When passing through security in European airports (I have seen them in Germany, Belgium, Spain, France) I notice that they have deployed machines where the security personnel rubs a strip of paper (?) on your baggage, sticks the strip into a machine with the help of a plastic stick, looks at the monitor, waits for a bing! (yes! :D) and then tells you to proceed. They usually wear latex gloves. Sometimes they seem to use the same strip of paper repeatedly for different pieces of luggage 
. I had seen those machines in separated rooms some years ago where they sometimes took you but more often not. They treated those machines with awe, af if they were expensive and wise. Now those machines are in the zones where they scan your hand luggage where everybody goes through and they seem to use them on one in four or five passengers. Does anybody know what those machines are and what they are looking for? Explosives, drugs, laundered money, illegal DNA? Do you have those in the USA too?
They detect traces of explosive residue.
And yes, the USA uses them as well. In 2011, the USA spent $39 million on these portable ETD machines in 2011 alone. Each machine is about $160K, so that is at least 240 purchased in just one year. I’m sure there are several times as many across the country considering we have over 5,000 public airports, and over 500 airports that service commercial flight operations.
Here is a TSA approved model used in the United States which can detect drugs as well: IONSCAN 600
Thank you very much, the machines I meant look like the one you set the link to, only a bit less portable. I think you are right.
I have an acquaintance that owns a small demolition business. Mostly blowing up big ass rocks that no excavator can move.
I sometimes wonder what type of hoops he has to jump though at the airport.
A coworker tested hot on one of these and got a full body grab n squeeze.
Also, instrument, not machine.
The ones I’m familiar with use ion mobility spectrometry, but apparently there are other types.
I tested positive on a machine like that back in 2007. I asked the security screeners not to x-ray my film, so they swabbed the film canister and checked it. I think they just asked if I’d been around any chemicals lately. I told them what might have caused it and they seemed convinced. That was on a trip returning to the U.S., in fact.
Oh shucks! I will never learn to write proper English. In Spanish or German I would have written *aparato *or *Apparat * or perhaps *Gerät *in the hope of covering both a machine and an instrument. Sigh… sorry.
ETA: I also see from the link provided that the strip of paper is called a swab. Should have known this one too.
FWIW, the term “machine” did not seem off there to me, and it’s probably the word I would use colloquially, as well, in asking the question (as a native speaker).
Yeah, they’ve been along for at least a decade and a few years here in the US. I remember a friend of mine c. 2005 purposely not taking me to the gun range before a flight, but rather the day before, because of the possibility of me triggering these machines on my security check out of the airport. (I have no idea if going to a gun range would or wouldn’t, but I didn’t want to find out.)
While technically it’s an instrument, “Machine” is understood in the context it was written. You speak English very well as a second language.
Anecdote isn’t data, but I have passed this swab test after having been at the range that morning, having gone through a whole bunch of 1950’s yugo 7.62x39. I did wash my hands, though - bein’ raised right and all.
I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but thanks nonetheless to both of you 
Last time we flew was ten years ago. We went to Wisconsin to visit friends. Of course we brought back souvenirs for everybody.
Our luggage got scanned at the Milwaukee airport, and it set of the bells and buzzers. The suitcases had to be opened and pawed through.
The scanner was looking for explosives. Our culprit? Cheese curds.
~VOW
Maybe even a bit longer than that – I fly fairly often for work, and there was a period of time, in the mid-late 90s (i.e., pre-9/11), when, every time I flew home out of an east coast airport (Newark, Philadelphia, etc.), my carry-on bag would get “selected” for a screening with one of those instruments.
I used to joke (though not in front of the security people) that I was being profiled because I look Irish. 
[quote=“VOW, post:14, topic:845716”]
Last time we flew was ten years ago. We went to Wisconsin to visit friends. Of course we brought back souvenirs for everybody.
Our luggage got scanned at the Milwaukee airport, and it set of the bells and buzzers. The suitcases had to be opened and pawed through.
The scanner was looking for explosives. Our culprit? Cheese curds.
My wife and I fly about once a year. The last tear out the luggage and see what was in there was caused by bath salts she bought in Key West.
In case anyone is interested in additional reading.
I don’t think they say what species they’re flagging, so I can’t say what would result in false alarms.
I’m not an expert, but I believe one of the primary targets for the ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) instruments is nitro-organic compounds used for explosives and some drugs. Examples of explosives include TNT (trinitrotoluene), nitroglycerine, RMX, DMX, etc. As for ammunition you might encounter on a gun range, I don’t think they would detect black powder, but some smokeless powder contains nitrocellulose (I think) and there may be other nitro compounds used.
I was working at a military base 1997-2000 and many of my coworkers would regularly get flagged when then flew back from one of the proving grounds. They were all U.S. military or defense contractors and had the necessary paperwork to show they were legitimate.
I have the impression that the screeners at the airport test a lot more people than before.
[offtopic rant]
Why are there still people flying with too many fluids? It’s ONE bag with the permitted amount of liquids. You don’t get more than ONE bag.
[/offtopic rant]
Hah! I remember in my first job out of college, I worked with a bunch of older guys who were pretty serious practical jokers, and would fuck around with each other pretty relentlessly. (they’d all worked there 20 years or so).
One time, a guy got sent to our Costa Rican manufacturing facility, and one of the other guys at the company suggested he go to lunch at a place that turned out to be a notorious brothel.
So as revenge, he went and got some smokeless powder (he was a reloader), and rubbed it all into the other guy’s laptop bag and carry-on that he was taking on a business trip.
Apparently he failed the swipe test and got harassed for quite a while (this would have been 1998 or so) by the airport security of the time.