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Fast, Accurate Detection of Explosives
It doesn't come easy writes "Fast, highly reliable detection of residues that could indicate the presence of explosives and other hazardous materials inside luggage is now possible with technology under development at Purdue University. Recent improvements to a previously developed prototype have proven successful at detecting at the picogram (trillionths of a gram) level in lab tests, about 1,000 times less material than previously required. From the article: 'In the amount of time it requires to take a breath, this technology can sniff the surface of a piece of luggage and determine whether a hazardous substance is likely to be inside, based on residual chemicals brushed from the hand of someone loading the suitcase.'"
Ok, here's something I've always wondered about. If you have these exquisitly sensitive machines that can detect even a few molecules of material, aren't they by the same token super-vulnerable to being attacked by "chaffing" or overloading?
Couldn't a bad guy simple walk around the airport with some material on his shoes and permanently, for all time, destroy the effectiveness of the instruments? I mean, how could one possibly clean a whole airport down to a few molecules worth of the stuff?
Isn't that a *huge* hole in any "super sensitive" chemical detection system?
now, when I fly, I have to worry not just about whether I handled matches or toy cap guns or went to the shooting range in the last 24 hours, but also whether my neighbor, my dog, or the taxi driver handled any nitrate-laden deli meat in the last month.
Good luck to explosives manufacturers - there go your chances of ever flying again!
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
People fly because they want to go somewhere as fast as possible. With recent rules and regulations regarding airports, it's been becoming slower and slower to fly anywhere. Perhaps with the advancement in technology such as this, we can slowly relieve the stress of having to fly somewhere.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
Yes, it's vulnerable to false positives -- for example, some construction workers are going to have to go through the slow way every time they fly.
That's okay, though -- the positive thing here is that the initial check can be made much much faster. Most luggage and most people can just be zipped through (they'll hardly need to stop walking!)... which leaves more resources available to help the inevitable false positives get processed in the old, slow way (with the little explosive-check tabs, or a search by hand) as efficiently as possible.
That's what matters, isn't it? Speeding the whole thing up, to make a reliable screening feasible.
I wonder as to how useful this technology will be in the fight against terrorism. If you were a terrorist, would you carry your kit with you on the plane or would you aquire all the materials locally when you arrive at your destination? I imagine crime networks who plan to set off bombs have their own stockpile of ingredients that they get from their own country and build them when they need them. Or am I completely off the mark and some regions don't have access to certain materials and need to import/smuggle them?
"More people rode the CTA today than will pass through O'hare and Midway over the entire Thanksgiving weekend. Yet the feds only provide a penny per passenger for security on buses or trains... compared to seven or eight bucks for each plane passenger."
Doesn't really make sense, does it?
End transmission.
This is specifically about *airport* security. It's about keeping the planes safe. A terrorist seeking to blow up an airliner would have a tough time if he acquired his supplies at his destination.
Of course, this brings up the point that even if we *did* manage to make planes super-safe, it remains simply impossible to protect all of the other soft targets all over the country. There are so many legitimate uses of explosive materials and the ingredients thereof that they can't all be secured, and any place that people are in large numbers is a potential target (including any school, stadium, office building, church, theater, etc.)... BUT Americans are nervous about planes after 9/11, so even though seeing the same attack again is unlikely, it makes constituents feel safer if we pump lots of money into airport security.
It's a shame that this is how we go about "waging the war on terrorism", but that's how the world works.
As for chaffing. I don't think this machine was meant to analyze the atmosphere of the entire airport. You just swab the bag and run it through the machine. There are ways to make the readings meaningless, but this would indicate some fishy behavior and cause for "other" means of investigation (ie "Bend over, son.").
This would be a real boon for forensic science in general, if they've managed to make one for a relatively cheap price in addition to its size. Now you don't have to wait for the lab, you can bring it with you.
Concern? You expect that to be considered a problem?
The fact of the matter is that there are some substances, including recreational drugs, which are illegal. If you really want to transport them between states, don't use commercial airlines.
Video for Online Dating Profiles
I hate to use a slippery slope argument here, but oh well.
Yes, drugs are in fact illegal, and no you should not be trying to take them onto a plane. Even still, without any cause to do so, there is no legal or logical basis to perform a search on EVERYONE entering the plane for drugs. Yes indeed, it would reduce (or eliminate) the illegal activity a great deal, but it would also violate everyone's right to privacy and security in their person and property that is guaratneed by the US Constitution.
The reason our rights are there and the reason these types of searches should be illegal is so we don't keep endlessly justifying bigger and bigger intrusions into our privacy to prevent/punish crime. In an authoritarian state, crime is extremely low (for example, in communist China), but that is because the state has absolute authority to abuse the rights of it's citizens. I don't think that's what we want here.
It seems to me that you could certainly circumvent this easily enough, with just some social engineering. Carry a lot of sniffer-activating things in your luggage. Travel 15 times on the route, or until you reliably know the security people.
After 15 times, the conversation goes like so:
You: "Hi Steve."
Security: "Hi John."
Detector : beeep! bip! beep! bip! beep! BEEEEEEEP!
You: "Damn detector. Can't they tone those things down a little?"
Security: "Every time you go through, these things go off."
(opens luggage)
Security: "Cheese, fertiliser, and trinitite. Again."
