[Infowarrior] - TSA Lab Seeks Radical Change at Airport Checkpoints

[Richard Forno]

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/March/SecurityBeat.htm#Sc
ience

March 2008

Transportation Lab Seeks Radical Change at Airport Checkpoints

Reported by Stew Magnuson

LOS ANGELES ‹ Transportation Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell
would like to see the day when airline passengers no longer have to take
their shoes off after standing in a long line at airport security
checkpoints.

To that end, she would like to combine the line and an array of sensors into
what she calls a ³tunnel of truth.²

The concept ‹ with the somewhat Orwellian name ‹ would have passengers stand
on a conveyor belt moving under an archway as various sensors scan them for
weapons, bombs or other prohibited items. By the time they step out of the
tunnel, they have been thoroughly checked out, she said at a homeland
security science and technology conference sponsored by the National Defense
Industrial Association.

³You¹re in line anyway Š why not enclose that in a little glass thing and do
your analysis there?² she asked. The lab has given a grant to Penn State
University to study the concept, she added.

The lab, located in Atlantic City, N.J., is responsible for testing current
screening devices and developing new technologies for both airports and for
other public transportation.

Among the new technologies that could be placed in the tunnels are
backscatter X-ray machines, which peer underneath clothes, and passive and
active millimeter wave sensors that can see the outlines of concealed metal
objects. These technologies are already being used in pilot programs.

Puffer machines are also in use and dislodge molecules from the residue
gathered during the manufacture of explosives. The human body also gives off
a heat signature, and sensors could follow the thermal plume coming off the
body as the passenger moves through the tunnel, she noted. Actual bombs, if
they are hidden on the body, give off their own heat signatures, and could
be detected as well.

Before the concept can move forward, the laboratory will have to perfect all
the sub-systems that would go into the so-called tunnel, she said.
Meanwhile, the lab continues to test machines designed to check shoes for
explosives without passengers having to take them off. So far, it has not
found an acceptable solution.
³We¹re still working on shoes. We¹re not there yet,² she said.