Scientist fools nude scanner

Quicksearch

Disclaimer

The individual owning this blog works for Oracle in Germany. The opinions expressed here are his own, are not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the individual author, and neither Oracle nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.

Navigation

< Dissecting a TCO study | Themen 9. HHOSUG-Meeting >

Scientist fools nude scanner

Thursday, January 14. 2010

This is a nice example, why those backscatter airport scanners are not the solution of all problems in airport security. The interesting part starts at 18:05 of this video available in the ZDF mediathek (an public broadcasting network in Germany). Despite being scanned they are not able to find the thermite the scientist is carrying. The guy demoing the scanner doesn't look amused as well as Mr. Bosbach, a german politician who thinks that we should use such scanners, if they are able to protect the privacy of the scanned peoples.

Posted by Joerg Moellenkamp in English, Privacy, Security at 19:40 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

View as PDF: This entry | This month | Full blog

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Termite does not blow up, it just burns very quickly, hotly, and brightly.

#1 Dave on 2010-01-15 15:36 (Reply)

In essence thermite is burning aluminium. It's used to connect rails when building railroad tracks. I don't want to know what happens in an airplane (made from aluminium) when you ignite some thermite near the wall or on the floor.

#1.1 jfa on 2010-01-15 17:23 (Reply)

Do you know what happens when you ignite termite near right above important control lines in a 747 burning through the aluminum? As the maintainance documents of a 747 are note exactly top secret it would be easy to find a location to maximize damage.

#1.2 Joerg M. (Homepage) on 2010-01-15 19:12 (Reply)

Even an unbelievable quantity of Termite will burn in seconds... by the time it burns up, you may have a melted seat and a bunch of men beating the stuffing out of someone - but the situation is still manageable.

A bomb is a much greater threat (i.e. very unmanageable because soon after the smoke, large hole exists in the plane removing rigid body integrity.)

Of course, this is not to say that we should not try to test for thermite, but more important things need to be done (i.e. defend against threats which have been demonstrated or have been predicted in captured intelligence from laptops, phone calls, computers, etc.)

#1.2.1 Dave on 2010-01-19 03:44 (Reply)

An unbelievable small quantity of Thermite can crash a plane when it's used at the right location ... for example above the avionics rack .. ?

#1.2.1.1 Joerg M. (Homepage) on 2010-01-19 17:52 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_.
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry