Terrorism: June 6, 2002

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Seeking to improve airport security, the Transportation Security Agency has given InVision Technologies (actually, its R&D subsidiary, Quantum Magnetics) a grant of $1 million to develop a new explosive detection system. The current system has a false alarm rate of more than 10 percent, and it takes way too much manpower to check out the bad reports. The new system will add quadrupole resonance technology, which detects explosives by low-frequency radio scans. The Transportation Security Agency has said that its tests have shown that Explosive Trace Detection (EDT) systems are equal to the current explosive detection system, but many have their doubts. The EDT system works by having a security agent rub a swab around a piece of luggage and then process the swab in a machine. Problems abound with this concept. It takes many more man hours, searching each bag takes longer, bags must be opened to be checked, and skillful terrorists could pack bombs in their luggage in a way that might escape this form of detection. --Stephen V Cole


 

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