Scanning Crowds for Bombs

The airport checkpoint is a linchpin of aviation security, but one of its unintended consequences imparts vulnerability: the long, weaving line of travelers who await screening. The lines present suicide bombers with a potential target that is common not only to airports but also to public events where masses must pass through security screening.

Passive millimeter wave scanners can spot suspicious objects under clothes, and someday, laser spectrometers may spot explosive residue on clothing yards away. Both technologies still, however, would require that people pass through choke points, as these technologies can only scan one person at a time.

With these threats in mind, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, pitted students from rival colleges against one another in a competition to see which school could better detect simple improvised explosive devices (IEDs) across large areas and groups.

The winning entry, fielded by students from the University of Michigan, relied on sensors linked by a wireless network, with software that processed data from the sensors to spot potential threats. The concept holds the promise of scanning large areas and crowds for explosive threats.

The AFRL based the competition’s scenario in part on an historical event—the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, where Eric Rudolph detonated a fairly rudimentary IED—a pipe bomb composed primarily of metal.

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Self-Storage Facilities Eye Sensors to Detect Terrorist Threats

Prior to the 1993 World Trade Center and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, the perpetrators used self-storage facilities to hide explosives and briefly housed the trucks used to carry out the attacks. A 2004 FBI memo to self-storage facility owners warned, “Terrorist plots that involve IED’s [improvised explosive devices] have utilized rental storage facilities to house parts of the bomb or other supplies until the plotters have the time to assemble the weapon or prepare the attack.”

Because of this threat, LifeStorage, a self-storage facility based in Chicago, has more than doubled the money it spends on counterterrorism technology. Potential for covert, illegal activity is especially high at facilities capable of housing cars or trucks and those with 24/7 drive-up access where surveillance is minimal and entry unrestricted, said a company statement.

The company began working with Defentect, a defense technology firm, to install sensors that detect terrorist weapons such as radiological devices used to make so-called dirty bombs. LifeStorage has spent $135,000 to install Defentect’s chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threat-detection sensors. Storage facilities are attractive to criminals and terrorists because they are “inexpensive, accessible and anonymous for the most part,” Defentect President Frank O’Connor said.

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