The millimeter wave whole body imager scans people's bodies.Posted on 09/14/2009 10:32:49 AM PDT by BGHater
As any airline passenger can attest, security at the nation's airports has gotten infinitely more stringent in the eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks.
While the technology to screen passengers has become more advanced and the check-in lines a little shorter, the question of whether flying is terrorism-proof remains.
By now the routine has become mind-numbingly familiar: Travelers take off their shoes and put them in gray plastic containers along with their toiletries. They carry no more than three 3-ounce bottles in a 1-quart plastic bag, remove laptops from cases and so on. It's a scene played out millions of times a day across the country's airports.
Controversial Technology
If not a showcase, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is certainly one of the nation's better-equipped facilities, security-wise. It has the latest in explosives-detecting luggage X-rays and something called a "millimeter wave whole body imager." The machine produces an image of each traveler who passes through it and leaves little to the imagination.
A TSA employee who cannot see the passenger checks the scan for what Robin Kane, assistant administrator of security technology at the Transportation Security Administration, calls anomalies.
"He'll just see the image come up," Kane says. "They'll look and see if there are any anomalies on the body." For instance, he says, the employee scanning the images might notice the person has something in his right pocket, which would allow a targeted search.
The machinery at the checkpoints is just the tip of the iceberg of what the TSA says is a 20-layer approach to security.
'9/11 Hangover'
But critics of the airport-screening process call all this "security theater."
Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot who writes a blog called Ask the Pilot, for Salon.com, says much of what occurs at airline checkpoints is needless.
"We have this 9/11 hangover going on for eight years," he says. "We see it most poignantly at the airport."
Smith says there should be less emphasis on looking for sharp objects, which, since the advent of secure cockpit doors inside planes, don't pose much of a threat anyway. The focus, he says, should be on explosives detection.
"We're wasting immense amounts of time and manpower searching through people's bags for little knives and pointy objects, and taking harmless liquids away from people," he says. "That doesn't make us safer."
Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon says airports need to beef up security in another area — the "back" of the airport, where maintenance personnel have unfettered access to planes.
"Our original vision was that everybody accessing the secure area of the airport, whether it was the terminal or the tarmac, would have to go through screening — similar to the system at Heathrow airport," he says. "I mean mechanics — everybody has to go through that system every time."
Positive Steps
But DeFazio defends the TSA. He says screening has improved dramatically in recent years. "When I came to Congress, the level of security at the airport couldn't even find a fully assembled .45 in a briefcase with a pair of socks and a pair of underwear," he says. "Today there is no question they would find a fully assembled handgun."
The government has spent about $45 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, on aviation security.
On Thursday, the Obama administration said it intends to fill a key vacancy at the top of the TSA and will nominate Erroll Southers to lead the agency.
Southers currently is assistant chief of Homeland Security and Intelligence at Los Angeles World Airports.
The millimeter wave whole body imager scans people's bodies.
Joy. How much would it cost to secure the border?
Another bonanza for unionized government jobs courtesy of D-rats amendments when W wanted these contracted to private companies.
Are Post-Sept. 11 Airport Screens Just ‘Security Theater’?
The prime function is to Sovietize the mentality of the American people.
Nothing. We’re already paying the troops anyhow.
My buddy is a pilot. It always amuses him that they take away his little “pointy” objects but he still has his two bare hands that he could use to fly the plane into any object of his choosing. It’s all a hoax and is all theater. You can bet all those people delivering sodas and magazines are not being screened as carefully as they should be.
Aviation “security” was implemented when passengers realized that their hijackers might use their airplane as a cruise missile. Better to die fighting that to be flown into a building.
Wow. What happens when kids go through? Child porn? Serious.
Getting on a plane to travel overseas a shortly after 9/11, I couldn’t help but notice that the metal silverware was replaced by plastic. Walking through first class I also noticed an entire tray of GLASS glasses. Any passenger could grab a glass, break it, and have a “pointy object” that would do just as much damage as a razor blade. ‘Security theater’ it surely is.
Yup, I agree. Theatre pure and simple, and doens’t make us one iota safer.
