Keeping One Step Ahead
The day everything changed began with just a few small steps through a security checkpoint. Hijackers Mohammed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari cleared the metal detectors at the Portland, Maine airport. Just three months later, Richard Reid, aboard an American Airlines jet from Paris to Miami, was caught trying to light explosives hidden in the heel of his shoe
As CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports, those security failures have changed the way we fly and the way we live. The government has been pressing the nation's high-tech industry for state-of-the-art answers. And slowly—too slowly for some critics—the results can be seen around the country.
It's called "the Puffer." Michael Jackson — the number two man at the Department of Homeland Security — says it's the newest passenger screening machine, but not the only change.
"It takes about 16 seconds, and its looking for trace material of explosive material that may be on a person's body," Jackson says. "After 2001, we basically replaced every X-ray machine and all the equipment you see here today."
Since New Year's Day 2003, all checked bags — more than a billion a year — have been scanned by explosives detectors. And airport screeners have been re-schooled.
"A year ago, we put basically everyone through an updated training session on how to find explosives, looking at liquids, looking at disassembled bomb parts," Jackson says. "This is a tremendously different and robust work force than we had before."
Jackson says that while all this technology can be used at border crossings and ports, trains and subway systems remain a challenge.
"There is no single technology that draws a shield around a large subway system," he says. "It's a combination of things: intelligence, training, tools that work together. We have to stay one step ahead of the bad guys."
To do that, tomorrow's security is being developed at companies like AS&E Electronics outside Boston. Joe Reiss is the marketing director here. The so-called "backscatter technology" he's talking about involves bombarding bags — even passengers — with a more revealing type of X-ray. Backscatter can also be used at ports and border crossings to more precisely examine the contents of large trucks and containers.
"Backscatter gives the capability to essentially peel away the side of the container and look inside," Reiss says.
Currently, only about 6 percent of the 11 million containers shipped to U.S ports each year are being visually inspected. More than 80 percent are driven through giant radiation detectors in a check for dirty bombs, but backscatter X-rays would add another layer of protection.
A van with the technology can simply drive by cars on the street or in the parking lot of a sporting event and pinpoint explosives or radiation. Now, when it comes to people, the government worried the backscatter X-rays can be too revealing. Passengers can appear nearly naked.
Last month's arrests in England have underlined the vulnerability of aircraft to liquid explosives being mixed on an airplane to make a bomb. The Ahura corporation in Wilmington, Massachusetts, uses lasers to detect this threat.
CEO Doug Kahn claims his product called "First Defender" can detect the fingerprints of more than two thousand chemical compounds. And more can be added to its memory.
The U.S. Capitol police, the Army and the FBI all already use this technology. The TSA. has been studying First Defender for the past year, but it's yet to be installed in any airport.
Also in the development stage: the COBRA-a CAT-scanning system, using three-dimensional images that can detect explosives and weapons much more quickly than current equipment.
And GE's shoe scanner, which would allow passengers to keep their shoes on at security checkpoints. It shoots radio waves at shoes to detect explosives.
But the government is also looking for potential terrorists — people not things. So, there has been increased use of biometrics: scanning the eyes and confirming fingerprints of airline and airport workers. And all visitors coming to the United States are now required to have their fingerprints scanned and a digital photograph taken. That program, called U.S. Visit, began two years ago and is now at 116 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land ports of entry into the country.
Homeland Undersecretary Jackson says he keeps a picture of the burning remains of the World Trade Center in his office — a reminder that for every step he takes to improve security, a potential terrorist is trying to find away around it.
"We have to be pushing, pressing, probing," he says. "'Cause that's just what the terrorists are going to be doing with our country.