TSA has spent huge sums replacing walk-through metal detectors with machines that capture naked images of people under their clothing but do NOT detect metal. This is to keep you safe in the Global War against Terror® and also to line the pockets of corporations who hire lobbyists like former People's Commissar Michael Chertoff as their barkers. But what the hey, keeping us safe, right?
Wrong. Here's Jeff Goldberg at the Atlantic, a long-term TSA skeptic:
A lone blogger seems to have discovered a fatal flaw in the TSA's whole-body imaging scanners (the ones that take pictures of you naked while you stand in a machine posing like a victim of an armed robbery). Watch this video and see for yourself. I'm waiting for a TSA explanation, which I hope is a good one.
And here's the video he's talking about. Please note that the blogger who posted the video is apparently a Ron Paul supporter ... but "stopped clock twice a day" seems to apply here:
Here's how the method works (Oh, and don't worry, the terrorists already know about this, as there's over 370,000 hits on the Youtube video).
1. As the video shows, the images generated by this particular scanner type, a radiation-based model, generate a white body image on a black background.
2. "Threats" or, in the vast majority of cases "anomalies" such as sanitary napkins, surgical scars, etc. show up within the white background as black objects.
3. However, the technology in this particular scanner type does not allow for scanning of he sides of a person's body.
4. Consequently, any "threat" or "anomaly" on the side of the body will show up in black and be invisible against the black background of the interface.
To test this theory, the libertarian blogger sewed on an extra pocket on the outside of his shirt, and placed in it an ordinary metal case, empty, but sufficiently large enough to contain material that could be harmful to an aircraft or its passengers. He went through security on two different occasions, and the metal case was never detected.
Had he gone through ordinary metal detectors it would have been. The blogger believes that something much larger than a metal case could be brought through the scanners by this means, perhaps even a firearm.
Our entire airport security system is premised on the idea that terrorists are idiots. While I don't agree with the idea that all weaknesses in a system need to be made public knowledge, this one appears so obvious and transparent that I cannot imagine how it was missed by the Transportation Security Agency. But I suppose in the rush to shovel out money to the contractors, this little detail must have fallen through the cracks.
Update:
See here for gizmodo's take on this (hint: they are not impressed with TSA's explanation. Also, the Google has rated the video as 18+ even though it contains no profanity, obscenity or anything else except the sample images from the scanner, which we're told aren't anything to worry our little heads about.