American Airlines Is Using a CT Scanner To Screen Luggage At New York's JFK Airport (theverge.com) 125
According to American Airlines, the airline is working with the TSA to install a new bag-scanning machine at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. "The machine uses the same technology as CT scanners, providing a 3D image of bag's contents, and is expected to be operational in late July," reports The Verge. From the report: The new scanner, which will be used at the airport's Terminal 8 security checkpoint, will allow TSA to rotate a bag's image 360 degrees to show its contents. American Airlines says this should provide a more effective way for agents to inspect bags for explosives and other prohibited items. TSA administrator David Pekoske tells CBS News that the new machines could allow for liquids, gels, aerosols, and laptops to be left in bags. The TSA plans to have 15 of the new CT scanners at airports by the end of the year, and are authorized to purchase up to 240 of the machines, which cost $300,000 each, in 2019. The technology has also been tested at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and in Boston.
Re:Security theater is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
You're assuming the TSA guys actually work.
Apparently they were only 5 percent [nbcnews.com] effective. Yes, 5%.
Theater Security Assholes.
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TSA Logic [chzbgr.com]
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It seems the government’s tiger repelling rock has been enough to discourage further attempts, or we can go with the tigers don’t want to eat us now theory.
FTFY
Obligatory link to The Simpson’s clip: https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw [youtu.be]
Long story short, you’ve created a false dichotomy. Given the 95% failure rate, we can assume the TSA’s security efforts aren’t doing much. Likewise, the terrorists likely still want us gone. The only reasonable conclusion is this that they aren’t attacking us for other reasons.
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Also, it has stopped all the tiger attacks. Hasn't been a single one since the TSA started.
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It's better than welfare, but could they give them something to do that doesn't involve me having to be late for my plane?
Re:Security theater is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
I think what you really want to know is if anyone has tried to smuggle explosives on to a plane, not into an airport. You don't get checked when you walk into an airport, you get checked when you go to the gates.
And, the answer is "yes". People have tried to smuggle explosives onto airplanes. Here is a partial list of 2017 attempts:
There were also about 4,000 guns that TSA seized in 2017 when stupid jackoffs (mostly rappers, professional athletes and Republican officials) tried carrying them onto a plane.
People also like to bring inert explosive devices onto planes for some reason. A bunch of inert hand grenades, claymores, suicide vests and other goodies were seized in 2017. Also, throwing stars, daggers disguised as hairbrushes and tons of other whacky shit.
https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2018/... [tsa.gov]
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Maybe the reason you didn't hear about them is because their weapons were taken away before they boarded the plane.
Re:Security theater is expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
There also haven't been any unicorns seized by TSA. But they did seize explosives, edged weapons, and 4,000 fucking guns.
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Source?
You don't have to "look it up". I've made it easy for you by including a link in my comment above where you can actually see many of the edged weapons and guns.
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Give me an honest answer: Is someone who, in 2017, doesn't know you can't take a gun on a plane really smart enough to own a gun? How do they remember which part they're supposed to point away from themselves?
And shouldn't someone who's so stupid that they bring a gun onto an airplane in 2017 get a serious smack upside the head?
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Except that one in Boston and like hundreds of mass shootings.
But ok.
Honestly, this doesn't bother me... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ok, now let us pretend they are keeping the scan data and tying it to your identity...
They know what you left with and what you returned with, now lets say you bought something out of state and returned home with it (the receipt is also in the scan), would you be ok with them (your state) using that knowledge to tax you the sales tax you did not report for that sale?
I wonder at what point people will say enough is enough, if at all?
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Problem is, I'm drowning in data, but what I really need is information from all that data.
Sure, you could collect it, and store it, and even possibly get a way to retrieve it quick enough to do comparisons, but what can you really tell from it? That they packed their laptop on top last time or are bringing home TWO bottles of water when they left with one? Maybe you could gig them for stealing shampoo from the hotel? Or, GASP, their carry on is LARGER on the way home than when the left and it's loaded u
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Which airports? In most of the US airports I've seen, the ticket/ID check desk is at the beginning of the line and the x-ray machines are at the other end. There's no check when you dump your bags on the belt, and the order of people doing so isn't really controlled -- some people slooooowly take laptops and liquids out while other people pass them by.
I think a few may do it backwards, with ticket/ID check at the boarding gate, but I haven't seen this recently either.
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honestly, this country would be a better place if we went back to pre-9/11 levels of security with locked/reinforced cockpit doors.
