• Work to start soon on Nashville airport's new baggage-screening system

    Nashville International Airport in a $31 million project to move the federally mandated explosive detection systems from the ticketing lobby to a space beneath the terminals

  • TSA considers repair station rule exemptions

    New TSA repair-shop proposal provides flexibility and recognizes differences between large and small shops, industry leaders believe, but those leaders also cautioned that many of the details of the requirements, and their impacts on small business, are still unclear

  • Global Entry to become permanent

    DHS secretary Janet Napolitano has decided to make the Global Global Entry system — a quicker way through customs and border control — permanent; U.K. and U.S. authorities are also working on an iris recognition scheme, similar to the Dutch Privium project, to fast-track entry to the United Kingdom

  • Hawaii judge throws out child porn evidence found by TSA

    U.S. judges keep telling TSA that the agency’s security screeners at airport are there to prevent weapons and explosives from being taken on board — nothing else; it is not the screeners’ job to ask passengers why they carry a lot of cash in the luggage — or child porn

  • DHS misses deadline for certifying new radiation detectors

    Back in June, the head of DHS’s nuclear monitoring division said the agency would sign off this fall on two congressionally mandated certifications for the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitor system; the testing and evaluation of these innovative nuclear detection systems have not yet been completed, though; the new machines are designed to not only detect radiation but identify the nature of its source, thus eliminating time-consuming secondary inspections to determine whether a material is dangerous

  • TSA limits scope of screeners' searches

    An assistant to congressman Ron Paul was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by TSA officials for nearly half an hour after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine; under a threat of a law suit, TSA has changed its search policies: TSA screeners can now only conduct searches aimed at keeping firearms and explosives off of airplanes and cannot search for crimes unrelated to transportation security, and the agency also told screeners that passengers carrying large sums of cash have not broken the law

  • GAO: TSA continues to face challenges in finding and deploying checkpoint screening technology

    Since TSA’s creation, ten passenger screening technologies have been in various phases of research, development, test and evaluation, procurement, and deployment, but TSA has not deployed any of these technologies to airports nationwide

  • Behavioral-detection TSA officers keep a watchful eye on people at airports

    To identify dangerous people, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has stationed specially trained behavior detection officers at 161 U.S. airports; the officers are trained to spot suspicious behavior; last year, officers nationwide required 98,805 passengers to undergo additional screenings’ police questioned 9,854 of them and arrested 813

  • Why does aviation security receive so much money relative to ground transportation security?

    Each year, more than 26 million passengers travel through Logan Airport; on an average month, more than the 20 million ride the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority; yet, more than $30 billion have been spent on aviation security since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, compared to just $1.5 billion for security on public transportation

  • New airport security scanners raise concerns

    Canada’s privacy watchdog said it agreed with federal authorities that full-body scans should be used at Canada’s airports; security personnel would be in a separate room while viewing the image and would never come in contact with the person being screened

  • Reveal Imaging awarded $3.9 million for personnel inspection system

    The company said it plans to use multiple sensor technologies and automation to avoid the need for human operators to separate threats from harmless objects using multiple monitors

  • Questioning TSA's behavior monitoring program

    Robert Burns, who is nin charge of implementing TSA’s behavior detection program at airport, admits that TSA’s behavior detection officers will be looking both for people who exhibit suspicious and nervous behavior — and for those who do not, because failure to appear nervous as evidenced by monitored bodily functions, “is just as indicative of being something that has to be resolved” as is the person who exhibits those signs”; former Congressman Bob Barr says: “In other words, you can’t win”

  • Backscatter technology: the future of airport security scanning?

    Manchester Airport is testing backscatter scanning technology from Rapiscan; the Rapiscan system works by bouncing X-rays off an individual’s skin to produce an outline image of the person’s body

  • Michigan airport turns off Web site over malware risk

    The Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids temporarily pulled its site in response to an unspecified malware threat

  • CSC replaces Unisys in a half-billion-dollar TSA account

    A 2006 DHS IG review criticized Unisys for handling TAS’s Information Technology Infrastructure Program (ITIP) services contract; CSC has now won the five-year contract, potentially worth $493 million