Archives for March 2012

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) released their report on safety of airport backscatter machines on February 29. The report has received criticism from ProPublica among others for what it says as well as what it doesn’t, mostly focusing on issues of incremental risk to the traveling public, the large number of repair services, and the lack of data analyzing whether the machines serve their claimed purpose. (The report does not address millimeter wave machines, which most scientists believe are safer.)

But what’s surprising in both the report and the critiques about it is that they have only discussed the radiation aspects when used as intended, and not the information systems embedded in the devices, or what happens if the scanners are used in unintended ways, as could happen with a computer system malfunction. Like any modern system, the scanners almost certainly have a plethora of computer systems, controlling the scanning beam, analysis of what the beam finds, etc. It’s pretty likely that there’s Windows and Linux systems embedded in the device, and it’s certain that the different parts of the device are networked together, for example so a technician in a separate room can see the images without seeing the person being scanned (as TSA has done to head off the complaints about invasion of privacy).

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