Modified radar gun can pick out suicide bombers

[General Zod]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... mbers.html

The radar guns police use to spot speeding motorists have inspired a version that aims to identify a would-be suicide bomber in a crowd.

A radar gun fires microwave pulses at a car and measures the Doppler shift of the reflected signal to calculate its velocity. However, the strength and polarisation of the reflected signal – the "radar cross section" – can provide additional information about the size and shape of the reflecting object and the material it is made from.

William Fox of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and John Vesecky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wondered whether the wiring in a suicide vest would alter the radar cross section of a bomber enough to allow a radar gun to pick him or her out in a crowd.

To find out, the pair used software to simulate how radar signals at 1 gigahertz and 10 gigahertz would be reflected by the most common arrangements of looped wiring typically used by suicide bombers. They found that the clearest reflected signals were in the 10 gigahertz range.

Together with colleague Kenneth Laws, they then fired low-power 10 gigahertz radar pulses at groups of volunteers, some wearing vests wired up like suicide vests. About 85 per cent of the time, telltale factors in the polarisation of the reflected signals allowed them to correctly identify a "bomber" up to 10 metres away.

The team hopes the US army will fund further development of the system, allowing them to boost the detection rate and include refinements to avoid false alarms being triggered by metal in underwired bras, jewellery and earphone leads.

The inventors suggest military checkpoints would be major users of such a system – but it could also be installed alongside CCTV cameras in shopping malls, railway stations, airports and high streets.

Overcoming false alarms will be a major challenge, says radar engineer Sam Pumphrey of the UK-based research and development company Cambridge Consultants, which is developing a radar system to detect explosives that may have been concealed within the walls of buildings as they were constructed. He thinks a bomb detection system that relies on radar guns alone might well be prone to false positives.

Fox agrees. He says that radar can be used in combination with other technologies, including smart surveillance cameras that can identify suspicious behaviourMovie Camera, and infrared imaging, which exploits the fact that explosives belts are often cooler than the body. Such a system could help security staff spot bombers from afar and discreetly begin an evacuation.

So remind me why we're wasting money with porn scanners at the airports again?

[sgt67]

Radar guns are too passive, no one will feel safe without the porn scanners and pat-downs. Just another reason why American airports are all show and no substance.

The idea itself is really interesting, but the article is quite right that this needs refinement before we start pulling everyone who may have any kind of wiring aside.

[Skgoa]

Because they have a higher visibility and thus fool the layman into thinking the government is actually doing something to keep him safe. I think the "highly invasive security meassures at airports are just for show" angle has been covered in most of the threads about this topic that are active right now.

BTW high frequency radar is exactly what the porn scanners use as well. Although iirc they are terahertz while this operates at 10 GHz.

[General Zod]

Because they have a higher visibility and thus fool the layman into thinking the government is actually doing something to keep him safe. I think the "highly invasive security meassures at airports are just for show" angle has been covered in most of the threads about this topic that are active right now.

I figured I didn't need to make them even more cluttered than they already are.

BTW high frequency radar is exactly what the porn scanners use as well. Although iirc they are terahertz while this operates at 10 GHz.

You don't need to step into a booth for these. Since they can be used at a fair distance I would expect they'd drastically speed up security lines. It's not exactly what the developers had in mind for them but they'd be a perfect replacement.

[SCRawl]

So remind me why we're wasting money with porn scanners at the airports again?

This thing also only appears to pick up a fairly narrow range of threats, i.e. the guy with loads of explosives strapped to his torso. It wouldn't pick up the "underwear bomber" type of threat (though, to be fair, neither would the scanners being used now), nor would it pick up the kinds of devices that any thinking terrorist would actually try to smuggle onto a plane. It seems to be optimized for picking up would-be suicide bombers at high-traffic areas, perhaps including airports, but not for airplane screening.

[General Zod]

So remind me why we're wasting money with porn scanners at the airports again?

