Originally Posted by
GUWonder
There are products -- medical or even foodstuff -- that can expedite the emptying of digestive tract-concealed contraband from the mouth or the rectum.
This would suggest prohibiting lavatory use earlier in the flight rather than later, would it not?
But would it be necessary to expel the explosive to make it work? Could a suicide bomber literally be a walking (or seated) bomb?
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
But they wouldn't have to go even that far. Vaginal or anal suppository concealing explosives can be removed with greater ease and are either not going to be detected by strip search machines and/or are going to result in more and bigger and uglier haystacks in which to loose a needle as the "tampon paradox" would come into play.
Yes, but while those would not show up on a WBI scan they could, in principle, anyway, be discovered by a physical examination of the anus, and of the vaginas of those who have them. But you couldn't discover stomach
content this way. Therefore, if in principle a person can turn himself into a bomb by swallowing explosive, would it, again in principle, require a higher-powered xray of the stomach and digestive tract to find this out?
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
The best bomb-makers can already and will usually be able to circumvent whatever security measures are in place or will be put in place using currently available technology.
I recall many years ago reading, in a piece about Presidential security, that preventing assassination is much more difficult if the perpetrator is indifferent to his own death, whether in the act or by subsequent execution. I recall this article coming to mind after 9/11. What you can do is make the crime more difficult for the suicidal assassin, but while you can improve the odds
you can't absolutely prevent it, at least without making it impossible for a President to do his job. The question, then, for the Secret Service as well as for airline security becomes, as you point out, a trade-off.