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Hitachi Develops Boarding Gate With Built-In Explosives Detector
An anonymous reader writes "Hitachi, in collaboration with Nippon Signal and the University of Yamanashi, have successfully prototyped a boarding gate with built-in explosives detection equipment as part of efforts to increase safety in public facilities such as airports. The prototype boarding gate efficiently collects minute particles which have affixed themselves to IC cards or portable devices used as boarding passes, and can detect within 1-2 seconds the presence of explosive compounds using internalized equipment. With this method, it is possible to inspect 1,200 passengers per hour."
Anything would be better then getting karate chopped in the crotch by the poorly trained TSA guy, every time I fly and refuse the body scanner.
I skimmed the link, looked like typical marketting pitch stuff. I didn't see any error rates on this marvelous new device. I'm curious as to how many false positives it's going to generate, and how often it will miss carry-on explosives. I'm also wondering how many days I'll need to stay away from the rifle range before I won't show any particulate explosives at one of these checkpoints.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I though that just read "Hitachi Develops Boarding Gate With Built-In Explosives" for a moment.
Doesn't look intrusive enough, so I guess it will not be used.
You've been though the perv-scan or the finger-rape, your carry on baggage has already been nuked, and you're at the boarding gate with only Sally Swipe-n-Smile between you and the 'plane.
Then the machine goes "ping" and the siren goes off. What now? How does that play out?
If it's a false positive (and it will be) then Sally asks you politely to step aside, and it's just another piece of minor inconvenience for the airline, and probably a missed flight and some more TSA probing for the traveller.
But let's pretend for a second that it's a true positive - which is surely the only scenario that we're actually interested in. What then?
Does Sally throw herself onto the passenger in slow motion, screaming "Nooooooo!" in order to save everyone else? And how does she know that this is the one time that it's a real threat, rather than the false ones that she's become used to, day after day?
Really, how does Sally react to the real threat, and what will be the results of that reaction?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
zippo01 +1. Friend, I full agree with you!
Chemical sniffing boarding gate: $10,800,000
Government contract for the U.S. air travel system: Billions
$4 bag of potassium nitrate fertilizer sprinkled on sidewalk ice by a terrorist instead of salt: Priceless
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I made the mistake of going to the range before flying once. Despite washing my hands, I still had gunpowder residue on them and my clothing.
Missing my flight and 4 hours of coerced interrogation later (CPS and Phila PD showed up and threatened to take my kids away if I didn't talk, and they wouldn't allow me to call a lawyer), I was finally allowed to leave and go home, since I was put on the no-fly list.
Unsurprisingly, the ACLU did not want to take the case, seeing as how they are a staunch opponent of gun rights, and numerous civil rights attorneys I called said it would be pointless to sue, since apparently the courts have adopted the stance that you give implied cosent to both searches AND interrogations when you purchase a plane ticket.
No rights for you!
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Eskimos. God's 'frozen' people.
> Why should the false positive rate be so low?
Because it's multiplied by the millions of innocent passengers the gate will encounter.
The false negative rate, by contrast, is multiplied by the handful of terrorists.
Question is, will this new gate satisfy the TSA agents? No more nudie pics, no more gropings? Something tells me this gate doesn't detect metal and the gropings will continue.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
1. It is not intrusive enough.
2. It replaces sullen TSA uniformed personal with hardware.
3. It reduces the DHS conditioning intended to make the general public accept arbitrary behavior by the government.
4. It is not as dangerous as full body radiation from scanners.
There are a few things that might make the TSA like it.
1. It is really expensive.
2. It doesn't actually work.
3. It will interfere with people for no discernible reason.
On the whole, it's reducing the number and visible presence of the TSA uniformed types that will keep it from being adopted. They are already so expensive, intrusive, arbitrary, and incompetent that they don't need that level of automation.
Why is Snark Required?
I wonder what the health impact of these scanners will be. And the cost. Multiply that out by the number of gates an airport has. Can they also say that the method of detection doesn't leave the gate. i.e. stray rays affecting those nearby such as boarding attendants.
