DHS Calls for Liquid Explosive Detector by September

I've searched and not seen this article posted: US anti-terror agency issues calls for liquid explosive bottle scanners, with September deadline for successful device.

Having scanners in place by the beginning of next year would be moving extremely fast for government.

Perhaps they realize that patience for the current elephant gun approach won't last much longer?

Great... right on the heels of them taking away the puffer machines.

Are the (handful of existing) puffers going away?

The fools are considering taking them offline because they would rather play their disgusting little shoe games.

The local news a couple nights ago said due to problems, inadequacies, and breakdowns, the few puffer machines will be phased out. I'll try to find a source.

The puffers work well, but the TSA is too stupid and incompetent to use them effectively.

The airport security teams in Israel are probably laughing at us.

Apples and Oranges.

I have no desire to be interviewed in order to travel by air.

How am I today? Great. Where am I going? Look at my boarding pass. Who am I going to see? None of your damn business.

...and is basically a non-starter. The procuring office is the DHS R&D office. They are procuring prototypes, not production models. Now, anybody in government knows (well, maybe everyone except the DHS) that September is the worst time to try to do a solicitation. That's because the new fiscal year starts on Oct 1st. Since this is a new contract, they will need FY 07 funding. Chances are that Congress won't pass all the spending bills and we will be under a continuing resolution. Under a CR, you can't issue new contracts. My sources say that we will be under CRs through December if the Republicans hold on to both houses. If one or both house becomes Democratic, we will be under CRs until March.

I'm not holding my breath. "September which year, Chertoff???"

Anyone who thinks this is actually going to happen needs to carefully read
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/us/03research.html

Summary: TSA is completely incompetent at procuring and deploying new technology. (I'm not sure the TSA is unique among government agencies in that regard; does anyone remember the billions that the FAA spent on the new air traffic control software some years ago that they had to cancel because they realized it was never going to work?)

My preidction: we're not going to see widespread deployment of high-throughput liquid explosives scanners until 2008 at the earliest.

I saw an LA local news segment a couple days ago about the suspension, but here's a much more comprehensive article discussion the suspension of new installations:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...d_at_airports/

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What? another machine that will not detect anything? Just like the x-ray machines that we put our shoes in to do what? Lets see all the insides of the shoe and do what? I really wish I were a company making all these machines so I could retire by the end of the year with all the added income they are recieving. Here goes the 9/11 charge we pay from $10 to $15 to pay for it. I wonder how many machines around the country I own....

No, you're not really oversimplifying. The ETD machines in use are, as far as I know, all based on gas chromatagraph - mass spectrometer technology. It should just be a software update to add additional substances to alarm upon. I'm not 100% sure how the airport-based machines work, having only used big and lumbering lab-based GC/MS machines, but the principles should be very similar.

The bigger question is how existing ETD machines could be better used. Swab everyone / every bag? That's unfortunately not going to work, even if we add more ETD machines. The puffers were supposed to address this issue, being essentially giant GC/MS machines that use their puffs of air to dislodge traces to analyze, but they've never exactly been perfect technology. Handheld "sniffers" might work better--just incorporate them into the carry-on x-ray scan and have a few for screeners to carry around for secondaries / closer looks at stuff. However, I'm also not sure how well-developed such "sniffer" technology is just yet.

I have advocated that if we're going to have a liquids ban, then to encourage checking of 8 oz or more of liquids and require ETD swabs of any others, in a separate line (if a liquid is seen, send the person to that line). Of course, seeing a liquid is another issue entirely... and not one the x-ray operators are well-prepared for yet.

ETD is the best line of defense at the checkpoint against explosives... but to make it effective, we're going to have to look at how it's used.