Aviation securityWearing shoes at airport checkpoints could be a new reality
As part of its continuing efforts to make security procedures at airport checkpoints easier for travelers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is actively seeking technological solutions that would allow passengers to keep their shoes on
U.S.Navy officers testing a shoe scanner at Bangkok Airport // Source: bangkokpost.com
As part of its continuing efforts to make security procedures at airport checkpoints easier for travelers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is actively seeking technological solutions that would allow passengers to keep their shoes on.
Beginning in 2001, after a terrorist attempted to smuggle explosives aboard an airplane by hiding them inside his shoes in 2001, passengers have been forced to remove their shoes and have them scanned by an x-ray machine.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano recently said this policy could change in the near future, and several companies have already developed shoe scanning equipment and are actively pitching TSA.
For instance, IDO Security has created Magshoe, a metal-detecting device that has been deployed in hundreds of airports and cruise ships around the world.
“As long as you’re still when you step onto the machine, it immediately reads the area from the soles of your shoes, midway up your calf. And then you step off the machine,” explained Michael Goldberg, the president of IDO Security, an Israeli firm. “You’ll get a green or a red, which is a go/no-go signal.”
Morpho Detection, a subsidiary of the French defense giant Safran, has also created a shoe-scanning device, but unlike Magshoe, Morpho’s ShoeScanner can also detect chemical compounds.
“It detects a wide variety of explosive and in fact, non-explosive, threats,” said Steve Hill, a spokesman for the company.
“As the passenger’s standing in this taco shell, if you will, there are plastic doors that are closed in front of him or her,” Hill explained. “And when the screening process of eight to twelve seconds is complete, the doors either open or remain closed, if there’s an alarm condition that’s detected.”
Some critics argue that technology like shoe scanners could actually make airport security more frustrating for passengers.
“If we continue to add these reactive patches to an old system, it just bogs down the whole process and it becomes very inefficient,” argued Steve Lott, the vice president of communications at Air Transport Association, an airline trade group.
In contrast, Jay Stanley, an analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, welcomed the new technology as he believed these scanners would be an improvement over existing security procedures.
“We’ve never really had a problem with particle-sniffers,” he said. “And in fact, we’ve encouraged the TSA to invest more money in developing those kinds of technologies, because they aren’t really an invasion of privacy.”
It is still unclear when TSA will change its no-shoe policy, so until then, passengers will be forced to continue removing their shoes at checkpoints.
