A better system?

Seeking a better security solution

By BILL ADAIR

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 14, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Two days after the terrorist attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it was getting tough about weapons. Knives and box cutters were banned from flights.

Since then, tests have shown that many weapons can still be taken onto planes. Broward County sheriff's deputies repeatedly carried a box cutter and utility knife through checkpoints at Fort Lauderdale International Airport. A week ago, New York Daily News reporters managed to take knives, scissors and razor blades past checkpoints at 10 major airports.

Why are so many weapons missed?

Many lawmakers blame the FAA for using old equipment. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, said the FAA is "far behind the curve" in using new technology. At a hearing last week, he held up a plastic knife similar to ones used by the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"We do not have the technology in place that will detect this plastic knife," Mica said.

But new security devices being considered for the nation's airports have their own problems. Some of them are too effective.

New body scanners can electronically undress airline passengers and show weapons hidden beneath clothes. But the scanners also reveal tremendous detail about the passenger's body.

FAA Administrator Jane Garvey said she doubted that the public would accept such an intrusive security procedure. She said the technology is good enough to detect the weapons but "there are questions about privacy."

Other new security devices have the opposite problem -- lack of reliability. They do not detect all bombs and weapons, they produce too many false alarms and are prone to breakdowns.

James F. O'Bryon, a Defense Department official who has studied the new systems, told a congressional panel last week that they are an improvement but that "we have a long way to go."

Undressing for safety

As federal officials explore new technologies, they are facing an odd question: Are people willing to show their bodies to make aviation safer?

That's not a problem with current metal detectors. If you try to carry a gun through one, it's likely the device will sound a shrill alarm. But some weapons are not detected.

Mica, chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee, said at last week's hearing that the "1970s screening technology" used by the FAA does not detect plastic weapons.

"The federal government and its employees have failed and, in turn, we have left our nation vulnerable," Mica said.

At least two companies already sell body-scanning devices that can detect a wider variety of weapons.

American Science and Engineering in Billerica, Mass., says its "BodySearch" system reveals plastic guns and ceramic knives. Instead of simply sounding an alarm if it detects a metal object, it shows an X-ray image of the person on a computer screen. A company marketing photo shows that its scanning device reveals items hidden under clothing, such as plastic guns, ceramic knives, even drugs. But it also shows the man's buttocks and a blurry image of his genitals.

A system from Rapiscan Security Products, a Hawthorne, Calif., company, uses a similar technology. The company's promotional photos show a man with a Glock 17 pistol tucked into his pants. They also explicitly show the overweight man's body.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the idea of using body-scanning devices on all passengers.

"These devices are electronic strip searches," said Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the ACLU. "To board an airplane, people shouldn't have to submit to strip searches and reveal intimate and potentially embarrassing details about their bodies."

But Stanley said the devices might be acceptable if they are used only when there is probable cause that someone is carrying a weapon or planning criminal activity.

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing a different type of body-scan system for the FAA. They are trying to adjust the pictures so they show the weapons without revealing too much about the person's body. "We obviously want to address that to the FAA's satisfaction," said Staci Maloof, a spokeswoman for the lab.

Supporters of the new technology say people may be willing to accept the intrusion because of the new threat of terrorism. Privacy concerns could be satisfied by using employees who are the same sex as the passenger. Also, the FAA could limit the body-scanning to a small portion of passengers who are judged to need the additional scrutiny because they failed an initial weapons test.

"Maybe people are going to have to give up some privacy for safety," said Harry Martz, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., who served on a government panel on weapons screening. "I think people are more receptive than they were before Sept. 11."

Peeking inside carryon bags

X-rays are already used to peek inside carryon bags. But government auditors have found that many weapons are missed.

That's largely because the devices do not clearly show the contents of a bag. The X-ray images of weapons are too blurry or too small to be identified by checkpoint employees. Also, watching the images of hundreds of bags -- and finding the one that has a weapon -- is very difficult. The task is monotonous and employees may be reluctant to delay lots of passengers because of a suspicious but fuzzy image.

The government is looking into several ways ways to make the system better.

