• Europe skeptical about whole-body scanners

    Questions are being raised in several European countries about the effectiveness, cost effectiveness, health, and privacy aspects of whole-body scanners; a former head of security for the British Airports Authority: “A thorough body frisk would do the same sort of thing, if it is done properly, and of course it costs a lot less”

  • Sorting the bad guys from the good

    Israel’s WeCu claims a 95 percent success rate for its new terrorist detection system that monitors reactions to visual stimuli at airports and checkpoints; the company’s device flashes stimuli, such as photos, a symbol, or a code word, relating to the information authorities are most interested in (whether it is terrorism, drug smuggling, or other crimes), to passengers as they pass through terminal checkpoints; hidden biometric sensors then detect the subjects’ physical reactions and subtle behavioral changes remotely or during random contact

  • Partnership aims to help air shippers meet security deadline

    Congress has mandated that by August 2010, 100 percent of cargo on passenger planes must be screened; companies begin to position themselves to take advantage of the business opportunity involved in offering secure cargo warehousing and shipping

  • 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

  • U.S.-bound ship cargo to get more scrutiny

    The goal of screening 100 percent of U.S.-bound cargo containers is may not be reached any time soon, but new cargo-reporting requirement stipulates that ocean carriers and importers submit additional details about U.S.-bound cargo twenty-four hours before it is loaded onto vessels in foreign seaports

  • NYC subway security system: past due, over budget

    In 2005 the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) awarded Lockheed Martin a $212 million contract to create a cutting-edge security system the city’s subways, buses, and commuter trains; the cost of the security system has ballooned to $461 million and is now over-schedule by a year-and-a-half; The MTA. has $59 million left in capital funding

  • Researchers propose a new way to scan cargo containers

    In 2007 the U.S. government set itself the goal of screening all aviation cargo loaded onto passenger planes and all maritime cargo entering the country for both explosives and nuclear materials; this is an ambitious goal: there are more than ten millions containers entering the United States every year through sea ports and land border crossings, and there are more than 28,000 commercial flights

  • 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”