Screening Tools Slow to Arrive in U.S. Airports

[cal04]

Citing unexpected reliability problems, the Transportation Security Administration is suspending installation of the only airport checkpoint device that automatically screens passengers for hidden explosives.

The rollout of the devices, trace-detection portals, nicknamed puffers because they blow air while searching for explosives residue, had already been far behind schedule. Now the transportation agency is assessing whether to modify the puffers, upgrade them or wait until better devices are available.

“We are seeing some issues that we did not anticipate,” Randy Null, the agency’s chief technology officer, said last week.

The portal problems are part of a pattern in which the federal government has been unable to move bomb-detection technologies from the laboratory to the airport successfully. While workers at the Homeland Security Department laboratory here busily build bombs to test the cutting-edge equipment, the agency still relies largely on decidedly low-tech measures to confront the threat posed by explosives at airports, particularly at checkpoints.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/us/03research.html?hp&ex=1157256000&en=35ebea236841990a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[uppityperson]

1. I know, how about just asking people if they have explosives,or strip them

JOkes aside, how about screening cargo?