And arming the pilots. Armed pilots was common practice for a long time. This was stopped when passengers weren't allowed to have weapons, after numerous hijackings in the 1970s as I recall. It was restored for a while after 9/11 but Obama put an end to that.
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Are armed pilots actually useful in a hijacking (assuming that hijackers get past a locked cockpit door)? The pilots already have the ultimate weapon -- the control yoke or stick. If they're strapped in, they can make sure anyone who's NOT strapped in is no longer vertical.
I'd frankly rather see an undercover air marshal that's armed and let the pilots concentrate on their core competency: flying the damn plane.
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Guessing that that depends on the hijacker.
There may ("may" being the key word) be a deterrent effect if you decide not to hijack a plane because dying in a grand gesture may be desirable, but being shot down like a dog by the pilot not so much....
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Re: Honestly, this doesn't bother me... (Score:2)
Germanwings Flight 9525:
The captain then tried to break down the door, but like most cockpit doors made after the September 11 attacks, it had been reinforced to prevent intrusion.
The time from cruise to impact was about 10 minutes.
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Given that it comes from you, I am surprised that you haven't suggested arming the pilots with nuclear reactors.
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TSA is like UBI. They take a group of otherwise unemployable people and give them do nothing jobs.
The world is full of these people, corporate world too. People who produce negative work, but are kept around, whole departments full of them. Worse than useless management layers etc.
It's not by accident. They've got to be kept busy.
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locked/reinforced cockpit doors.
Everything is a trade-off
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/... [mirror.co.uk]
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it might reduce some of the other security-theater TSA nonsense
This is a contradiction. If you believe that effective screening could reduce the ineffective stuff, then you don't believe that it's theater. The point of security theater is not to be effective.
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It reduces what you can own and travel in privacy with. Several generations ago, some of my ancestors were stripped of their silver at the border leaving.... Sounds like more of the same coming, and other common govt hijinks.
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Stripped of silver at the borders? Sounds like Deleware.
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If they can effectively screen baggage and prove it, it might reduce some of the other security-theater TSA nonsense.
If only I had points to mod you "Funny"...
Seems the same (Score:2)
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/world-first_geneva-airport-tests-revolutionary-3-d-baggage-scanners/44244006/ [swissinfo.ch]
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are you confused between CT scanners and MRI?
CAT scans use x rays. MRI uses magnets.
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A CT scanner isn't a MRI. Rather, it's a fancy x-ray machine that computes the density of what is being scanned in 3D. Metal is not a problem for these machines.
In theory, they could potentially distinguish between real toothpaste and a tube of high explosive based on the difference in density. Although, I don't know how different such things will appear in reality and it could easily be fooled by mixing in modifiers to give the same x-ray absorption as the item they are intending to mimic.
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Actually, metal IS a problem for a traditional medical CT machine which works with a point source and only a couple of point targets going round and round as the thing being imaged slowly moves though the scanner. Metal creates scattered X-Rays and shadows that the CT software doesn't know how to deal with in the medical world. I've seen these effects in CT's of my daughter's arm where they had to install metal plates after a car accident.
HOWEVER.... This is *also* a thing you can leverage if you want to
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Also, regarding metal shadows and scatters - if you think that plate in your daughter's arm is impressive, you ought to see one in someone who has had a lot of metal fillings in their teeth.
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So I have a question..
What stops them from doing away with the rotating bits?
I was thinking that you could have a ring of detectors that had sufficient resolution and then have a ring of scanning X-Ray sources that didn't move, but could scan an X-Ray beam though the object and to the detectors. No moving parts = easier to maintain and as a bonus you get to get your slices faster AND can do some additional calculations and get some interesting chemical information too.
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Outside of the clinical space, some X-Ray and CT systems use dual energy emmission to have better materials discrimination than you might think, as it isn't just based on density but also Z eff ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_nuclear_charge [wikipedia.org]).
Also, there are units that don't spin the tube - an older system that spun a beam to hit a large, circular annode (only a single manafacturer), and at least one moder
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They don't move slowly any more.
No kidding. most of the modern scanners can do a full rotation in under half a second.
Currently, you can get 320-slice scanners.
Actually I saw one of the newer Toshiba scanners a few months ago. They have a couple models that are 640 slice. With the speed that the table can move through one of those, I can see how a conveyor belt could move luggage through something like that a very fast rate.
Unfortunately, metal artifacts are still an issue. But the software has improved greatly to clean this up. But I doubt the TSA has a 3D lab full of techs po
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I thought the BS about those was because the security types were afraid of explosives? How are CT scans going to mitigate that?
