As US lawmakers demand to know how a would-be attacker smuggled explosives aboard a plane on Christmas Day, the use of body scanners at airport security points is likely to be revisited.
The machines are considered effective and have been tested at numerous international airports, but they are also controversial because they scan beneath clothing to detect items that may be hidden from ordinary view.
Security experts believe that the scanners could have detected the explosives that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was hiding as he boarded a Northwest Airlines plane in Amsterdam last week.
PHOTO: AFP
Abdulmutallab attempted to bring down the Airbus 330 by combining a flammable liquid he was carrying in a syringe with an explosive powder known as pentaerythritol (PETN) that was sewn into his underwear.
The metal detectors that passengers ordinarily step through as their luggage is being X-rayed would not have detected either component, experts said.
In the wake of the failed attack, British Interior Minister Alan Johnson said on Monday he would consider installing full body scanners at British airports “as quickly as possible.”
In the US, the scanners are already used at 19 airports and a handful of courthouses and prisons, the US Transportation Security Administration says.
The machines look like small booths and use radio frequencies to scan underneath clothing and produce a 3D image of the individual’s body.
While the scanner does not produce an image of the naked body, it has caused consternation among privacy advocates because it does faithfully reproduce individual curves hidden beneath clothing, from the shape of a breast to a roll of fat.
The device has been tested in numerous European airports, but its use was halted after the EU expressed concerns and protested a plan to install the scanners at airports throughout the EU.
EU representative Martine Roure praised the mothballing of the project, saying it would have been “disproportionate to submit all passengers to this type of check in the name of the fight against terrorism.”
But Thursday’s failed attack could prompt lawmakers worldwide to change their minds about the body scanners.
Successful and failed terror attacks targeting airplanes have already led to significant changes to the way people fly.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, pilots began locking the cockpit door behind them to prevent hijackers from accessing the flight controls.
In the wake of Richard Reid’s failed December 2001 attempt to detonate explosives in his shoes, passengers now routinely submit their footwear to inspection before boarding a plane.
And after authorities uncovered a plot in 2006 to blow up airliners with explosives in liquid containers, new regulations were imposed limiting the amount of fluid each traveler could bring aboard a flight.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, told reporters that traditional security measures simply would not be able to detect the sort of explosive Abdulmutallab was carrying.
“There is no other way, except for a body scan, to detect it,” he said.
Even the secondary screening measures sometimes used at airports would have failed, he said.
“If [if the explosive PETN] was sealed extremely tight in plastic, dogs wouldn’t have picked it up,” he said.
Douglas Laird, a former security director for Northwest Airlines, agreed, noting it was virtually impossible to know what was beneath clothing without the scanners.
But some are more skeptical about the efficacy of the machines, including Jimmie Carol Oxley, the co-director of the Center of Excellence in Explosive Detection, Mitigation, Response and Characterization at the University of Rhode Island.
“Anything is hard to detect if you’re not looking for it,” he pointed out, noting that airport security already has machines that can detect PETN. “If you go through the airport and they ever pull you over for your carry-on and they swab your carry-on, they can pick up that, those machines detect it.”
The machines also come with another problem: They cost around US$1 million, 20 times more than a standard X-ray machines, Laird said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in