re: #55 Bobibutu

[Link: www.nytimes.com…]

An Airport Screening Program Is Killed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 21, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is scrapping a post-Sept. 11, 2001, airport screening program because the machines did not operate as intended and cost too much to maintain.

The so-called puffer machines were deployed to airports in 2004 to screen randomly selected passengers for bombs after they cleared the standard metal detectors. The machines take 17 seconds to check a passenger and can analyze particles as small as one-billionth of a gram.

They also break down when exposed to dirt or humidity, the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement Thursday. Since 2005, maintaining the machines has cost the government more than $6 million.

Right. But most homes in the US have effective cheap CO2 and Smoke detectors. If we stop trying to do the perfect search passenger by passenger and look for the most common explosives in the airport air with simple detectors I suspect we would be doing more than that detector program did to ensure safety.