You: "Well, a man's got to earn a living some way. Isn't there some form or something I can fill out to get out of this?"
Security: "Nope. Everyone gets checked."
(closes luggage)
Security: "Off you go."
Travel 15 times without the bomb so everyone gets to know you.
The 16th time, travel with the bomb concealed somewhere in your luggage, but
leave the cheese , fertiliser and trinitite on top. Odds are pretty good that you'll get on that plane.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
This is 2005, the so called "terrorist" attack was 2001.
Where are all the other attacks since then? We've had one series, the anthrax mailings, using official US army brand anthrax. Not abduls discount bugs, US Army brand. hmmmm no arrests either...isn't that convenient, and why look, the first guy nailed was a journalist of the yellow press in the middle of writing an expose of the drunk and stoned twins, and the other folks? Opposition leaders and influential newsies, and well, congress in general as the important "enabling act" was up for a vote, and gee whizz, it seemed to pass after the scared washington enough. Did some guy named mohammed really do that?
How hard is it really to do attacks in the US? Any commando with a minimum of simple basic training in assymetrical warfare could pull off one attack per day in some random area, even just plain old arson, and probably never get caught, just keep moving. And that is just one person, where are all the "sleepers" they used to talk about, what exactly are they waiting for again? The secret signal? It's not a secret anymore, there's some big wars going on, so I repeat, where are these "terrorists"?
This whole scenario is to get the herd dumbed down and terrorized into accepting fascist military rule, and they have suceeded. So in hat sense it is terrorism, but 99.999% of the people out there just refuse to actually look at the raw data as compared to what the propoganda masters feed them. This is Reichstagg Fire vs 2.0 stable. It is beyond obvious.
You're insane. Absolutely utterly insane. You say the election looks tampered (which one? any evidence), imply that Bush caused 9/11 so he could solidify his power (he was already the President) and that he started the war in Iraq to train the troops to start a totalitarian state here.
You're absolutely batshit insane.
It's posts like these on /. and around the Internet that are starting to push me further and further away from the left side of politics and /. itself. For instance this story is about a specific technology used to find traces of chemicals. It doesn't have an inkling of political skewing about it.
/.) groupthink supports irrationality, conspiracy theory and poorly thought out historical analogies. Is the Bush admin doing a bad job? Yes I totally agree. But I don't think we are ever going to be taken serious in our claims or actions to change the system when some of our fellow progressives are completely irrational in the way that they present themselves.
So now we have the parents post (currently modded +4 interesting) who claims that this new technology could be used to suppress the population. The parent never bothers to extrapolate on how this technology in the article could be used for the purpose of suppression of course. We are just supposed to accept the fact that it will sometime in the future under the guise of a totalitarian government. Notice how we are supposed to just accept his didactic terms the parent lays out? That's called propaganda.
The parent is why I'm moving away from the left. It seems the lefts (and
The parent post is pretty offtopic from the subject at hand but I had to respond.
Sorry buddy, but you need to get your facts straight. 98 out of the the 100 Senators voted in favor of the Patriot Act in 2001. Right Wing Warmongers, eh? Like, Kerry, Leiberman, Edwards, Hillard Clinton, Kennedy, and Feinstein, eh? Source
To be honest, the term "homeland security" just makes the country feel less like my own home. It has a vague nuerolinguistic programming sound to it. It sounds antiforeign and hyperguarded. For starters, no American uses the term "homeland."
The term Homeland Security sounds like another politically correct nonsensical term being forced out of the Government that provides no obvious answer as to what it does. That's not something you can blame on just Republicans, bub.
If the government turns AGAINST us? Really, what have you been smoking? This isn't 1984. Bush sucks as a President, we get it. He's not Hitler. Hell, he isn't SMART enough to be another Hitler.
As for civil liberties, this isn't in your lifetime, but read up about the Alien and Sedation Act sometime.
Has it ever occurred to you that the war on terror's refined capacities to detect explosives could also be used to suppress a "rebellious" majority population? (that is to say, to enforce a dictatorship in the USA?)
[Cut the rest of the political rant]
How does this stuff get moderated up? People need to remember that driving a car is a privledge, not a right (and judges will be happy to remind you of that after you break a few driving laws). Similarly, when you get on any form of mass transportation (airplane, subway, train, etc), you subject yourself to the rules of that mode of transportation. Yes, it would be easy for a group to skew those rules to discriminate, so we need to keep an eye on our elected officials. But who in their right mind is defending someone that brings a backpack or shoe filled with explosives onto a plane or anywhere else? All I ask is that you treat the person with respect until you know for sure that it's some kind of explosives and not "yet another false positive."
The world is a half decent place when everyone is doing unto others as they would have done unto themselves. It's reasonable to defend mass transportation when there are some crazy folks that want to kill a lot of people. It's also reasonable to figure out why someone is so upset that they would get that pissed off at us to see if there's some way we can get along better with our neighbors. But we should be able to do that without the political rants.
Has it ever occurred to you that the war on terror's refined capacities to detect explosives could also be used to suppress a "rebellious" majority population? (that is to say, to enforce a dictatorship in the USA?)
If every time that something is put into place for the public safety or other benign purpose someone shouts "dictatorship", how many people will be paying attention when our civil liberties actually are taken away?