Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Before the end of April, San Jose Mineta becomes the first Bay Area airport to install shoe scanners -- meaning many of us will no longer have to remove our footwear. Here's more on that and other upcoming technologies intended to reduce the time needed to board a plane.
Your trip to the plane hits a bottleneck in 3 places:
-- examining your identity
-- examining your body
-- examining your
things
The identification part has seen the greatest gains. Today, you can breeze through a special line, while everyone else bunches up. But only if you're a member of Clear, the Registered Traveler program developed by Verified Identity Pass, Inc. San Jose was one of the first airports to implement it.
To join, you pay $100 a year, undergo a background check, finger printing, face recognition, and a scan of your eyes.
State of the art. But GE Security, the technology partner for all of this, thinks it still takes too long.
Steve Hill, GE Security: "We think it should be possible to get a passenger through here in 20 seconds or less."
The challenge is that even Registered Travelers have to pass through a metal detector and partially disrobe.
Wouldn't it be nice not to have to remove your keys? Your laptop? Your shoes? Just walk through security...? Here are things to look for during the coming months:
First, a new phone booth that uses something called millimeter wave technology to deal with your keys, your coat and your belt while you wear them.
Second, a medical CT scanner for carry-on, so you don't have to remove your computer.
Finally, the shoe scanner, which kills two birds with one stop. At the same time your face is being identified, your footwear is being examined, by a kind of junior MRI. It also smells your feet -- literally-- for explosives.
Despite all this research and investment, there is still no machine more sensitive than this nose: on an airport sniffer dog.
FACTS:
The average time through airport security in the US for the past year is 3 minutes, 47 seconds. TSA screened 708,400,522 passengers, and confiscated 1,607,100 knives.
LINKS:
SECURITY TECHNOLOGY TESTED BY TSA:
Backscatter
Biometrics
Bottled Liquid
Scanner
Explosive
Detection System
Explosives Trace
Detection
Millimeter
Wave
Threat Image
Projection
Trace Portals
REGISTERED TRAVELERS PROGRAM:
"CLEAR"
CANINE TEAM
Explosives Detection
Puppy Walker Foster Program
ABOUT DOGS:
The human nose contains 5 million scent receptor nerves, but
the canine nose may contain up to 225 million receptors. Dogs have over 7 square
meters of nasal membranes, compared to only about one-half of a square meter for
people. Dogs have also been used to detect illegal currency, gas leaks, and
termite nests. Over 350 mine-detection dogs are "sniffing out" land mines
worldwide. [From TSA Website]
MINETA SAN JOSE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (SJC)