The AP Reports that putting your shoes through an X-Ray machine isn't going to help find liquids and gels, because they cannot detect them.
The government's new order that all airline passengers put their shoes through X-ray machines won't help screeners find a liquid or gel that can be used as a bomb. The machines are unable to detect explosives, according to a Homeland Security report on aviation screening recently obtained by The Associated Press.
We, the taxpayers, give our hard earned money to the government for a machine that can't detect liquids? The Republicans say they are better with security issues, and yet we are still waiting in lines to use machines that won't even find things in the first place?
Among the new procedures are a ban on liquids and gels in airline passenger cabins, more hand searches of carryon luggage, and random double screening of passengers at boarding gates.
Random? Random Searches? Shouldn't there be a method to this, some reason for searching? We should have machines be doing this to everyone, in a quick and orderly fashion, and then if something is fishy, pull them aside. Random... Jeepers!
As I pass through the airport, people being searched are being searched at random, not because anybody came through the machine and had something illegal with them. And this is even better.
In its April 2005 report, "Systems Engineering Study of Civil Aviation Security -- Phase I," the Homeland Security Department concluded that images on X-ray machines don't provide the information necessary to detect explosives. Machines used at most airports to scan hand-held luggage, purses, briefcases and shoes have not been upgraded to detect explosives since the report was issued.
I am not familiar with the tech specifics of the X Ray Machine, so maybe the technology just can't provide these results. So then we need to start developing new technology, instead of playing games with airport security and using it as a political tool.
Obviously, as a rational person, I don't expect every single water bottle to be checked, but these "random" searches and machines that can't detect the very materials we are now guarding against, what is up with that? If Democrats are elected in November and take over one or both houses, Airport security should become a priority on their agenda.