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Chertoff Argues for Whole Body Scanners

Former HSA Secretary Michael Chertoff has jumped into the fray over whether to use full body scanners with an op-ed in the Washington Post. He urges that Congress fund "a large-scale deployment of next-generation systems."

Most airport security checkpoints use metal detectors. Al-Qaeda has shown that it knows how to avoid detection by using an explosive device that contains little or no metal, such as PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, used by Abdulmutallab and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in 2001.

It will only be a matter of time before terrorists figured out how to avoid detection with these machines as well. One reason: The Government's publicly available list of which machines have been purchased for airport use. Each one carriesthe name of the company that makes them, and the company's website has all the particulars about the machine, including in some cases, what a particular machine doesn't screen. [More...]

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