With current X-ray systems, the FAA has started using a training tool in airports that projects a fake image of a gun or an explosive on top of the real image of a bag. When employees spot the weapon and confirm by pushing a button, they are rewarded with a message that says, "Congratulations. You have correctly identified a fictional gun threat. Please examine the bag to determine that no real threats are present."

The system, which may some day be used at all checkpoints, keeps employees more alert and provides positive feedback for catching weapons.

"That is an incentive to find things," said Martz. "Unfortunately, the incentive before Sept. 11 was to not find things, because they would be holding up travelers from getting to their planes."

The FAA is also exploring new technologies that could provide a better picture of what's inside a bag.

One possibility is to use computer tomography -- commonly known as CT scan -- for carry-on bags. It is already used for checked luggage.

The CT scans, which are similar to the medical devices of the same name, provide several images of a single bag. By using multiple images, employees could see a weapon that might be hidden near the bottom or be obscured in a single image.

However, the CT scan system may not be as fast for checking bags as conventional X-rays, which could mean longer lines for passengers or higher costs for additional machines.

Another technique is to use "backscatter" X-rays in addition to a conventional X-ray system. The backscatter X-rays can show some objects more clearly, depending on their location in the bag. Backscatter systems, which are already used at the U.S. Capitol and other federal buildings, provide two TV screens that show both images backscatter and traditional X-ray images.

Ralph Sheridan, president of American Science and Engineering, which makes backscatter systems, said the government has not been willing to spend enough money on systems like his. He said the FAA officials were "a little bit twisted in their underwear" because of pressures to keep costs low from the airlines and other outside groups.

He told the congressional panel last week that "what is needed is an integrated gauntlet of technologies working together."

'Slicing and dicing' checked luggage

While every carryon bag is X-rayed, that's not the case for checked luggage. Only a small portion of the checked bags are examined.

The reason has to do with money and the FAA's assesments of security risks. The agency has put tougher requirements on larger airports than smaller ones. It also requires more scrutiny of passengers who are identified as being higher risk.

The airlines use a government list called the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, which identifies higher risk passengers. The FAA does not reveal how passengers are picked, but the goal is to identify the passengers who may be more likely to plant a bomb on a plane. It is commonly known that how passengers purchased their tickets and how often they travel are taken into account.

When people are identified by CAPPS -- one estimate says they account for 3 to 5 percent of all passengers -- their bags are run through a CT scan machine. Bags from other passengers are randomly selected for the screening.

Unlike the strategy for carryon bags, which is to find weapons or explosives, the CT scan machines are focused entirely on explosives. (That's because a gun in checked luggage is not considered a risk. In the cargo hold, it is inaccessible to a passenger. The real concern is a bomb similar to the one used on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988.)

The CT scanners are better for detecting explosives because they "slice and dice" the bags by taking multiple snapshots. That allows them to find items that might be buried under other objects. The images are compared against known properties of explosives and examined by security workers.

If an explosive is suspected in a bag, there is a procedure to determine the contents and prevent the bag from being placed in an airplane. The local bomb squad is then called.

But witnesses at last week's hearing said the CT scanning technology still needs to be improved and that the machines are not utilized as much as they should be.

Kenneth Mead, the inspector general for the Transportation Department, said the machines are being used for an average of 350 bags per day when they could check about 1,500 bags. Mead's investigators made surprise visits to airports last week and found that many of the machines were idle or even turned off. That indicated security workers were not following an FAA directive to use the machines continuously for randomly selected bags.

CT scan machines made by L-3 Communications, which has a manufacturing plant in Clearwater, have been plagued by problems, according to Mead. The machines broke down so often and for so long that the FAA has delayed installing new units.

L-3 president Joseph Paresi said that his company has fixed many of those glitches and that the machines should be installed soon.

O'Bryon, the Defense Department official, testified that the CT scan technology still has lots of shortcomings. There are many types of explosives that still cannot be easily detected and the machines give employees lots of false alarms.

"The false alarm rate is so high that they get numb to the prospect of a real one," O'Bryon said.

Members of the congressional panel were sharply critical of the FAA -- and Congress' lack of action on the issue. They said the government needs to expand weapons screening and spend more for the latest technology.

"Why did we fail?" asked Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. "We failed because of the relentless lobbying pressure of the airlines, the private security firms and the Air Transport Association (the airline trade association). It was security on the cheap."

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