Invention: Shocking airport scans

[realFedUp]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7777&feedId=online-news_rss20

Invention: Shocking airport scans
15:09 02 August 2005

NewScientist.com news service
Barry Fox

For over 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled the world's weird and wonderful patent applications each week, digging out the most exciting, intriguing and even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is now available exclusively online. Please send us your feedback.

Shock tactics
Patents filed by an Israeli inventor Amit Weisman and US company Yardeni Associates of Connecticut make scary reading for nervous travellers.

Airport security guards already use hand-held electromagnetic wands to detect metal hidden under clothing. The same wand can also sniff for traces of the gases some explosives emit into the air.

If the passenger is a suicide bomber who realises the wand has found something, the guard might not have enough time to pull out handcuffs or a gun. So the new wand will have a hidden secret – a transformer which steps the detector’s battery power up to 100 kilovolts and feeds it to disguised metal electrodes at the end of the wand.

If the wand gives a silent warning of explosives, the guard can then subtly slide the pads onto the passenger’s neck or hands and press a shock button. The patent reassures that the effect is “temporary and reversible”.

So an innocent traveller who “happened to have a significant amount of metal on his person or happened to treat explosives legally” should wake up shaken but unharmed.

continued

[Ready4Change]

1. And should that bomber have a deadman switch...

...while standing amidst the typical crowds of security lines?

Brilliant. :eyes:

[n2doc]

2. Another reason not to travel

So now, if ,for some reason the device "detects" explosives (which could be fertilizer from a farm, or from certain chemicals and not explosives) now you can be "tazered" instantly. Gee, I wonder how long it will be before the first "So Sorry, we inadvertantly killed your husband" story comes out. And have any of these idiots thought about how explosives are triggered-by electric current through a primer?

[SouthernDem2004]

3. Yes, lets run electricty through a bomb and see what happens. /nt

[sakabatou]

4. Uh-huh

[Ilsa]

5. And if it isn't a bomber, it'll work just like a taser...

"shaken but unharmed." Yeah, right. How many have died over the last couple of years from some minor shocking?

[pitohui]

6. any yahoo can file a patent and many do

doesn't mean this will be used

too many false positives of explosives caused by glycerine in hand lotions

grannies would be dropping from heart failure right and left

put this on the don't worry about it, not gonna happen list