How do the new airport body scanners actually work?

[weltweit]

As title..

What technology do these body scanners use?

Anyone know?

And are there any implications for things people might be carrying, like films for example, digital cameras whatever ..

 

[fractionMan]

They have trained psionic monkeys hooked up to brain scanners. Not that they'd admit it.

 

[weltweit]

Gordon Brown promises full body scanners at UK airports
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8438355.stm

The £80,000 full body scanners, which produce "naked" images of passengers, remove the need for "pat down" searches.

They work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth. A virtual three-dimensional image is then created from the reflected energy.

"electromagnetic waves" .. so are they like a CAT scan?

 

[weltweit]

The machines could detect shrapnel, heavy wax and metal, but not plastics, chemicals or liquids, he claimed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/03/brown-airport-security-full-body-scanners

If they cannot detect plastics, what is the point?

 

[fractionMan]

They need better monkeys for that. Psionic monkeys cost money you know.

 

[weltweit]

greater use of body scanners that advocates say would have detected non-metallic items such as the explosives
.....
In a pilot program implemented after the September 11 attacks of 2001, TSA operates 40 millimeter wave technology units at 19 airports and has purchased 150 backscatter, low-level X-ray machines that will be deployed over the next year at a cost of $130,000 to $160,000 per unit. In addition, TSA has plans and funding to buy another 300 units in 2010.
...
Millivision, an 11-employee company based in Massachusetts, says its $180,000 units can operate in "privacy mode" where the operator sees only a video image that highlights concealed items in red.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BT2QZ20091230

So, its a "backscatter, low-level X-ray" which detects "non-metallic items such as the explosives". Bit different from the BBC report above.

 

[weltweit]

They have trained psionic monkeys hooked up to brain scanners. Not that they'd admit it.

They need better monkeys for that. Psionic monkeys cost money you know.

Don't you mean "bionic" rather than "Psionic" ?

 

[fractionMan]

Errr. no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psionics

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Got pulled aside going long-haul two years ago & asked if I wouldn't mind going through one. Well, you're not going to say "No . . ."

Process took about 2 mins, had to stand in 3 different positions (feet on the blue, green then red marks)

Saw the results on the guy's scanner/tv.

Not a lot left the imagination, put me off my sausages.

 

[quimcunx]

I never got to see the picture when they did me!!!


I'd have only complained about looking fat or short or my hair being a mess, I suppose.

 

[Crispy]

It's like an X-ray, but instead of the radiation going through your body, it's only strong enough to go through your clothes, then bounces off your body. A clever computer picks up the bounces and reconstructs the shape of the thing that bounced rays back. Hard things bounce rays differently to soft things, so it can tell if you're carrying a concealed hard thing. fnar. a mobile phone emits 10,000 (or something like that) times as much radiation in the same wavelengths.

 

[kyser_soze]

So while they get a nudey pic of you, it's about as health-issue and invasive as the current metal detecting bleeper thingy?

Dammit, I was hoping for the Total Recall scanner...

 

[Crispy]

well, no, it's a bit more invasive. you get to see the naked human body (in odd-looking computer b&w), with hard objects silhouetted on it.

a bit more than a beep

 

[quimcunx]

They didn't tell me they'd be using my scan for their information leaflet.

 

[DotCommunist]

They follow the same principle as those x-ray specs they used to sell in the back of comics and in joke shops

 

[danny la rouge]

They follow the same principle as those x-ray specs they used to sell in the back of comics and in joke shops

Here is a Scientific Explanation:

 

[weltweit]

As many of the reports say these devices will not detect plastic I can't really see the point in them. Perhaps the authorities are just using the pants bomber to stick another security measure on us!

 

[danny la rouge]

As many of the reports say these devices will not detect plastic I can't really see the point in them. Perhaps the authorities are just using the pants bomber to stick another security measure on us!

No perhaps about it. These scanners weren't going down well. Now we're told Pants Bomber is why they're needed (despite the fact they wouldn't have stopped him). Like all the other bollocks these fuckwits have pushed through.

 

[MikeMcc]

They are terahertz imagers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_radiation
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...mage_result&resnum=3&ct=image&ved=0CBMQ9QEwAg

 

[Fruitloop]

well, no, it's a bit more invasive. you get to see the naked human body (in odd-looking computer b&w), with hard objects silhouetted on it.

a bit more than a beep

Liza Minelli's looking a bit rough these days innit.

 

[danny la rouge]

They are terahertz imagers

This. You have to have one person locked in one closet, who lets the other person out of the other closet. And vice versa.

 

[geminisnake]

Just out of curiosity, so it doesn't show up anything internal then??

 

[weltweit]

They are terahertz imagers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_radiation

Thanks for that, its interesting:

Terahertz radiation is non-ionizing, and thus is not expected to damage tissues and DNA, unlike X-rays. Some frequencies of terahertz radiation can penetrate several millimeters of tissue with low water content (e.g. fatty tissue) and reflect back.
....
Terahertz radiation can penetrate fabrics and plastics, so it can be used in surveillance, such as security screening, to uncover concealed weapons on a person, remotely. This is of particular interest because many materials of interest have unique spectral "fingerprints" in the terahertz range. This offers the possibility to combine spectral identification with imaging. Passive detection of Terahertz signatures avoid the bodily privacy concerns of other detection by being targeted to a very specific range of materials and objects.

 

[Herbsman.]

It probably actually does produce some sort of chemical when it reaches the skin, a chemical for MIND CONTROL.

 

[Herbsman.]

^ Look, I wrote mind control in capital letters, which makes it even more believable AND more likely to be true.

 

[weltweit]

I sometimes WRITE in caps, but it USUALLY just shows how MENTAL I am

 

[weltweit]

The only truly safe way to fly will be naked!

 

[MikeMcc]

Just out of curiosity, so it doesn't show up anything internal then??

No, it's absorbed by the skin

 

[editor]

As title..

What technology do these body scanners use?

They ask you trick questions while making a whirring noise to put you off.

 

[EastEnder]

Just out of curiosity, so it doesn't show up anything internal then??

I dread to think where you're planning on hiding the bomb....