Who’s Getting Rich From the Full-Body Scanner Boom?

 By

James Ridgeway,


Mother Jones Online

The TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed
technologies. Will the “digital strip search” device just bring more of the
same?

Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake
of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According
to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped
by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would
have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin. 

Within days or even hours of the bombing
attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic
bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing
hearings by the Senate Homeland
Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone
conclusion, saying one of the “big, urgent questions that we are holding this
hearing to answer” was “Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect
explosives in wider use?” Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told
the Washington Post, “You’ve got to
find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get
at. It’s either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven’t
figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out.”

Since the alternative is being groped by airport
screeners, the scanners might sound pretty good. The Transportation Security
Administration has claimed that the images “are
friendly enough to post in a preschool,”
though the pictures themselves tell another story, and numerous organizations have
opposed them as a gross invasion of privacy. Beyond privacy issues, however, are
questions about whether these machines really work — and about who stands to
benefit most from their use. When it comes to high-tech screening methods, the
TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed
technologies, and there are signs that the latest miracle device may just bring
more of the same.

Known by their opponents as “digital strip
search” machines, the full-body scanners use one
of two technologies — millimeter
wave sensors or backscatter x-rays — to see through clothing, producing ghostly
images of naked passengers. Yet critics say that these, too, are highly
fallible, and are incapable
of revealing explosives hidden
in body cavities — an age-old method
for smuggling contraband. If that’s the case, a terrorist could hide the entire
bomb works within his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search
undetected. Yesterday, the London Independent reported
on “authoritative claims that officials at the (UK) Department for Transport and
the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that
they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation.” A
British defense-research firm reportedly found the machines unreliable in
detecting “low-density” materials like plastics, chemicals, and liquids —
precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs. 

Yet the rush toward full-body scans already
seems unstoppable. They were mandated
today as part of the “enhanced”
screening for travelers from selected countries, and hundreds
of the machines are already on order,
at a cost of about $150,000 apiece. Within days of the bombing attempt, Reuters
was reporting that the “greater U.S.
government shift toward using the high-tech devices could create a boom for
makers of security imaging products, and it has already created a speculative
spike in share prices in some companies.”

Which brings us to the money shot. The body
scanner is sure to get a go-ahead because of the illustrious personages hawking
them. Chief among them is former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, who now heads
the Chertoff Group, which represents one of the leading manufacturers of
whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems. For days after the attack,
Chertoff made the rounds on the media promoting
the scanners, calling the bombing
attempt “a very vivid lesson in the value of that machinery” — all without
disclosing his relationship to Rapiscan. According to the Washington
Post, Chertoff’s advocacy for the
technology dates back to his time in the Bush administration. In 2005, Homeland
Security ordered the government’s first batch of the scanners — five from
California-based Rapiscan Systems.

Today, 40 body scanners are in use at 19 U.S. airports. The number is expected
to skyrocket at least in part because of the Christmas Day incident. The
Transportation Security Administration this week said it will order 300 more
machines.

In the summer, TSA purchased 150 machines from Rapiscan with $25 million in
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

The Washington
Examiner last week ran down an entire
list of all the former Washington politicians and staff members who are now part
of what it calls the “full-body scanner lobby”: 

One manufacturer, according
to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is
American Science & Engineering, Inc. AS&E has retained the
K Street firm Wexler & Walker to lobby for “federal deployment of security
technology by DHS and DOD.” Individual lobbyists on this account include former
TSA deputy administration Tom
Blank, who also worked under House
Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Chad Wolf — former assistant administrator for policy at TSA, and a former aide
to Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., a top Senate appropriator and the ranking
Republican on the transportation committee — is also lobbying on AS&E’s behalf.

Smiths Detection, another screening
manufacturer, employs
top transportation lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates,
including Kevin Patrick Kelly, a former top staffer to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.,
who sits on the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee. Smiths also
retains former congresswoman Helen
Delich Bentley, R-Md.

Former Sen. Al D’Amato, R-N.Y., represents
L3 Systems, about which Bloomberg
wrote today: “L-3 has ‘developed a
more sophisticated system that could prevent smuggling of almost anything on the
body,’ said Howard Rubel, an analyst at Jefferies & Co., who has a ‘hold’ rating
on the stock.”

In forecasting the fate of the full-body
scanners, we can turn to recent history, which saw the rapid rise — and decline
— of the previous “miracle” screening technology. In the years following 9/11,
dozens of explosive trace portals (ETPs) were installed in airports across the
country, at a cost of about $160,000 each. These “puffer” machines — so called
because they blow air on passengers to dislodge explosive particles — were once
celebrated as the “no-touch
pat down.” But in a Denver test by
CBS in 2007, a network employee was sprayed with explosives and then walked
through the airport’s three puffers without any trouble. The machines also set
off false alarms, and they frequently broke down, leading
to sky-high maintenance costs.

After spending more than $30 million on the
puffer machines — most of them purchased from GE — the TSA announced earlier
this year that it was suspending
their use. Only about 25 percent of
the machines were ever even deployed at US airports. A report
last month from the Government
Accountability Office found that the TSA had not adequately tested the puffers
before buying them.

What will happen if the full-body scanner goes
the way of the puffer? Well, there’s always the next generation of security
equipment: the Body
Orifice Security Scanner, or BOSS chair.
This contraption, which has an uncomfortable resemblance to an electric
chair, is used
in prisons, mostly in the UK, for
tracing cell phones, shivs, and other dangerous contraband that’s been swallowed
or inserted into body cavities by inmates. So far, it only detects metal, but
you never know.

Give me a friendly German Shepherd any day.