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Faster Full-Body Scans Coming to Airports

New machines could replace metal detectors

By Sarah Quinn,  Newser Staff

Posted Dec 29, 2009 11:11 AM CST

(Newser) – In the wake of last week's attempted attack on a Detroit-bound flight, security companies say they're working on new body-scanning machines that search out threats like plastic explosives in an instant and could replace airport metal detectors. Similar scanners are used today at 19 US airports, but they take a relatively long 30 seconds or so because passengers have to stand in a glass area with their arms up.

The new machines are "as quick as going through a metal detector," one manufacturer tells USA Today. "You don't even stop walking." The TSA is testing them and plans to install 150 in airports next year, while ordering another 300. Privacy advocates complain they're a little too detailed, but the renewed call for better security could override those concerns.

A woman is scanned by airport security before entering the gate area at the airport in Cancun, Mexico, on Sept. 10, 2009.
A woman is scanned by airport security before entering the gate area at the airport in Cancun, Mexico, on Sept. 10, 2009.   (AP Photo/Israel Leal)
A passenger is checked inside a body scanner at Schiphol airport, Netherlands, Monday, Dec. 28, 2009.
A passenger is checked inside a body scanner at Schiphol airport, Netherlands, Monday, Dec. 28, 2009.   (AP Photo/Cynthia Boll)
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This is the only type of machine that is capable of detecting the kind of device that was part of the attempted Christmas bombing. - Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security secretary

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 20 comments
JoeQ
Dec 30, 2009 12:18 PM CST
Yeah but I don't want MY tax money wasted paying for YOUR misguided sense of security. Now if it came out of YOUR paycheck and YOU used it to feel "safe", good for you.
JoeQ
Dec 30, 2009 12:14 PM CST
@piyrwq. Well, you clearly do not know what you are talking about. You don't lnow it, but the sources you mentioned are IR and RF photons in the kHz to mHz range. That wouldn't work but it wouldnt be too bad if it were true. These machines are much worse. Old ideas use x-rays which are bad enough as it is (x-rays are high energy photons). New ideas are to use protons, alpha particles, or beta particles. Any of these would leave your body ever so slightly radioactive for a while afterwards. Isn't that lovely? All in the name of "security". That and the machines cost over a million dollars a piece, and you need one for every concorse in every airport in the USA plus all airports flying into the USA. Do the math and think a little about what that all means.
piyrwq
Dec 30, 2009 3:16 AM CST
Here is a basic fact- the body scanners don't use x-rays, protons, alpha, or beta particles.
 

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