[Infowarrior] - Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts

[Richard Forno]

Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts

Todger, yes. Combustibles, no

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Security, 24th January 2010 11:02 GMT

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/24/body_scanner_fail/

Most of the uproar over full-body scanners has focused on privacy  
concerns. There's one larger question, however, that hasn't received  
much scrutiny by the chattering classes: do the damnable things work?

One German TV station says "Nein."

By way of Americablog comes a video of a man easily concealing the  
makings of high-temperature combustibles in a manner that evaded a  
full-body scanner. As the blogger writes: "Even if you don't  
understand German, it's easy enough to follow how this physicist beat  
the system."

First the World's Ugliest Man forced us all to remove our shoes when  
going through airport security. Now the Nigerian crotchbomber has  
upped the ante, forcing us to leave our dignity at home.

And for what? So that few hundred million taxpayer dollars can be  
spent slowing our boarding even longer while producing images that  
some of the more-squeamish members of the public have likened to child  
porn and which can't detect bomb ingredients?

As the video shows, the concealment of materials sufficiently  
incendiary to melt a frying pan is no big deal. But perhaps we should  
be even more distressed by what the only English speaker in the video  
-  who appears to be pro-scanner - says about four and a half minutes  
into the demo: "No system is perfect."

Unarguable. And distressing on a number of different levels, from  
exploring aircraft to exploding security costs. ®