You are funny, acting like the shape is the only information you get from an X-ray....
You do understand that density of the material along with some very interesting information about the structure at a molecular level is obtained with X-Rays. Interesting enough to make a determination about it's chemical composition and tell explosives apart from shampoo, shaving cream and mouthwash. All this without looking at the shape...
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Interesting enough to make a determination about it's chemical composition and tell explosives apart from shampoo, shaving cream and mouthwash.
The liquid limitations are not because someone tried to smuggle a liquid explosive on board, it was because they tried to smuggle the components to make a liquid explosive on board. Acetone and hydrogen peroxide, to be specific.
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Yep, I understand, which is why we have the crazy limits on amounts of fluids and containers you can bring.
However, the components to make an explosive may be detectable using x-ray spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You can basically detect the chemical makeup of the fluids using X-Rays and CT techniques if you have the proper source and detector setups. At $300K for each machine, I'm guessing they have the capability to do this in the hardware, just not implemented and/or validated yet in t
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However, the components to make an explosive may be detectable using x-ray spectroscopy
A CAT scan is not x-ray spectroscopy. It is a 3-D x-ray, based on density and not chemistry.
I'm guessing they have the capability to do this in the hardware
Unlikely.
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However, the components to make an explosive may be detectable using x-ray spectroscopy
A CAT scan is not x-ray spectroscopy. It is a 3-D x-ray, based on density and not chemistry.
I'm guessing they have the capability to do this in the hardware
Unlikely.
Ah, but the equipment configuration of a CT machine *could* be used in the same way as am x-ray spectroscopy setup, especially if you are removing the majority of the moving parts of a CT machine by putting a ring of detectors around the object to be observed and then you could detect the diffractions and reflections from a point source of X-Rays. My guess (and that's all) is they've done this, or think they can do it with the equipment they have with more software and processing. Remember, what makes a
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Ah, but the equipment configuration of a CT machine *could* be used in the same way as am x-ray spectroscopy setup,
if only a CAT scanner had spectroscopy hardware and not just a density (intensity) detector. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
especially if you are removing the majority of the moving parts of a CT machine by putting a ring of detectors around the object to be observed and then you could detect the diffractions and reflections from a point source of X-Rays.
So, yeah, if they replace all the hardware for a CT scanner and replace it with X-ray spectroscopy hardware, they'd have an X-ray spectroscopy system.
Remember, what makes a CT generate images is the post processing of the collected data to calculate the X-Ray blocking of the material and a specific point, by passing a beam of X-Rays though the object as the detector and source go around it.
It seems I know what a CT scanner does a lot better than you do, since you're imagining all kinds of different hardware that isn't in one. Don't tell me to "remember" when you haven't.
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I never claimed to be an expert here, in fact quite the opposite. But you seem to be all upset, as if I've hit a nerve.
I'm looking at the theory here and there are some common aspects between the physics of CT and spectroscopy that just *might* be possible to leverage using the right detectors. Actually, it looks pretty likely to me as the physical layouts of the two techniques are *very* similar, so similar that I'd be willing to bet that you could generate a CT image using spectroscopy hardware prett
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The capability is to build a 3d image of all luggage and have chemicals and substances show.
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You can basically detect the chemical makeup of the fluids using X-Rays and CT techniques if you have the proper source and detector setups. At $300K for each machine, I'm guessing they have the capability to do this in the hardware, just not implemented and/or validated yet in the software.
They are using L3's ClearScan [l-3com.com] scanner, described as combining "dual-energy CT technology and advanced explosives detection algorithms". It's not really x-ray spectroscopy, but it can be used to measure effective atomic number [wikipedia.org] as well as density.
To quote a paper [csuptwo.com] on the subject:
An object’s material type can be better determined by using both its density and
effective atomic number than by using the density alone. For example, water and the explosive ANFO
(Ammonium Nitrate and fuel oil) can have similar physical densities. However, they differ significantly
in effective atomic numbers.
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Actually there was a misread of the text, it's Virginians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
(Note: The video has Robin Williams saying some four letter words.)
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Think of a 3d look inside anything that a passenger attempts to bring with them.
Drugs, toothpaste, different chemicals all show up as something different.
Add some color and a GUI with an alert for 100% of all luggage and such scans will find a lot of what is attempted to be hidden.
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Drugs, toothpaste, different chemicals all show up as something different.
Things with different densities show up as different. It's not chemistry, it's density.
