Did you catch the little tidbit that these reporters carried multiple forms of contraband through "every airport security checkpoint they encountered"? Of course we can't reasonably expect "perfection", but a 100% failure rate certainly gives me pause, especially in a fully independent test like this -- 11 different airports, using different screening machines and employees, and different passengers, bags, and contraband items.
Let me guess, these journalists were white females with blonde hair or white clean-cut men wearing Polo shirts...right? Why don't they take a dozen Arab men and try the same test? What do you think the result will be?
I sincerely hope that far less scrutiny is given to those who do not fit within any higher-risk profile than those who do. How many airliners have been hijacked throughout the world again by white women or men vs. Arabs or Muslims? Ummm...tough question!
The goal isn't to catch every violation, at least not at first. The immediate goal is to catch those violations by people who are a risk for targeting an airliner in a terrorist act. We know who those people are, essentially, and we know who those people are EXTREMELY unlikely to be. We knew this before 9/11, quite frankly, but civil rights groups were rather successful at enticing people to believe the fantasy that terrorists "can" come in every color, ethicity, or nationality.
While technically true, it is certainly "possible" for terrorists to come in every color, ethnicity, or nationality, "possibilities" are irrelevant because the 'possibility standard' dictates wasting limited resources chasing every remote extreme merely because its 'possible', invariably stealing resources that could be better spent on the probable.
It is "probabilities" that matter most and we were given the most painful reminder, the latest in a host of painful reminders, of the significance of probability on 9/11.
This obviously isn't the story being told to the public, but you bet your ass this is the unwritten internal policy guiding increased scrutiny and who gets it, and I agree with it 110%.
When the infrastructure and capabilities to give all possibilities regardless of probability equal scrutiny, without causing air-travel to unnecessarily grind to a screeching halt with the consequence of forcing the airline industry out of the frying pan and into the fire, we will do so.
But its going to take a lot longer than the extremely foolish and naive time-frame expectation of a year to accomplish this goal. I don't know who gave you the absurd notion this would all be done in a year, but you can tell them I said they were an idiot.