Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Airport safety is questioned

Tests show equipment misses some contraband. Adm. David Stone calls for better technology.

By JEAN HELLER
Published April 19, 2005

TAMPA - The head of the Transportation Security Administration said Monday the technology used by airport screeners is inadequate to do the job of finding weapons and explosives and needs to be replaced.

Undercover tests done by the TSA prove the equipment doesn't pick up contraband deliberately taken to checkpoints, Adm. David Stone said Monday in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times . "But it infuriates me when I hear the screeners blamed for these problems. It isn't them. It's the inadequate technology."

As recently as last week, it was reported that the General Accountability Office and the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security - TSA's parent agency - are preparing reports that conclude screening is no better now than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"In the rush to ramp up protection for air travelers after 9/11, we put what we had out there, X-ray machines, metal detectors and wands, but they're not good enough," said Stone, who is leaving his job in June. "I'm a huge proponent of technology, and our checkpoints do not have the technology they need."

Stone sat for a 40-minute interview before an appearance at the formal opening Monday night of the new Airside C at Tampa International Airport, an airside that does have one of the elements of new technology Stone wants to see everywhere.

It is a mechanism dubbed the Puff Portal. Experts say it is impossible to work with any explosive and not get trace amounts on clothes and skin. As passengers stand in the portal, puffs of air strike them from head to toe. The device analyzes the air around each individual and alerts authorities if explosives are detected.

The portals cost $165,000 each, and Stone said 147 more would be installed at airports in the next year. But that will cover only about a third of the more than 400 U.S. commercial airports.

Other technology upgrades Stone said he wants to see are Backscatter X-rays that can detect the mass density of explosives no matter where on a human body they are hidden.

"They're already using Backscatter at Heathrow (in London), but we have privacy issues with it here," Stone said of the device, which can see through clothes and even into body cavities.

TSA is especially sensitive to privacy matters after it tried last year to conduct more extensive patdowns of select passengers and was hit by a wave of outrage.

"Obviously, there wasn't a lot of public support for that sort of thing," Stone said. "But you give up something like that and you give up a measure of security."

Backscatter X-rays cost $125,000 each, a fraction of the $750,000 price tag for the ZBackscatter, a larger version that can be used on vehicles, train cars and marine containers.

Stone also likes multidimensional X-rays that allow screeners to shift the angles at which they view each bag.

The speed at which any of the new technology can be deployed depends on congressional budget appropriations. Some on Capitol Hill, including Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Aviation subcommittee, have raised the possibility of dismissing the federal screeners hired just three years ago and replacing them with private security forces.

Asked if he thought there was an effort under way to dismantle TSA, Stone avoided commenting on congressional opinion directly.

"I don't sense that (Homeland Security) leadership feels that," he said. "I'm comfortable that DHS feels transportation security is enhanced by TSA. There is some interest on the Hill among those who want to find out if the job can be done by civilians and, in fact, it has been the policy since Nov. 19 that if any airports want to switch to private screeners, they can apply."

So far, he said, only the airport at Elko, Nev., has asked to make the switch. Five airports never got federal screeners, serving as test cases to determine if a private force supervised and trained to federal standards could work. These include Kansas City and San Francisco.

"Those airports are doing just fine," Stone said. "The fact is, you can outsource the screeners, but you can't outsource the leadership."

Stone, 52, will leave TSA in June after 18 months on the job. His assignment was to create an operational command for an agency that had placed federal screeners in every commercial airport in the country but had no formal structure.

"But there was no focal point where TSA, the FAA, Homeland Security, the White House and Defense Department could all coordinate," he said. "Now there is a state-of-the-art facility in Herndon, Va., and every issue that deals with transportation security is channeled and coordinated through there, so everyone knows what's happening."

When Stone took the job, there were 4,000 names on a combined list of individuals forbidden from boarding U.S. aircraft and those designated as selectees for additional screening.

"Working with the CIA and the FBI," he said, "we now have a no-fly list of 30,000 names and a selectee list of 40,000 names and the capacity for running the names of every boarding passenger against that list."

--Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

[Last modified April 19, 2005, 09:03:17]