Would you support full body scan screening at airports?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Option 4, duh.

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- A suspected terrorist’s attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner may override privacy concerns and intensify a push for full-body scanning equipment at airports.

U.S. officials charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it prepared to land in Detroit on Christmas Day. President Barack Obama said yesterday he ordered a thorough review of the episode and called for new scrutiny of screening policies and technologies.

Metal detectors currently used to screen passengers wouldn’t have found the explosive allegedly carried aboard by the suspect, said former Federal Aviation Administration security chief Billie Vincent. Only more sophisticated devices such as low-level X-rays and millimeter-wave technology would work, Vincent said.

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, called for more widespread use of the full-body scanners after the aborted attack. “We were very lucky this time but we may not be so lucky next time, which is why our defenses must be strengthened,” Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement yesterday.

The committee said it would hold a hearing next month on airline security and how the alleged terrorist got onto the plane.

Advanced Equipment

Companies such as OSI Systems Inc., Smiths Group Plc, Safran SA and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. may benefit from any requirement that airports get more security equipment. London-based Smiths is the world’s biggest maker of airport scanners. Safran, based in Paris, is the world leader in biometric technologies, such as fingerprint scanners. New York- based L-3 also makes scanners for airport use.

L-3 has “developed a more sophisticated system that could prevent smuggling of almost anything on the body,” said Howard Rubel, an analyst at Jefferies & Co., who has a “hold” rating on the stock. “Speed and privacy issues have slowed its introduction.”

Jennifer Barton, a spokeswoman for New York-based L-3, didn’t respond to a phone call seeking comment.

L-3 rose $1.17, or 1.4 percent, to $86.80 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading yesterday. That was the highest closing price since October 2008. OSI jumped $2.45, or 11 percent, to $24.47 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The percentage gain was the biggest since Jan. 29.

OSI’s Rapiscan unit makes machines that can detect liquids and other potential explosives beneath passengers’ clothing. In October, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration placed an order valued at $25 million for Rapiscan’s imaging equipment, the Hawthorne, California-based company said.

Expediting Delivery

“We are starting to implement and put them in at TSA’s direction at U.S. airports,” Peter Kant, an executive vice president for Rapiscan, said yesterday in an interview. “We’ve been on the phone a lot with TSA about how to expedite delivery.”

The company has delivered about 40 machines so far to the agency, he said.

The Transportation Security Administration has been adding low-level X-rays and millimeter-wave technology machines to find explosives. There are millimeter-wave machines at 19 airports, the agency said on its Web site.

TSA recently announced the purchase of 150 Rapiscan units with some of its $1 billion in airport-security funds from the $787 billion economic stimulus package, said Greg Soule, a security administration spokesman.

The agency intends to purchase an additional 300 advanced imaging-technology units in 2010, Soule said.

Using the technology is voluntary for passengers, the security administration said. Those who do not wish to receive millimeter wave screening will undergo metal detector screening and a pat-down, according to the agency.

Privacy Issues

Full-body imaging has been criticized by some advocacy groups as an invasion of privacy. Kant said his company has mitigated that concern by blurring body images and having technicians viewing the images in a different location from the screening equipment.

“There have been privacy concerns expressed about the use of these whole body-imaging devices, but I think those privacy concerns, which are, frankly, mild, have to fall in the face of the ability of these machines to detect material like this,” Lieberman said on “Fox News Sunday” on Dec. 27.

Using technology for every threat may cost more and reduce risk less than measures such as increasing visa reviews in “high-risk” countries, said David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University and the University of North Carolina.

“Every time we have an episode, we should not rush to judgment and spend billions of dollars deploying the newfangled technology that will meet a very narrow sliver of the threat,” said Schanzer. “That’s not a satisfying response that politicians can make. Politicians feel an urgent need to respond to the threats today.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

option 1

[Bo]

Yes, safety first. Even though people might feel uncomfortable with it, if they have nothing to hide they shouldn't worry about it and it will only take a few seconds.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

option 1

[Alexander Hamilton]

Option 4

[anvi]

Don't know.  None of us know enough yet to fomulate apppropriate responsive measures.

Still, even with the best conceivable security procedures imaginable, even when you look a hundred times, you can still miss something.  For every new piece of security technology, there will be invented two ways to get around it.  That's why the alertness and vigilence of passangers, crew members and whoever else is on a scene is indespensible for security.  Call the outcome of this event lucky if you want, but we have something to learn from the actions of the responsible and brave folks on that flight.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Full body scan? So that's how it is called in English. In Germany (or rather: in German media) it's called Nacktscanner (literally, "nude scanner"), which a) sounds as retarded in German as it sounds in English and b) doesn't make any sense at all.

[© tweed]

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.



go worry about something relevant.

[Magic 8-Ball]

No.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

No.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

No, but I do understand why some people would want them.

[Mint]

go worry about something relevant.

[Eraserhead]

No thanks. I'm not Ben Constine.

[Scam of God]

Absolutely not. Freedom always, always trumps so-called "safety".

[Ebowed]

Lol no.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From an entirely self-interested point of view, it's a better idea than certain alternatives. If I'm going to have to suffer some form of indignity in such places, I like the idea of dragging the lot of you down with me.

[Sasquatch]

No.

Where does it stop?

[Franzl]

No, but I do understand why some people would want them.

[tmthforu94]

No, but I do understand why some people would want them.

[Alcon]

Not to be willingly obtuse, but is there some hidden privacy violation here that I'm not understanding?

[Torie]

Probably, depending on cost and efficacy. The privacy thing does not bother me.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Not to be willingly obtuse, but is there some hidden privacy violation here that I'm not understanding?

A legal one?  God knows.

If the scanners see through everything, then obviously every woman is going to object to their privates being on a screen, also people with prosthetic devices which don't set off the detectors will have those in plain view, and of couse guys with small penises won't be happy .

It's a decency/privacy thing.....and unless you haven't seen the quality of our TSA screeners, I'll tell ya, I don't want some grocery store reject screener to have that kind of access.

[JSojourner]

GG is just hoping for a body cavity search.

;-)


(No, btw.)

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Only if I was working at the airport, as the security person responsible for scanning the good-looking guys. But since there probably wouldn't be seperate lines for hotties, and non-hotties, I don't see the point.

You know, chances are about 10 000 times bigger that you'll die the next time you sit in a car than that you'll ever be on a plane that is destroyed by terrorists. So I second the people who think we should start worry about relevant things. 

[Sewer]

FUCK NO.