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With Footwear Scanners Failing in Airport Tests, the Shoes Still Have to Come Off

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With Footwear Scanners Failing in Airport Tests, the Shoes Still Have to Come Off

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Old Aug 24, 2012, 2:35 am
  #1  
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With Footwear Scanners Failing in Airport Tests, the Shoes Still Have to Come Off

Hi All,

I did a search, but did not see a thread on shoe scanners.

I always find this topic funny considering I rarely have to take my shoes of anywhere outside of the US!! And, in many places, they do not use the variations of the nude-o-scope, but the traditional metal detectors.

More wasted USD perhaps?



NY Times: With Footwear Scanners Failing in Airport Tests, the Shoes Still Have to Come Off

After spending millions of dollars testing four different scanning devices that would allow airline passengers to keep their shoes on at security checkpoints, the United States government has decided for now that travelers must continue to remove their footwear, by far the leading source of frustration and delays at the airport.

The Transportation Security Administration said it had rejected all four devices because they failed to adequately detect explosives and metal weapons during tests at various airports. One of the scanners is now used in airports in 18 countries.
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 4:44 am
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After all the promises that the shoe carnival would go away in 2009, uh, 2010, well, SOME time soon? I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!
Originally Posted by rwoman
More wasted USD perhaps?
At least they didn't buy thousands of the things before they found out that they don't work. Or is this like the puffers, where they work just fine but they're too stupid to maintain them properly?
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 5:02 am
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Originally Posted by RadioGirl
After all the promises that the shoe carnival would go away in 2009, uh, 2010, well, SOME time soon? I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!

At least they didn't buy thousands of the things before they found out that they don't work. Or is this like the puffers, where they work just fine but they're too stupid to maintain them properly?
But, we paid for all the non-recurring engineering...
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 5:28 am
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Originally Posted by FliesWay2Much
But, we paid for all the non-recurring engineering...
Well, at least some of it.
Originally Posted by NYTimes
In 2007, the agency tested a General Electric shoe scanner at Orlando International Airport. The next year, it tested two scanning machines made by L3 Communications at Los Angeles International Airport. But none of them passed agency muster.

It also tested a device called Magshoe, which is intended to detect metal and is made by IDO Security, an Israeli firm, that deploys the scanner in hundreds of airports and cruise ships around the world, including in China, Italy and Israel.
TSA may have paid for (some of?) the development costs for GE and L3. (And by "development costs" I mean expensive overseas vacations for GE and/or L3 executives and their families.) I doubt they paid for the IDO development, which in any case is being offset by (apparently) selling units to other countries.

But there's certainly more cost to come:
Originally Posted by NYTimes
The government has a $1.4 million contract with Morpho Detection, a subsidiary of the French defense giant Safran, to develop a shoe-scanning machine.

Morpho’s scanner can detect chemical compounds and metal objects...
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 5:56 am
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Originally Posted by RadioGirl
Well, at least some of it.

TSA may have paid for (some of?) the development costs for GE and L3. (And by "development costs" I mean expensive overseas vacations for GE and/or L3 executives and their families.) I doubt they paid for the IDO development, which in any case is being offset by (apparently) selling units to other countries.

But there's certainly more cost to come:
I know that U.S. companies invested very little, if any, IRAD into these devices because they know that the TSA will simply throw money at them. The TSA is the ideal customer for the private sector: an agency with money to burn and is clueless.
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 8:25 am
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Why can the rest of the world practice common sense, and the US cannot?

I am really really REALLY sick of the Americans who clog up security queues around the world, insisting on removing their shoes, even after I and airport staff tell them over and over and over again not to remove their shoes. Summers are especially bad at LHR and FRA. I actually filled in a screening comment card at T3 recently requesting that at T3 and T5 they create an 'Americans only' screening queue for the AA passengers who think that removing their shoes is their duty to make us safer.

(Did I mention that I am sick of shoe-removers?!) And no, I'm not anti-American, but I am anti-stupid.

And, in many places, they do not use the variations of the nude-o-scope, but the traditional metal detectors.
That is an incorrect statement. There are very very few places around the world which use scanners, and they are not primary as in the US.
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 1:14 pm
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Originally Posted by exbayern
Why can the rest of the world practice common sense, and the US cannot?

I am really really REALLY sick of the Americans who clog up security queues around the world, insisting on removing their shoes, even after I and airport staff tell them over and over and over again not to remove their shoes. Summers are especially bad at LHR and FRA. I actually filled in a screening comment card at T3 recently requesting that at T3 and T5 they create an 'Americans only' screening queue for the AA passengers who think that removing their shoes is their duty to make us safer.

(Did I mention that I am sick of shoe-removers?!) And no, I'm not anti-American, but I am anti-stupid.

That is an incorrect statement. There are very very few places around the world which use scanners, and they are not primary as in the US.
As an American, and a veteran, I should be insulted, but I find myself very much agreeing with you.

I know not for what I would now fight, considering all that I have lost that I once defended.
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 2:45 pm
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Wonder what the outcome would have been if Skeletor was on the board of any of the companies
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 5:12 pm
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The Transportation Security Administration said it had rejected all four devices because they failed to adequately detect explosives and metal weapons during tests at various airports.
And yet we're forced into "oh we PROMISE they'll be secondary screening ONLY" NOS machines that fail to adequately detect explosives and metal weapons if someone uses a really really easy means to defeat the scanner.

But they won't stop using them.

The shoe removal circus is ridiculous, and it's one of the things I hate most about flying.
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Old Aug 24, 2012, 7:15 pm
  #10  
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Can we say enough is enough. No more taking off the shoes. Because this is in the past. It's time to move on. Let's try to forget the shoes carnival. Elimination the shoes screening. Because those people were never have any explosives inside the shoes. Better listening to those customers! Those passengers who had it right to kept the shoes on. Because TSA is lying all of those years and cheating on those passengers.

Good riddance to TSA!!!
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Old Aug 25, 2012, 5:19 am
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Every single time I fly into the US (and therefore over the US) I do so without removing my shoes. The ridiculousness of having to remove shoes to connect, and sometimes only to leave the airport, but not to fly in, is indescribable.
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Old Aug 25, 2012, 9:57 am
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The Transportation Security Administration said it had rejected all four devices because they failed to adequately detect explosives and metal weapons during tests at various airports.
I can't think of any machine that can adequately detect metal objects...

Originally Posted by exbayern
I actually filled in a screening comment card at T3 recently requesting that at T3 and T5 they create an 'Americans only' screening queue for the AA passengers who think that removing their shoes is their duty to make us safer.
Don't lump us all into one category.
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Old Aug 25, 2012, 10:23 am
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Originally Posted by Majuki
Don't lump us all into one category.
for the AA passengers who think that removing their shoes is their duty to make us safer.
If you aren't an AFS'er, then you aren't in my new security checkpoint recommendation.
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Old Aug 25, 2012, 10:50 am
  #14  
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Wasting money is what TSA does best.
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Old Aug 25, 2012, 7:44 pm
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Many security experts say the security agency is too focused on technologies for intercepting things — guns, knives, explosives — instead of focusing on stopping people.

Doesn't take an expert, common sense tells us object oriented security will always fail.
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