The Ineffectiveness of TSA Body Scanners

TheNextCorner points out a video that lays bare a glaring flaw in the TSA body scanners used in airports to detect weapons and explosives. In such scans, citizens are depicted in light colors, while metallic objects show as very dark. The problem comes when you consider that the images are taken with a dark background. From the transcript: "Yes that’s right, if you have a metallic object on your side, it will be the same color as the background and therefore completely invisible to both visual and automated inspection. It can’t possibly be that easy to beat the TSA’s billion dollar fleet of nude body scanners, right? The TSA can’t be that stupid, can they? Unfortunately, they can, and they are. To put it to the test, I bought a sewing kit from the dollar store, broke out my 8th grade home ec skills, and sewed a pocket directly on the side of a shirt. Then I took a random metallic object, in this case a heavy metal carrying case that would easily alarm any of the “old” metal detectors, and walked through a backscatter x-ray at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. On video, of course. While I’m not about to win any videography awards for my hidden camera footage, you can watch as I walk through the security line with the metal object in my new side pocket."

Comments

yup

[Anonymous Coward]

I was part of a team bringing forward a competing technology to those scanners (standoff biometrics, no weird imaging, ~5 different measurements, easy to beat one, hard to beat them all). We thought we had won the tests. At least, we found all the people sneaking stuff in during our test and we knew they couldn't have detected certain things - like explosives, which they still can't see.

Due to the nature of my sensor work, much of my clothing is covered in explosives residue. A good scanner should really pick me out every time, but I only ever get "caught" when I'm selected for random screening.

We were pretty surprised when we found out they were selected. I guess we should have worked harder on our lobbying and less on our engineering.

TSA is an expense account scam

[Okian Warrior]

The inquisition (yes, that one) was an expense account scam. Since the accused was required to pay for their own inquisition, the system simply padded the expenses to the limit of the available money.

The TSA is the same thing. People wail and moan about how stupid/intrusive/incompetent/useless they are, and miss the larger picture.

The TSA sends money to corporations, and the corporations grease the political wheels.

There's no rocket science, no ulterior motive, nothing else to consider. Like the inquisition, the TSA doesn't need to justify expenditures with usefulness or effectiveness. The more they spend, the more they get to spend. Cause and effect.

Why do you think they spend billions on technology, but pay only slightly above the minimum wage and spend so little on training?

People keep grousing about the TSA as if that will make a difference. It won't. They have been generally incompetent from the start, and there's nothing that people can do to unseat them from their position.

Voting hasn't helped. Contacting representatives hasn't helped. Complaining to the TSA or their employees hasn't helped. Legal action hasn't helped.

There's one obvious remaining course of action we can take to rein in all the government waste and corruption. Can anyone think of things to try before we take that last drastic step? I'm out of ideas...

Re:SSDD

[Johann Lau]

Sure. Meanwhile, funneling mountains of money into BS like this, not to mention all the military hardware, ends up leaving more people out in the cold, and effectively killing them, than all terrorist attacks of all history combined, and people who do the real harm get rewarded for it ("too big to jail"). I mean, it's not like people have this inate tendency to be hateful towards freedom and generosity -- it's just that that's all pretty much BS, and for all we know, every single terrorist was trained by the CIA, because that's what's needed to keep people in check and the actual wolves running wild. That surely would make more sense than the hilarious explanation you're offering. Thanks for the chuckle though.

Re:Surprise it took that long

[dgatwood]

Yeah. I was worried about the TSA folks having a cow about my valve oil, so I dutifully packed it in a plastic bag for my first post-9/11 trip with an instrument, wondering if I'd have to dispose of it anyway. I don't think anyone else brought bags, and as far as I could tell, nobody got pulled aside. (I waited around as folks went through just in case I needed to pass somebody a spare plastic bag.)

It's kind of scary to realize (in hindsight) that between the couple of dozen brass players, we probably walked through the TSA checkpoint with between fifty and a hundred fluid ounces of light petroleum distillates (basically kerosene) without comment....

If we had been terrorists, I suspect that the plane would not have reached its destination. It scares the crap out of me to realize that in spite of all their amateur theatrics, we're really not significantly safer than we were before.