Word: airports
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...foiled terror plot in Great Britain aimed to exploit vulnerabilities in airport security, but new technology may help patch those holes. In recent months, the Transportation Security Administration has begun testing a new tool for detecting such materials, security industry sources tell TIME. The device, Ahura's FirstDefender, is a handheld chemical identification system about the size of a hardcover book. The FBI, U.S. Customs and Immigration and the Department of Homeland Security have already begun using the gadget to detect and identify chemical hazards, but it hasn't yet been implemented in airports. The TSA recently deployed...
...Older machines used to examine liquids were so large that they were generally anchored to labs. But given the portability of this 3.5-pound tool, the TSA could quickly deploy it in airports nationwide. The gadget is simple enough to use that airport screeners and security officials with just several hours of training could monitor suspicious materials in transit. In its latest iteration, the FirstDefender can identify 2,500 liquid and solid substances. The U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center issued a recent assessment of the new handheld as an effective portable tool in detecting dangerous substances, including sarin...
...latest plot seems to have validated the assumption that terrorists would be more likely to try and confound airport security measures by smuggling a bomb on board in pieces and assembling it in mid-flight. The particularly devious innovation of the London plotters was their alleged use of liquid explosives or explosive components, which are easily concealed in many of the items found in most travelers' hand luggage - perfume, hair gel, deodorant, medicines, drinks, toothpaste, lotions, and so on - and are extremely difficult to detect. Metal detectors will obviously miss them. While there have been some "puffer" explosive-detection machines...
...also attack airline security's weakest point - the Transportation Security Administration screeners. They are the burger-flippers of the entire security system, and the chances of even the best of them visually identifying a liquid explosive in an innocuous bottle are slim - that's why Israel's Ben Gurion airport has a laboratory in the basement to conduct instant tests of liquids found on suspect passengers. If the U.S. system lacks sufficient technology to detect liquid explosives, and if it relies on the TSA screeners to ID possible terrorists, it is, at best, a wire mesh fence...
...passenger at Washington's National Airport Thursday morning described passengers crowding around the trashcans dumping anything that could be considered liquid, even toothpaste. But he passed unchecked through security with toothpaste and lotion in his hand luggage, showing the difficulties of enforcing tighter measures in a country with 700 million passengers a year...