New Screening Technology Is Nigh

U.S. government efforts to prevent further terrorist attacks on the nation's planes and trains are increasingly incorporating smart technologies that can sniff out bomb residue on a passport or see through clothes to detect weapons taped to a would-be terrorist's stomach.

The Transportation Security Administration, which Congress created shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, has been investing millions to upgrade technology that the nation's train stations and 429 commercial airports use to detect bombs and weapons.

Currently, the TSA is field-testing a wide range of new gadgets and systems. At five airports, for example, the agency is testing passenger-screening portals that shoot puffs of air at passengers to loosen particles, which the machine then quickly tests for explosive residue.

At the back doors of airports, the TSA is testing fingerprint and iris checkers that would keep out unauthorized people. The agency is also prototyping smart identity cards that frequent travelers can use to bypass extra screening at airports and another that they hope to issue to all transportation workers -- from longshoremen to Amtrak linemen -- to keep known terrorists from infiltrating the transportation system.

The TSA is also moving forward on a noninvasive X-ray system, known as a backscatter portal, that can see items hidden on a person's body, including plastic explosives, nonmetallic handguns and drugs.

But a bipartisan group of critics says the agency has simply moved too slowly in shifting technology from test phase to wide deployment.

Robert Atkinson, the hawkish Democratic vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, argues that the TSA is moving in the right direction, but thinks the agency has been slow to roll out technologies past the testing phase due to bureaucracy and under-funding.

"The small-government ideology of the Bush administration does permeate over into some of these homeland security initiatives," Atkinson said. "They just don't think it is worth spending the money that needs to be spent."

Even some Republicans, such as Rep. John Mica of Florida, who chairs the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's aviation subcommittee, think the agency is just not moving fast enough.

"The TSA is woefully behind where they should be," said Mica spokesman Gary Burns. "The first thing they did as an agency was hire a couple hundred lawyers rather than getting the job done. They are taking a slow, lumbering and bureaucratic approach.

"We are still operating with 1960s magnetometers and CAT scan equipment, and they have only just begun working toward backscatters and puffers," he said.

Burns isn't sure, however, that more money is necessarily the answer. He thinks the government needs to find a way to work with airports and states to come up with innovative ways to put introduction of better technology on the fast track.

Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations committees, on the other hand, attempted in early October to add $2 billion to the Homeland Security Department's $33.1 billion budget for 2005. The proposal, put forward by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), along with Reps. Dave Obey (D-Wisconsin) and Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minnesota), included $600 million to equip 10 more major airports with explosive-detection equipment. It was defeated on a straight party vote.