Safeguarding the private and public sector from insider threats

inside their bodies, particularly in prisons, as they are not visible to body scanners.

In contrast, transmission body scanners penetrate more deeply and allow security officials to see if individuals have hidden any items inside their bodies.

He said, “I’ve replaced both of these two technologies (backscatter and millimeter wave based body scanners) at a number of large institutions simply because the bad guys find out the weaknesses of the system. So if the bad guys at the jails and prisons know the weaknesses of our system, then the TSA, which basically deploys these two, they’re being exploited there too.”

He pointed to several examples where convicts successfully smuggled contraband items hidden in their body cavities through multiple layers of security before finally being caught by transmission body scanners.

To ease privacy concerns, Wolfe compared images of the current backscatter body scanners, which show the contours of a body, to transmission body scanners, which appeared like a medical x-ray and did not reveal any compromising areas of the body.

Deborah Misir, a former Department of Justice attorney who also served as counsel to the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force after 9/11, was quick to point out that the legality of the transmission body scanners has yet to be determined in the court of law as these new scanners essentially perform a strip search.

She added that “the courts are working to keep up with,” the pace that new technological solutions are being invented.

“The bottom line is that [courts are] going to continue to look through these issues with the paradigm of the employer has a right to protect their information versus the employee as a U.S. citizen and as a human being has a right to a certain degree of privacy.”

Misir also warned of the potential legal ramifications of other stepped up security measures as private employers and government agencies more diligently protect against insider threats.

Misir cautioned that there must be a balance between guarding against insider threats and protecting employee rights because “if an employee’s rights are violated, they’ll be on the phone to a lawyer in no time and you’ll be looking at a lawsuit.”

Misir suggested that employers do their “due diligence” before hiring an employee and carefully screen them. Potential procedures include drug testing, credit reports, background criminal checks, and E-Verify to quickly and easily screen employees as a first line of defense.

While E-Verify, a service provided to employers for free by the government, is primarily used to check immigration status, “it is also a good way to make sure a person is who he claims he is,” she said.

“If you send his or her information through the system and it doesn’t match, that’s a red flag right there,” she explained.

As for surveillance, she said that it was generally legal for employers to use security cameras, track emails and phone calls, and the movement of a corporate car because “employees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in common work areas.”

Despite having the legal ability to implement these security procedures, Misir warned that doing so could fuel employee discontent and actually be harmful to the organization.

She said, “Employees are just not going to like it if they know they are being taped all the time or unduly intruded upon. If they get really angry about it, there’s legal exposure, and if you’re a big enough company adverse media coverage, which could hurt your brand.”