..done that. Now time to shut up.
static electricity is bad for explosives. why dont they just force everyone to go through a long hallway full of balloons before boarding? much cheaper than making robot snifferdogs
I suppose the terrorists are going to have to plant their bombs without boarding the plane, now. Oh, wait! They already figured that out.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Couldn't anyone wanting to create trouble could just somehow apply these chemical residues that imply explosives on travelers; Think of all the problems this would cause from mere delays for many and backups of security lines and creating passenger backlash, to worse problems like false positives masking true positives.
All I read was Nippon Signal and lost it.
Thought it said Nippon Central;
Nippon.
Seriously? A company called nippon is going to verify whether my gf's nip-on's have explosives; they're in for a surprise bang.
Imagine the IRL DDOS of an airport.
Can you see it?
Bring a small aerosol canister of basically liquid shit and spray it inconspicuously on people's luggage. For better results bring a few cans with you with slightly different composition, mix powder traces of real explosives as well.
Do it as a flash mob across the globe and shut down the entire airline industry.
You can't handle the truth.
1- Grind up some fertilizer. (Fertilizer is rich in the oxidizing agents that these things look for.)
2- Deposit in airport bathroom soap-dispenser.
3- ???
Skimming the front page, looking for a headline that looks interesting.
"Hitachi Develops Boarding Gate With Built-In Explosives"
Hey! That looks promising! Oh, wait...
Did nobody else notice the word internalize doesn't mean what they think it does, even in American English.
I see a new wave of false positives in our future if these things are deployed. Explosives of all varieties are used everyday in most developed countries. We have had seismic detonations in our area looking for oil, fireworks use, target shooting, and its use in building demolition and mining are pretty pervasive. All it would likely take would be riding in a cab, or sitting in the same chair at the DMV as an individuals who had just been involved in one of these activities and this machine would peg you as a terrorist. And all a "terrorist" would have to do to bring the system to a screeching halt or flood it with so many false positives that the screeners would cease using it would be to serendipitously sprinkle some powdered explosive compounds at the entrances of the airport.
How many people have carried on bombs to airplanes in the past 20 years? Far fewer than were struck by lightning.
This seems to be just another way for a large corporation to make money off the infinite budget of Homeland Security. We would save many more lives using this money on cancer research or to fight drunk driving.
And that is different to today....how?
The difference is that this is being marketed as a "boarding gate", not as a remote checkpoint. To me, at least, that suggests much closer proximity to a specific plane and checking being done much closer to boarding time, thus being more likely to cause disruptions to the flight schedule. Add to this the already-mentioned issue of more severe response than you'd get with a metal detector, and you're set for frequent, pointless, expensive disruptions to air travel. People grumble about the security checks now, it'll be worse if it's happening at every gate right at boarding time.
The truly paranoid among us would also argue that the necessary increase in security personnel due to the security being distributed rather than centralized would be a selling point for the TSA rather than a liability. After all, we can't let an opportunity to expand police powers slip by, can we? =P
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Yeah, right.
Next thing you know, Hitatchi will make some kind of 'magic wand' security can wave ..
My understanding is that the purpose of a terrorist explosive device is to create as much graphic damage as possible. If they've got as far as a crowded terminal, isn't it already too late?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So I hit the firing range then take a flight. Just like today, they check for nitrates and of course find them. All they know is that I have nitrates on me. BECAUSE I WAS PRACTICING A PERFECTLY LEGAL HOBBY! Testing for nitrates is like looking for cocaine on money - all you know is that there's cocaine on the money. You don't have any clue why it's there. Terminally Stupid Administrations wasting our money.
But what will trigger this explosive detector?
I stopped flying all together because the Continentals Airlines bomb sniffer detected my alarm clock as a bomb because it had a phosphorus glow in the dark dial. You might want to practice diving face first to the floor so than you can beat the cops from throwing you down first.
Oddly enough, I can see how Hitachi's experience in particular with building hard drives would lend itself to developing devices that can detect explosives.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)