Add some color
CT scanners don't create color images. They create INTENSITY maps, and you can apply pseudo-color colormaps to the intensity images to highlight small variations in density.
and a GUI
Oh, my, you should have said that first. Of course with a GUI they can detect reversals in the polarity of the neutron flow and all kinds of other things, too.
and such scans will find a lot of what is attempted to be hidden.
THAT is the important part of using a CT scanner instead of a simple X-ray. If you are carr
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Re "chemistry" - the plastics and gels change as different attempts are made to hide drugs in different ways.
The better the scanner science the more every attempt is detected and fails.
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But luggage scanners DO create color images (albeit false colors), and many modern scanners combine different types of scans to discriminate different types of materials.
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Actually, I think they eventually will.
X-Rays can give you a lot more information about a material than you might think looking at a B&W picture of your broken arm.
In Fact, you can tell a LOT about the material using an X-Ray and lots of detectors looking at how they are scattered going though an object, including details about the molecular structure and clues about the chemistry of the material. It doesn't seem a stretch to me to assume that CT techniques could be used to tell the difference between
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CT is basically an X-ray with computers that do just that. So functionally there is little difference between an X-Ray and a CT scan, except that you use computers to analyze the X-Ray image and there is better resolution than a typical X-Ray machine because it uses hundreds of times more radiation.
The question is whether the radiation levels will cause any issues with electronics. Space missions have to have radiation-hardened chips for what amounts to equal or lesser radiation than a high-powered CT can p
Sure (Score:2)
"the new machines could allow for liquids, gels, aerosols, and laptops to be left in bags."
Just as the guns, knives and hand-grenades they never find when they get tested.
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The requested 2019 budget for the TSA is $7.7 billion
I just hope these are the same type of scanners we designed for last year, I would hate to have to redesign the mechanical/electrical support for new ones for a third time. By the way, that upgrade of the back-of-the house scanners (not the ones you see at the check-in or carry-on lines) for a single airline at a single airport had greater than a $50,000,000 budget. At $300,000 a piece, the cost
free CT scans for everyone! (Score:2)
CT scanners already in use at PHX (Score:1)
They are already using CT scans at PHX airport. It is much more convenient, I didn't even have to take my laptops out of my bag.
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June, 2017 [aa.com]. PHX were one of the first airports anywhere to try this out.
Put the TSA agents on the planes (Score:2)
I'll believe that the TSA agents are taking airplane security seriously when they start putting the TSA agents on the planes. I know that the crew have their best interests in mind on that plane because they have to ride in the plane. Maybe that's how it can work, the TSA agents become the crew. They take a shift working security, then they take a shift as attendants on the plane. Of course they can't check themselves through security so someone else has to check them.
Here's a better idea. Have the air
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Can they install better customer service? (Score:2)
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Probably won't happen. The entire airline industry is about:
"How can we make this as miserable experience as we possibly can while we price gouge you for it."
Cost effective? (Score:2)
Is this really a cost effective way to save lives? How many deaths a year are caused in the US by terrorists on aircraft? How many of those would actually be stopped by CAT scanners?
That is separate from the serious privacy issues that other posters have raised.
Laptops? Liquids? (Score:2)
Go through the security at Schiphol Airport and you're asked to leave everything in your bag in the right 6 lanes. Has been like that since the start of the year and they aren't 3D CT scanning anything, they just have a better X-ray machine with finer contrast adjustment.
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They very likely are CT scanners as the bbc news article about Heathrow installing some says that Schiphol already tested them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44925635
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They very likely are CT scanners as the bbc news article about Heathrow installing some says that Schiphol already tested them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
Also Amsterdam Schipol is a very well run airport and the Dutch are an exceptionally well mannered people with a solid work ethic. I've been though hundreds of airports and the only departing Customs or Immigration officer who ever asked me if I enjoyed my stay was at Amsterdam.
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Did you try a bit too much in the lounge while you were in Amsterdam? ;-)
Solid work ethic is right, I wouldn't call the Dutch necessarily well mannered, and I sure as hell wouldn't call Schipol well run. Have you ever been ushered through the employee entrance of an airport because they utterly failed to manage the security line during a holiday? They also managed to then tell customers to arrive at the airport 3 hours early but didn't tell the airlines, so there were customers who go to the airport super e
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Sorry you are absolutely right. I confused them with MRI scanners and their giant magnets.
This is what I put my bag through last week: http://airportfocusinternation... [airportfoc...tional.com]