• Senator Collins: U.S. airport full-body scanners inferior to those deployed in Amsterdam

    Maine’s junior U.S. senator says the full-body scanners DHS is deploying in the wake of the Christmas Day airline bomb threat are not the best devices available

  • Children must go through full body scanners at U.K. airports

    U.K. transport minister says that to exclude children from going through full body scanners risked undermining the security measures at U.K. airports; the government’s code of practice on the scanners said airport security staff had all been vetted, including a check of criminal and security service records

  • Nigeria installs body scanners at airport

    Lagos international airport installs three full-body scanners at a cost of $300,000 each. Nigeria’s three other international airports — in the capital Abuja, the oil town of Port Harcourt, and the largest northern city, Kano — are also scheduled to be equipped with the scanners

  • Day of trained sniffing bees is here

    The bee’s discreet sense of smell, equivalent to a dog’s, is being exploited as a much cheaper way to detect various odors in the environment; a U.K. company is now training bees to sniff out explosives and land mines — but also to identify diseases and cancers in people and animals, detect rapidly spreading bacteria in food, and identify dry rot in buildings

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  • Airport sensor detects explosives hidden in the body

    Smiths Detection says that the 16HR-LD model of its B-Scan technology can see everything; the machine’s low-dose security technology is able to see all internal body cavities for the detection of concealed threatening objects, such as bombs and detonators

  • Better explosives detection for soldiers, first responders in the field

    From a chemical viewpoint, developing a detector for nitroaromatic compounds such as TNT is difficult because such compounds have a low vapor pressure, meaning their concentration in air at room temperature is around six parts per billion; MIT researchers develop cantilever sensors which use functional coatings to transduce detection of chemicals into a signal; the coating, usually a polymer, swells up when it reacts with the target analyte and deflects the cantilever

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  • TSA: Full-body scanner safe for prostheses

    Full-body scanners are safe for passenger with artificial body parts — from replaced hips to augmented breasts; TSA says the scaners uses low-energy X-rays that do not penetrate the skin: prosthetic devices, artificial limbs, and surgically replaced body parts will not show up on the body scan image

  • GAO raises questions about effectiveness of full-body scanners

    The Obama administration is aggressively pushing for deployment of full-body scanners: 450 of the scanners will be installed at U.S. airports by the end of 2010; 950 installed by the end of 2011; and 1,800 by the end of 2014; the cost of installing and maintaining the scanners: about $3 billion over eight years; concerns have been expressed about privacy (some of the technologies used - for example, active millimeter-wave radiation — generate anatomically accurate images of passengers’ bodies) and health (some technologies, for example, backscatter X-ray, inundate passengers with large amounts or radiation (although many physicians say the amount of radiation is not health-threatening); now questions are being raised about the effectiveness of these scanners; GAO: “While [TSA] officials said [the scanners] performed as well as physical pat downs in operational tests, it remains unclear whether the AIT [advanced imaging technology] would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident”

  • TSA adds AS&E's X-ray inspection systems to qualified air cargo screening list

    Screening cargo on air planes is promising to be big business, and companies rush to have their screening cargo machines certified by TSA; AS&E has its Gemini 6040, Gemini 7555, and Gemini 100100 X-ray inspection systems added to TSA’s certified cargo screener list

  • Religious leaders discuss body scanners with DHS

    Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders met with DHS officials to discuss the privacy aspects of whole-body scanning; Muslim religious organizations, the Pope, and Orthodox Jewish authorities declared body scanners to be in violation of their respective religions’ modesty strictures, especially for women, and urged their followers to opt for pat-downs instead

  • Smiths Detection's mid-sized X-ray system added to TSA's Air Cargo Screening Qualified List

    By August 2010, all cargo carried on passenger planes will have to be screened; Smiths Detection’s latest addition to its list of cargo screening machines — a pallet-sized scanner — is the company’s sixth technology approved to help shippers meet TSA August 2010 100 percent air cargo screening deadline

  • TSA: Alleged child molester did not train or use new full-body scanners at Logan

    A Boston man charged with multiple child sex crimes was a certified luggage and passengers screener at Logan Airport; TSA says the man was already missing from work for several days when full-body scanners were deployed at Logan on 1 March, and thus had no access to the machines; the man’s arrest adds fuel to the opposition to body scanners

  • Passive millimeter-wave technology promoted as solving privacy, health concerns

    There are three leading technologies in whole-body scanning: backscatter X-ray, active millimeter wave, and passive millimeter wave; the first raises privacy issue; the second raises health concerns; Florida-based Brijot, a champion of passive millimeter wave, says its technology addresses both sets of concerns

  • Airport security by the numbers

    In its 2011 budget request, DHS has asked for $214.7 million to buy and install 500 whole-body scanners; 75 percent of high-risk airports and 60 percent of second-tier airports will have body scanners deployed by the end of 2011

  • Nigeria ordering Rapiscan backscatter imaging systems for the country's international airports

    The government of Nigeria is deploying Rapiscan’s Secure 1000 Single Pose backscatter whole-body scanners at the country’s four international airports; the systems will be used to screen passengers traveling to the United States as well other countries