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  Volume: XX, Issue No. 02 September 1-15, 2010  
     
 
  AVIATION
  New concerns arise over body scanners
_A Monitor Report
Washington, DC : Aviation security experts say the machines may miss items that metal detectors catch. Airline passengers may also be able to hide materials in the groin or body cavities.

As US Government begins deploying whole-body imaging machines to replace metal detectors at airports nationwide, some security experts worry that the new technology could make it easier, not harder, to sneak weapons and explosives onto airplanes.

In the wake of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing, the Transportation Security Administra-tion decided to double its investment in the new machines, with a goal of installing 450 across the country by the end of the year and 1,800 by 2014.

The machines are best-known for the privacy issues they pose, because they can peer through clothes and present screeners with an image that some have likened to a virtual strip search. The government has addressed those concerns by obscuring the faces of those being screened, preventing examiners from seeing the passengers, and allowing the option of a physical pat down.

But the TSA has not been able to ease concerns among some aviation security specialists about the body imagers.

"I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing B747," said Rafi Sela, former chief security officer at the Israel Airport Authority, who is now a security consultant.

The TSA won't talk about specific capabilities but says the body imagers will better enable screeners to find nonmetallic weapons, including concealled powdered and liquid explosives that do not set off metal detectors.

"No technology is going to be the silver bullet, but this is a significant enhancement," said Robin Kane, Assistant Admi-nistrator for the TSA's Office of Security Technology.

Officials hastened deployment of the scanners after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly smuggled a powdered explosive sewn in his underwear onto a Detroit-bound flight from Am-sterdam last Christ-mas, but failed to detonate it.

However, Stephen M. Lord of the Govern-ment Accountability Office told Congress in March that the TSA's classified testing shows it's unclear whether the technology would have detected Abdulmutallab's bomb.

The GAO also noted that unlike metal detectors, the body imagers rely on TSA employees to accurately read the image, as they must do with X-ray images of carry-on bags.

Classified tests show that X-ray screeners routinely miss threats, said Clark Ervin, former Department of Homeland Security inspector general. The rate of detection for baggage X-rays is "disastrously low, and it's no better than it was on 9/11 - that's the scary thing," he said.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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