• 950 whole-body scanners in U.S. airports by end of 2011

    The administration has allocated $215 million in the proposed 2011 budget to buy 500 whole-body scanners; they will be added to the 450 to be bought this year; currently there are 40 body scanners operating in 19 U.S. airports

  • Ahern signals support for airport body scanners

    The Irish government will support the deployment of whole-body scanner at Irish airports; Minister of Justice Dermot Ahern: “If additional measures are required either in exchange of passenger information or better technology, then we should take them”; Ireland has also accepted the apology of the Slovak government for an explosive-smuggling exercise which saw an unwitting Slovak passenger smuggle explosives planted in his luggage by Slovak intelligence through Irish security

  • IBM filed patents for airport security profiling technology

    IBM has filed a dozen patent applications which define a sophisticated scheme for airport terminal and perimeter protection, incorporating potential support for computer implementation of passenger behavioral profiling to detect security threats

  • GAO: TSA needs to test whole-body scanners rigorously

    A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) needs to make sure that the whole-body scanners the agency plans to deploy at U.S. airports undergo thorough operational and vulnerability testing; a failure to do such vetting has already resulted in a similar airport checkpoint security technology for explosives detection being withdrawn from service before being fully deployed, the GAO report noted

  • Yemen bolsters airport security – and adheres to Muslim strictures

    Growing pressure from European countries lead Yemen to bolster its lax airport security measures; among the new measures are whole-body scanners; because of Muslim sensibilities, female security scanners would watch the images of women passengers’ body images, and male security scanners would observe the images of male passengers

  • Thermal-boosted infrared detection scanners address radiation, privacy concerns

    Iscon Video Imaging’s proprietary thermal-boosted infrared detection technology shows objects and clothing without any harmful radiation; the detection system creates a temperature differential between clothes and a hidden object

  • Research aims to improve airport security

    From body-part censors to cameras that recognize faces, Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab is working with security technology that assuages privacy concerns; CMU’s Instinctive Computing Lab, eventually envisions a system that can wipe out the body image entirely, picking up only weapons, which will appear to be floating in space

  • U.S. Supreme Court will eventually rule on the legality of whole-body scanning

    In the absence, at least for now, of an overarching U.S. Supreme Court decision, how would U.S. courts react to the privacy concerns surrounding whole-body searches, assuming a legal challenge is initiated against taking pictures of one’s private parts while trying to fly to the United States? An answer may be found on the fact that at least two U.S. circuit courts of appeal have beaten back challenges to airport security measures; in the most recent one, in 2006, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Justice Samuel Alito’s old stomping grounds — ruled a suspicionless, unwarranted search during airport screening was allowable under the “administrative search doctrine”; the doctrine, elucidated in a 1971 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said that “searches conducted as part of a general regulatory scheme in furtherance of an administrative purpose, rather than as part of a criminal investigation to secure evidence of a crime, may be permissible under the Fourth Amendment though not supported by a showing of probable cause directed to a particular place or person to be searched”

  • U.S. airlines worry about security fee hikes

    The ailing U.S. airline industry – the industry has lost some $60 billion since 2001 – is worried that the Obama administration is set to hike to security fees passengers pay on top of the price of the ticket; the do not believe they should shoulder the financial burden of added security; an airline spokesperson: “The airlines are not under attack; the country is under attack”

  • Gordon Brown: U.K. airports to get whole-body scanners next week

    The U.K. prime minister said that beginning next week, whole-body scanners will be deployed at U.K. airports; in addition to backscatter X-rays and millimeter wave systems, Brown hinted that the government would seek to deploy terahertz technology

  • Biometric travel luggage for secure, stylish travel

    The biometric business case offers travelers a high level of security for their luggage; the case can be opened only if the built-in scanner recognizes the fingerprints of the individual trying to open it; for family luggage, the fingerprints of several family members may be programmed into the scanner’s memory

  • U.S. boarding pass system easy to circumvent

    Unbelievable but true: If a terrorist obtains someone else’s credit card, he (the terrorist) could then follow instructions on the Internet to doctor a boarding pass; the terrorist could then show the fake boarding pass with his own name instead of the cardholder’s, along with his own ID, to pass through security, where the boarding pass is not scanned into the system; then at the gate, where the terrorist is not asked to show his ID again, he can simply hand in the real boarding pass with the cardholder’s name and be let onto the plane

  • Potential security breach in German airports workers' IDs

    A German TV news program and members of a computer club demonstrated how they managed remotely to access data stored on key cards used by airport employees; terrorists could use such a breach to gain admittance to restricted areas of the airport

  • Discrimination warning over U.K. airport body scanners

    U.K. equality watchdog wrote U.K. home secretary to say it was “concerned that that the proposals to introduce body scanners are likely to have a negative impact on individuals’ rights to privacy, especially members of particular groups including disabled people, older people, children, transgendered people, women and religious groups”

  • U.S. calls for more stringent aviation security in light of al-Qaida threat

    The Obama administration yesterday instructed all airlines flying to the United States or within the country were told Thursday to prepare for even tighter security because of the al-Qaida threat from Yemen; a U.S. counterterrorism official said American intelligence agencies were intensely examining all information about threats from the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula, including potential plots and specific individuals