Regards,
True story...I was boarding a plane in Dallas and got waved into a pat dpwn booth. I was facing the gate. I am one of the most obvious white men in America, older and obviously a business travler. While I was being patted down and examined what looked lik three poster children for Jihad rolled up to the line, walked through with two bags apiece, speaking some Arabic language, went through “security” and headed for the gate. I sais to the silen t guy who was going through my stuff “Are you guys kidding? YOU ARE PUTTING ME THROUGH THIS AND WAVING THESE THREE INTO THE PLANE? I WON’T GET ON THAT PLANE WITHOUT THEM GETTING THE SAME SEARCH!” And yes, I was really loud.
Well, you would think I had just threatened to kill the POtuS. Yep, I was pissed, but what happened was I was surrounded by two more ugly SOB’s who thought I was WAY out of line (their ethnicity aside, I was having trouble understanding all the words, but got the gist) and was told I had better STFU or I WOULD miss the plane, because I would be held by security for “deeper clearance.”
Just as things were about to get a little ugly, there were obviously a number of passengers in the line that saw the same unbelievable PC wave-through that I did and there was such a commotion and several people at the desk, that it took all of us in REBELLION to get the Saudi looking Homies off the plane and passed through with a reasonable amount of security. They were, of course, deeply offended and really pissed that they would be singled out like that.
Score one for the older white guy, some offended passengers and common sense, I guess, but I wonder how many others have had similar stories?
I worked as a security guard at the Mpls-St. Paul airport in the 70s and 80s. Both passenger gates and maintainance gates.
1) “Pointy” objects can still be used to take hostages. Since passengers are generally unarmed, an airplane is a hostage-rich environment. Yes, they should be screened for.
2) It is more like “Political-Correctness Theater” than “Security Theater”. Profiling is a valid and effective security measure. But the hands of the TSA workers are tied by PC rules.
3) Yes, the biggest hole in security is the maintainance workers.
And all those hands with swine flu germs on them touching those gray plastic boxes. A source for the upcoming pandemic.
The idiot made me miss my flight. If I did have an explosive in my case, that moron would never have found it.
Hey, mini-tea party! Somewhere Sam Adams is smiling.
He asked to see their Supervisor in the loudest of tones, and told him her Civil Rights are being violated and that you have a Civil Rights Suit on your hands if you continue.
They stopped faster than $&!t threw a tin-horn.....
Umm... S&%t doesn’t stop on its way through a tin horn.
Did the rate of plane crashes drop or stay the same since they started this “needless” checking?
“Umm... S&%t doesn’t stop on its way through a tin horn.”
You should see a doc about that problem...or lay off the bad Tex-Mex ;^)
yes..........profiling would be more effiecient.
If I have to explain it, it ain’t funny! Oh never mind~!
The gov is always ready to become more fascist.
It would be simpler to block entry to the USA from ALL jihadi-friendly countries, and expel all who are already here.
With a few 2-3 ounce containers of certain chemicals you could put together one heck of a bad time in short order. I don’t think it’s possible to screen for everything and it doesn’t matter anyway if the procedures are being followed half-a$$ed. Not an easy solution.
The stupidest and most useless “security” rule has got to be the one that makes the traveler take his laptop out of his carry-on so that the laptop can go thru the x-ray machine separately. The same traveler can have a portable radio, DVD player or other electronic device in his carry-on — and it doesn’t need to be screened. What harm is a laptop going to do that a portable radio can’t do?
“What harm is a laptop going to do that a portable radio can’t do?”
A laptop has a high-energy battery and can be a timing/trigger device. The main reason you take it out is so that they can see that it is not connected to anything else. The secondary reason is that if it’s in the case there is a lot of “clutter” from the accessory junk we carry around, wires, mice, chargers, and so forth. They want to scan it alone. lying flat (there have been incidents with laptops in the past that has raised the security awareness).
If you run your radio through and the system sees a large lithium battery they’ll ask for a secondary look-see.
Why can't I bring my own sealed water bottles? Why are solids okay and not liquids? Suppose I get in line with a stick of butter (it was a solid when I got in line)? Am I the only one who thinks this was all dreamed up by the airport food service providers?