This thing also only appears to pick up a fairly narrow range of threats, i.e. the guy with loads of explosives strapped to his torso. It wouldn't pick up the "underwear bomber" type of threat (though, to be fair, neither would the scanners being used now), nor would it pick up the kinds of devices that any thinking terrorist would actually try to smuggle onto a plane. It seems to be optimized for picking up would-be suicide bombers at high-traffic areas, perhaps including airports, but not for airplane screening.

Which is why you'd use it in combination with other technologies, like they mentioned in the article. If the airport scanners missed the 12" razor blades Adam Savage accidentally brought on board with him they don't exactly seem to be a very good job of picking up legitimate threats.

[SCRawl]

So remind me why we're wasting money with porn scanners at the airports again?

This thing also only appears to pick up a fairly narrow range of threats, i.e. the guy with loads of explosives strapped to his torso. It wouldn't pick up the "underwear bomber" type of threat (though, to be fair, neither would the scanners being used now), nor would it pick up the kinds of devices that any thinking terrorist would actually try to smuggle onto a plane. It seems to be optimized for picking up would-be suicide bombers at high-traffic areas, perhaps including airports, but not for airplane screening.

Which is why you'd use it in combination with other technologies, like they mentioned in the article. If the airport scanners missed the 12" razor blades Adam Savage accidentally brought on board with him they don't exactly seem to be a very good job of picking up legitimate threats.

And that sounds fine. You seemed to be advocating replacing the "porn scanners" with these devices, which really wouldn't work.

[General Zod]

And that sounds fine. You seemed to be advocating replacing the "porn scanners" with these devices, which really wouldn't work.

Why not? It's not as if the scanners have done a terribly effective job at catching things so far.

[Coalition]

Because they have a higher visibility and thus fool the layman into thinking the government is actually doing something to keep him safe. I think the "highly invasive security meassures at airports are just for show" angle has been covered in most of the threads about this topic that are active right now.

Make a giant metal octagon stand similar to the SPY radar system that AEGIS vessels use, have a couple people with thick lead outfits standing near it (they need the protection, they are exposed to it for their entire shift), add a couple subwoofers for a low-frequency rumble, some sort of a dog-leg to make people think they are only being scanned a few at a time, and you can make it look imposing.

In reality the small hand scanners that are used to scan your ticket before you enter are the real emitters, and the security personnel are watching the display for both ticket reading and radar returns.

[folti78]

So remind me why we're wasting money with porn scanners at the airports again?

Because ol' man Chertoff bought byworks for the biggest pornscan maker? Who's parent's CEO just travelled with the President recently to India thus getting free lobbyist time? Or more plausably, getting a cheaper and more efficient method on taxpayer dime is no longer considered to be american ?

[xt828]

Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but I gather from the article that what the scanner detects is wires on a person's torso, and it's unable to distinguish between wires for a bomb, a wired bra, and earphone wires? Because with the last two being between them nearly ubiquitous, I'm not sure how this is helpful inside a Western country.

[SCRawl]

Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but I gather from the article that what the scanner detects is wires on a person's torso, and it's unable to distinguish between wires for a bomb, a wired bra, and earphone wires? Because with the last two being between them nearly ubiquitous, I'm not sure how this is helpful inside a Western country.

The trick, according to the OP, is to be able to improve this system so as to enhance its effectiveness through an increased detection rate (above its current 85%) and a decreased false positive rate (by discriminating between bomb wires and mp3 players). The means by which these goals will be accomplished are the, I think, the province of the engineers on this project.

And that sounds fine. You seemed to be advocating replacing the "porn scanners" with these devices, which really wouldn't work.

Why not? It's not as if the scanners have done a terribly effective job at catching things so far.

Let me state my case more clearly. These devices surely could not be terribly useful for detecting those who would choose to blow up a civilian passenger jet, because those who would do so surely wouldn't choose to show up wearing the sorts of devices that this device could detect. They might be useful for preventing (and, ultimately, deterring) those who would take advantage of an airport, with its target-rich environment of travelers, but since bringing down a plane requires a more subtle approach these days it will require other methods to detect those who would try. You may disagree with the implementation of the current battery of counter-terrorism methods, but surely a direct swap of "porn scanners" for these modified radar guns would not be likely to yield any useful results. Well, other than elimination of the full body scanners, that is.