News:
By now, everyone knows of last week?s thwarted terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives on trans-Atlantic flights from Great Britain to the United States. Most people also recall the claims of Homeland Security officials that there is not feasible technology for detecting liquid explosives and that those which do exist are plagued with false alarms. Apparently these DHS officials were not aware of work going on elsewhere in our government.
According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been working on a technology for years that is both feasible and has been proven to work in some very demanding situations.
The technology, known as Hazardous Material Acoustic Inspection Device or HAZAID, works by sending high frequency (ultrasonic) sound waves of a known frequency and amplitude through the container of suspect liquid and measuring the changes. These changes are then compared to a database of known substances, and the suspect liquid is identified. The entire process currently takes between three and four seconds, but scientists believe they can get it down to a mere one to two seconds with more work.
There is no word whether the Transportation Safety Administration plans on adopting this technology.
Views:
First of all, I laugh at the DHS officials who claimed that there was no reliable technology for detecting liquid explosives at airports ? it seems that there is. I am also surprised that the National Laboratories don?t promote themselves to the TSA well enough to at least make their technology more widely known. I guess such is the way of the government.The technology itself strikes me a really very interesting. The idea that sound waves are modified as they pass through materials is a basic concept in even middle school physics, but seeing it applied to the preventions of potential national security threats is really quite stunning.My simple hope is that the folks over at PNNL can get the technology working almost flawlessly and even more quickly within the next year. If that happens, it only seems probable that the TSA will be able to adopt the technology fairly quickly and perhaps bring an end to the recent restrictions of taking liquids in your carry-on luggage.
At the same time, even if this technology were to become commonplace at airports, people would be forced to remove all liquids from their carry-on baggage in order to scan them. It seems to me that this would likely cause delays at security checkpoints, or perhaps limit the number of liquids one is allowed to carry on to a bottle of water or a cup of coffee.
Commonsense:
Should this system be perfected and utilized I airports (as I suspect it will), please limit the amount of liquids that you choose to carry on. There will be delays, but remember that they are for your own safety. As long as we live in a world with terrorism, we?re going to have to face these types of security measures.
Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/281761_liquidexplode18.html