Unfortunately there is no area that is terror-proof. The US and other nations cooperate to greatly reduce the threat, but it’s an exercise in risk reduction, not risk elimination. We could completely ban luggage and clothed people on airplanes. You’d be safer but the policy wouldn’t be popular or practical. Security is extremely complex and most measures and prevented events are never made public. Rest assured that there is plenty going on in airport security that you don’t see - ticketing control, plainclothes observers in the airport, cargo inspection, etc.
If a container of liquid more than 3 oz is too dangerous to take onto a plane, why are they throwing all of those dangerous containers into a big trash barrel right there next to all of the security screeners?
So you know the drill, are used to it, and probably just see it as another inconvenience of travel. They could search you, or the grandma that can barely hear them, or the person who is going to scream, "Profiling!", or that guy who looks like he just ran his 350# butt up 20 flights of stairs with goat cheese sandwich in each hand. Hmm, tough choice if you're there to punch the clock.
I have a suggestion. Make the flight crews do security for their flights. That way the people looking for dangerous stuff literally have a little skin in the game.
They weren't really being "singled out like that" if you were being searched, too.
-PJ
-PJ
>> A laptop has a high-energy battery and can be a timing/trigger device. <<
So can a simple, homemade circuit board, tucked away inside a portable radio and operated by a low-energy battery. And ditto for an analog, mechanical clock that doesn’t use batteries of any kind.
>> The main reason you take it out is so that they can see that it is not connected to anything else.<<
Not persuasive. The “timer” in question could operate via a very low-powered wireless device.
Anyway, if somebody was going to take a bomb on board in his carry-on baggage, why would he even need a timing device? He could just set the thing off by hand — assuming of course that he got it through whatever explosive sniffing devices the security folks might have.
>> The secondary reason is that if it’s in the case there is a lot of “clutter” from the accessory junk we carry around, wires, mice, chargers, and so forth. <<
OK. Just require that all the cables, etc. be in one-quart plastic bags, placed well apart from the laptop and ready for inspection if they don’t clear the scan.
>> If you run your radio through and the system sees a large lithium battery they’ll ask for a secondary look-see. <<
I’ll give it try. But I’m still very dubious.
ME: were, of course, deeply offended and really pissed that they would be singled out like that.
YOU: They weren’t really being “singled out like that” if you were being searched, too.
ME: They were taken off the plane. I got hit before boarding. Not saying they shouldn’t have been pissed...saying they NEVER should have been boarded while I was getting frisked...actully, I should NEVER be frisked anyway...to my knowledge there are no older Irish men in history (not even against the Bloody Brits) that have blown up a plane and profiling DOES and SHOULD be used...
So can a simple, homemade circuit board, tucked away inside a portable radio
Xray will flag that as an anomaly.
Not persuasive. The “timer” in question could operate via a very low-powered wireless device.
Hidden inside the laptop, so let’s see if it’s connected to anything.
OK. Just require that all the cables, etc. be in one-quart plastic bags..
Yeah, that’s easier than taking the puter out and putting it in a bucket!
You will find this hard to believe, but the stuff they do and the way they do it has been pretty carefully thought out. Sometimes the analysts will see a likelihood of an event, a loophole that could be exploited, and they take steps to plug the gap. In other cases, experience has taught them what to look for and how to thwart the event from happening. The exact reasoning is not made public, because that information becomes exploitable.
Let’s assume you did not know about the Shoe Bomber, it would seem pretty silly to have to go through the line in your argyles. I also think it’s notable that planes stopped falling out of the sky as often once we started doing these stupid things (and also interesting that the rate seems to be creeping up again, including foreign hijackings, hmmm)
Ritualized airport privacy violations are far more than theater. They keep us in a state of fear, so we more readily exchange liberty for security.
They condition us to accept massive, probing intrusions into our intimate personal effects.
They remind us that Osama bin Laden is laughing at us, savoring his victory over America’s Constitutional heritage of freedom and liberty. Because we were too weak and scared to stand up and oppose Big Government IN ALL ITS MANIFESTATIONS on 9/12/01.
They remind us that the biggest threats to our freedom are DOMESTIC, NOT FOREIGN, ENEMIES.
And most importantly, that eternal vigilance is required of EVERY GENERATION.
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