Would the new body scanners have detected the underwear bomber’s bomb? I have heard a few news story that cite an unnamed expert that they would not have detected the bomb, but what is the straight dope?
Yes. In fact that is exactly the type of things these scanners are being purchased for.
Do you have any cites?
Yep, it’s part of our determined response to always prevent the last attack.
Ditto the request for cites, both on the answer to the OP and on the motivation for purchase.
There are some people who would argue that the motivation for purchasing the scanners is, well, profits. Not that you can believe the communist USA Today, of course.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-11-22-scanner-lobby_N.htm
Google “backscatter X-ray.” There’s lots of information. The image is produced by reflected gamma rays. If it isn’t skin, then it looks like something else, basically.
Well, of course the people who make them do so to sell them at a profit – and even at a profit after their [del]bribes to Congress members[/del] campaign contributions. The question really is, why does the TSA buy and use them?
Should I not wear my glow-in-the-dark boxers on the day I fly?
Without bothering to look up cites, the scanner would not detect that it was a bomb but should have shown that there was something wrong with the underwear bomber’s underwear.
So the answer is “yes” and “no.” It would require the person watching the scanner to determine there was something out of place.
The scans, like taking off our shoes, are a direct result of a specific threat that we have become aware of. God help us if a suicide bomber decides to stick an explosive up his ass. Because the screenings would then include a brief and barely invasive colonoscopy.
An Israeli security expert, Rafi Sela, formerly chief of security for Israel’s airports so testified to Canada’s parliament (see here, could not find direct link to the testimony: http://www.truth-out.org/revolt-against-body-scanners65377 ; http://www.colinmayes.ca/EN/newspaper_columns_&_press_releases/air_transportation_safety_and_security_issues/)
Also the American GAO held that it was unclear that the scanners could in fact detect the threat (and at reasonable cost): http://www.gao.gov/htext/d10484t.html
It would appear that unless one is inclined to immediately believe a security agency with financial incentive to assert utility, it is unclear. Of course the Nigerian lad could have simply inserted something up his arse, rendering the whole thing farcical.
A barely-invasive colonoscopy is a sigmoidoscopy. They only look at about the last third of the large intestine (the sigmoid colon).
A delivery method already used, it should be noted. Of course on a plane one would have the leisure of going to the toilet and assembling the bomb from parts hidden in body cavities and placing the bomb strategically afterwards.
Besides hiding explosives in one’s ass, I believe any body cavity will do. Stomach, vagina or even a fat skin fold will cleverly disguise objects from the scanners reach. Of course, we are relying on the assumption that suicidal bombers would draw the line at such an indignance as having to shove an explosive up their bum or other bodily oriface. Blowing themselves up shouldn’t have to be so icky.
But it is true that the scanner will find those terrorists who insist on the traditional method of hiding things in their underwear.
TSA, bringing horses to tank battles since 2001.
On the Diane Rehm Show yesterday, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said that the machines were designed before the underwear bomber was caught last year, and that, despite claims to the contrary, they cannot detect PETN, the powder explosive he used.
He also said that FOIA requests they have filed prove that the systems can, in fact, save and transfer images, contrary to the TSA’s stated claims.
Another guest on the show, a biophysicist, said even though both of the two technologies being used create images of equal quality, one, millimeter waves, has virtually no known health risk, whereas the other, x-rays, does. And based on the resolution of the images that have been shown, it is a virtual certainty that the x-ray units are emitting as much as ten times more radiation than has been claimed for them.
Finally, it turns out that Michael Chertoff, Bush’s second secretary of Homeland Security and a strong proponent of the scanners, was employed by Rapiscan, one of the manufacturers.
And they are built in Indonesia.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous thread, sticking an explosive device up one’s bum is going to reduce the intensity of said explosive (re: Medal of Honor’s awarded for using one’s body used as an explosive’s attenuator). I’m sure it would be worthy of a Mythbusters episode… but that’s a pipe dream, so to speak.
Not if you go to the lavatory and take it out…
I was pointing out a case of non-removal.
Can anybody here at the Dope speak of using one’s descending colon as a way of getting around a baggage charge? I know the Perfect Master spoke of this once; perhaps it’s time to revisit this question in a post 9-11 world:
*Can you get enough explosive in and out of your bum to take out a commercial jet liner?*
And how this connects with the discussion here where the removal of the explosives while in the lavatory has already been highlighted as an easy and trivial way to deal with that… The Saudi bombing was of course limited by the personal security around the Emir. Hardly the case in-flight.