TSA talks up new security device
Currently, the TSA is investigating how to better detect threats, while still preserving passengers’ dignity. Now, there may be a solution.
The Transportation Security Administration is testing new software for its Advanced Imaging Technology screening devices. Before now, some passengers and civil libertarians have complained that AIT is too revealing.
While it illuminates guns, knives and explosives, it also leaves little to the imagination when it comes to the human body. TSA hopes the new software will maximize modesty, better ferret out illegal objects, and get flyers through the security lane faster.
TSA wants to determine “whether [the new software] will continue to meet the same high security standards that we have in place,” says Jon Allen, the agency’s southeast public affairs manager. The trick is doing that while boosting bodily privacy. Allen says the system aims to accomplish both. That’s because “a passenger-specific image no longer has to be generated.” Screeners see the generic outline of a person, not the anatomic particulars. The bodily image “is identical for all passengers.”
TSA is testing the new software at Las Vegas, Atlanta and—soon—at Reagan Washington National.
Right now there are some 500 AIT machines loaded with the old more revealing software arrayed at 78 airports across the country. With the older set-up TSA officers of the same gender view flyers from afar. The officer, and the image, are sequestered. With the new systems, they’re right there, at the screening machine.
If passengers still don’t want their image taken, no matter how purportedly innocuous, they can opt for a pat down – just as they can now. TSA is hoping the new approach pans out, not just from the privacy perspective but in terms of throughput as well. “The software is capable of rendering a read-out very quickly as to whether a passengers is [carrying] any threat items,” says Allen.
There are two kinds of AIT hardware. One is a millimeter wave device. Electromagnetic waves bounce off the body, bequeathing an image. The other species of advanced imaging is based on backscatter technology that relies on what Allen calls, “low-level X-rays.”
The Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Washington tests involve millimeter wave machines. “[New] software is still in development or the backscatter units,” says the TSA spokesman.
TSA says the new software automatically detects the potential threat and points out where it is. If there’s no threat, an ‘OK’ pops up on the monitor. In that case, no passenger image appears - no matter how tame.
If what Allen terms “an anomaly” shows up, the software highlights that particular part of the pyhsique. “It’s on the screen,” he says. “Not only for the Transportation Security officer to see, but the passenger themselves.”
Whether this new approach works in out there in the work-a-day world of a busy airport remains to be seen. Thus the test. TSA is hopeful. The bigger test, however, is whether skeptical airline passengers buy into the premise of a set-up that is faster, better, and protective of their privacy all at the same time.
Story by Jerry Chandler
Comments: