The Department of Homeland Security has placed five transportation security employees on leave following the inadvertent leak of a sensitive manual detailing security procedures for screening passengers at airports.
The workers, all employees of the Transportation Security Administration, were put on administrative leave while an investigation is being conducted into how the security breach occurred, according to the Associated Press.
The TSA manual was posted at a government procurement site last March by a private government contractor and was uncovered by a blogger on Sunday. Parts of the manual were redacted, but the redaction was bungled and allowed anyone to easily uncover the concealed information. But even the unredacted parts of the document were never meant to be seen by the public. The Screening Management Standard Operating Procedure contained this warning: “No part of this record may be disclosed to persons without a 'need to know.'"
The 93-page manual provided details about which passengers are more likely to be targeted for secondary screening, who is exempt from screening, TSA procedures for screening foreign dignitaries and CIA-escorted passengers, and extensive instructions for calibrating Siemens walk-through metal detectors.
It revealed the limitations of screening equipment to detect certain types of electrical wire and other potential bomb-making materials and provided details about what objects -- such as wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs -- are exempt from screening.
The manual also provided sample images of sensitive identification cards for DHS and CIA personnel as well as congressional representatives. And it disclosed that passengers carrying passports from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen or Algeria are to be designated for selective screening.
The 93-page manual was removed on Sunday, but not before someone had grabbed a copy of it and submitted it to whistleblower site Cryptome. Numerous copies have subsequently appeared on other sites.
The TSA told Threat Level on Monday that it was conducting a full investigation into how the document was exposed, but maintained that it was outdated and had been revised six times since the May 2008 version, which was posted, had been published.
At a Senate Judiciary hearing on Wednesday, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was briefly grilled about the mishap.
"We have already initiated personnel actions against the individuals involved," Napolitano told the senators, noting that the inspector general would be conducting an independent review of the breach as well.
Although the person who posted the document was a private contractor, Napolitano said that "some of the supervisors ultimately were at TSA."
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