Highway Honeypot
Police set up a highway sign warning motorists that there are random stops for narcotics checks ahead, but actually search people who take the next exit.
Entries Tagged "searches"
Page 6 of 16
Is the Whole Country an Airport Security Zone?
Full-body scanners in roving vans:
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview.
This should be no different than the Kyllo case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the police needed a warrant before they can use a thermal sensor on a building to search for marijuana growers.
Held: Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment “search,” and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.
Skeletal Identification
And you thought fingerprints were intrusive.
The Wright State Research Institute is developing a ground-breaking system that would scan the skeletal structures of people at airports, sports stadiums, theme parks and other public places that could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks, child abductions or other crimes. The images would then quickly be matched with potential suspects using a database of previously scanned skeletons.
Because every country has a database of terrorist skeletons just waiting to be used.
Yet Another Way to Sneak Liquids onto an Airplane
Coffee cup disguised as a camera lens.
Voluntary Security Inspections
What could possibly be the point of this?
Cars heading to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will see random, voluntary inspections Monday.
The searches are part of an increase in security at the airport.
It’s a joint operation between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Austin Police, and airport security.
The enhancements are not a response to specific threats, and the security level has not changed.
Officials say the searches are voluntary and drivers can opt out if they want.
Training? Reassuring a jittery public? Looking busy? This can’t possibly be done for security reasons.
Bringing Lots of Liquids on a Plane at Schiphol
This would worry me, if the liquid ban weren’t already useless.
The reporter found the security flaw in the airport’s duty-free shopping system. At Schiphol airport, passengers flying to countries outside the Schengan Agreement Area can buy bottles of alcohol at duty-free shops before going through security. They are then permitted to take these bottles onto flights, provided that they have the bottles sealed at the shop.
Mr Stegeman bought a bottle, emptied it and refilled it with another liquid. After that he returned to the same shop and ‘bought’ the refilled bottle again. The shop sealed the bottle in a bag, allowing him to take it with him through security and onto a London-bound flight. In London, he transferred planes and carried the bottle onto a flight to Washington DC.
The flaw, of course, is the assumption that bottles bought at a duty-free shop actually come from the duty-free shop.
But note that 1) it’s the same airport as underwear bomber, 2) reporter is known for trying to defeat airport security, and 3) body scanners would have made no difference.
Watch the TV program here.
The Limits of Visual Inspection
Interesting research:
Target prevalence powerfully influences visual search behavior. In most visual search experiments, targets appear on at least 50% of trials. However, when targets are rare (as in medical or airport screening), observers shift response criteria, leading to elevated miss error rates. Observers also speed target-absent responses and may make more motor errors. This could be a speed/accuracy tradeoff with fast, frequent absent responses producing more miss errors. Disproving this hypothesis, our experiment one shows that very high target prevalence (98%) shifts response criteria in the opposite direction, leading to elevated false alarms in a simulated baggage search. However, the very frequent target-present responses are not speeded. Rather, rare target-absent responses are greatly slowed. In experiment two, prevalence was varied sinusoidally over 1000 trials as observers’ accuracy and reaction times (RTs) were measured. Observers’ criterion and target-absent RTs tracked prevalence. Sensitivity (d’) and target-present RTs did not vary with prevalence. These results support a model in which prevalence influences two parameters: a decision criterion governing the series of perceptual decisions about each attended item, and a quitting threshold that governs the timing of target-absent responses. Models in which target prevalence only influences an overall decision criterion are not supported.
This has implications for searching for contraband at airports.
Scanning Cargo for Nuclear Material and Conventional Explosives
Still experimental:
The team propose using a particle accelerator to alternately smash ionised hydrogen molecules and deuterium ions into targets of carbon and boron respectively. The collisions produce beams of gamma rays of various energies as well as neutrons. These beams are then passed through the cargo.
By measuring the way the beams are absorbed, Goldberg and company say they can work out whether the cargo contains explosives or nuclear materials. And they say they can do it at the rate of 20 containers per hour.
That’s an ambitious goal that presents numerous challenges.
For example, the beam currents will provide relatively sparse data so the team will have to employ a technique called few-view tomography to fill in the gaps. It will also mean that each container will have to be zapped several times. That may not be entirely desirable for certain types of goods such as food and equipment with delicate electronics.
Just how beams of gamma rays and neutrons affect these kinds of goods is something that will have to be determined
Then there is the question of false positives. One advantage of a machine like this is that it has several scanning modes is that if one reveals something suspicious, it can switch to another to look in more detail. That should build up a decent picture of the cargo’s contents and reduce false positives.
Transport Canada on its New Security Regulations
Okay, it’s really the Rick Mercer Report.
German TV on the Failure of Full-Body Scanners
The video is worth watching, even if you don’t speak German. The scanner caught a subject’s cell phone and Swiss Army knife—and the microphone he was wearing—but missed all the components to make a bomb that he hid on his body. Admittedly, he only faced the scanner from the front and not from the side. But he also didn’t hide anything in a body cavity other than his mouth—I didn’t think about that one—he didn’t use low density or thinly sliced PETN, and he didn’t hide anything in his carry-on luggage.
Full-body scanners: they’re not just a dumb idea, they don’t actually work.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.