this is a big deal at all:

With the approval of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Sig Sauer gun company has released specific information about the model of pistol that Federal Air Marshals will soon be carrying – data that both current and former Air Marshals say puts the Marshals and air passengers at risk.

“This is the last thing you want to give to anyone who wants to carry out an act of terror,” said Frank Terreri, president of the Federal Air Marshal Agency, a trade group representing the Marshals. “Anyone who wants to take over a plane can be proactive and research that type of weapon, basically know everything about that weapon before going on the plane,” said Terreri. “You really don’t want to give that playbook out to your enemy.”

This isn’t some super-secret classified weapon we’re talking about here, it’s a Sig P250. Were they thinking that no one would ever know which off-the-shelf gun Air Marshals were carrying? Getting worked up over this is just plain silly.

On the other hand, there was some other “improperly-redacted” information that should not have been released involving how many bags are physically checked, weaknesses in the x-ray equipment, and what size of wire can be missed by screening machines. Letting that out could cause serious problems.

TSA says that that version of the manual was outdated. Sure it is. Now, anyway.

Hat tip to the reader who sent this in.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Industry News, Law Enforcement, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.