IEEE Spectrum September, 2011 - 13

uS $232 246

Amount fetched at auction for the property of
unabomber ted Kaczynski, who terrorized technologists
and others between 1978 and 1995. the money went to his victims and their families.

How 5 Technologies Fared After 9/11
Developed, deployed, and sometimes demoted

he terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 sparked
a security mania in the United States that included a
brassbound push for new surveillance technology-
one that 10 years later has had mixed results. Radiation
monitors for incoming cargo have been deployed en masse, but
Technology

illustrations: anders wennGren

spectrum.ieee.org

their utility remains dubious. Other technologies-such as the
airline passenger imagers used by the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA)-seem to work and have proliferated
but leave some people feeling creeped out. Below, we compare
five technologies pre-9/11 and today.
-Ritchie S. King

pre-9/ 11

now

advanced
imaging

Advanced imaging technology was
not used to screen people prior to 9/11.

the first advanced passenger scanners in the
united States-using X-ray backscatter or
millimeter wave radiation-were installed in
2007. there are now a total of 488 machines
at 78 U.S. airports. the revealing images
the machines produce have raised privacy
concerns.

cargo
conTainer
radiaTion
Scanning

In 2003, there was only one radiation
scanner at a u.S. seaport and none
along the u.S.-mexico border. but
63 percent of the cargo entering
the united States through canada
was scanned.

all cargo entering the united States overland
is scanned, as is 99 percent entering by
sea. existing scanners, however, have been
fraught with high false-positive rates, and
in July, the united States announced it is
killing a program to develop next-generation
scanners owing to operational problems.

Biological
weaponS
deTecTion

the only reliable portable bioweapons
detectors were large mobile labs; the
u.S. Army's was housed in a Humvee
and operated by four technicians.

the bio-Seeq plus, from Smiths Detection, of
Watford, england, can detect anthrax, plague,
and other agents, weighs 3 kilograms,
and provides results in a little over an hour.
However, handheld detectors still aren't
reliable enough to justify public health
measures, such as quarantining.

face
recogniTion

In 2000, a few early commercial
incarnations of face recognition were
tested. their accuracy in identifying
a face faltered when the subject's
distance from the camera or facial
expression varied or when the
lighting changed.

engineers and computer scientists made a
20-fold improvement in accuracy between
2000 and 2006. today, Facebook, Apple's
iphoto, and Google's picasa all have facialrecognition capabilities. In August, a German
official asked Facebook to disable the
feature, claiming that it violated european
privacy laws.

exploSiveS
deTecTion

In 2002, airline passengers and cargo
were rarely swabbed for explosives
(those swabs were run through chemicaltrace detectors). no explosive-tracedetection portal machines were used.
called puffers, these machines puff air at
a passenger and sniff for explosives and
other chemical contraband.

Since 9/11, 1200 explosive-trace detectors
have been installed to screen airline
baggage. At their peak, there were also
94 puffers in 37 U.S. airports, but the
tSA started phasing them out in 2008
because of high maintenance costs.

sourCe: u.s. dePartment oF homeland seCurity

September 2011 * Ieee Spectrum * NA

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2011