Airport Security

Airport security

This paper will address the September 11 attacks and the problems with airport security personnel and the outdated technology that was being used in most airports The September 11 terrorist attacks could have been avoidable if airport security was up to par with new security devices and better trained personnel. The government should have passed a new airport security law to update security devices and to make sure employees were properly trained long before September 11. Airport security would still be in poor shape if it wasn't for September 11. It took September 11 to happen to make the U.S. government realize that airport security was not good enough. The September 11 attacks are the worst terrorist attacks ever committed on U.S. soil. On September 11 there were four passenger planes that were hijacked by terrorist. The first plane to be hijacked that morning was American airlines flight 11. This passenger plane was crashed into the north tower of the world trade center. About fifteen minutes later a second plane appeared in the skies it was united airlines flight 175 and it crashed into the south tower of the world trade center. Forty five minutes later the third hijacked flight American airlines flight 77 was crashed into the pentagon. The fourth and last hijacked plane was united airlines flight 98 this plane was crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers tried to stop the terrorist. This plane may have been heading for Camp David, the White House, or the U.S capitol building. (www.cnn.com) Fifteen out of nineteen terrorist that were involved in the attacks were from Saudi Arabia. They all had been living in the U.S. for years and were suspected of having terrorist ties. They all had trained in the U.S. to get there pilots license. Most of the terrorist were being by law enforcement because of having suspected terrorist ties. To take control of the passenger planes the terrorist were suspected of using weapons such as box cutters and knives. If this is true the metal detectors should have picked the weapons up in less the terrorist used the knives avaible that contain no metallic which make them virtually indictable.(www.cnn.com) There is no hard evidence of what weapons were used for sure. All the voice recorders on the planes were destroyed in the crashes so officials have no idea for sure what method was used to take control of the planes. There were people on the flights that called from cell phones to tell that there flights had been hijacked and that the terrorist were going to crash the planes. From these calls authorities now know that some of the terrorist were threatening to use bombs and other weapons so that the passengers wouldn't intervene with there mission. (wwwphilly.com) If this turns out to be true that they had all these possible weapons such as explosives it is clear that airport security may be to blame for not doing there security screening properly.

Airports and airplanes are the most common major sights for terrorist to carry out attacks. They have also been the most successful in creating major loss of life and causing the most chaos. Since the attacks of September 11 the U.S. has realized a major demand for an increase in airport security.

Most of the security equipment being used in airports could be traced back to the seventies. This old equipment primarily x ray machines can pick up metal objects but not new advanced materials used as explosives or other weapons. These older machines don't always pick up all metal objects either. This machine that is used in most airports is the dual energy x ray system. This x ray machine only uses one x ray source to detect metal objects. The x ray power of this old machine sends out between one hundred and forty to one hundred sixty kilovolt. (www.controlscreening.com) That is pretty low power compared to some of the newer machines that can send out almost two hundred sixty kilovolts such as the backscatter machine. The more power used in an X ray machine the more it can go throw to view objects. This older machine will only pick up metal and nothing else. There is a newer machine on the market that could be successful in finding anything that could be used as a weapon or an explosive. This new machine is called the Backscatter and it would reveal all. This new machine will pick up both metals and plastics. This x ray machine scatters x rays beams that bounce off metals or plastics instead of skin like the older machines. The x ray beams are so powerful in this newer backscatter machine that it will show the person passing through it without any clothes on. The reason this machine has not been put into effect is because a lot of people feel that it would violate there rights. People would feel really uncomfortable having there private body parts being seen by a stranger. This intern would make a lot of people angry and cause problems. This machine has been available for about nine years and cost between one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand dollars. A lot of other countries are already using this machine. The company Edgewood technologies that makes this backscatter machine is working on a version that would not show so much of the body undressed.(www.cnn.com) This machine may need to be put into effect even if a version cannot

be developed that wouldn't show the person passing through it naked. People need to realize that if this machine will help prevent another terrorist attack like September 11 than it would be worth putting this machine in all 450 commercial airports and violate the rights of those that feel uncomfortable passing through the x rays machines. There is also other newer x ray machines that can pick up plastics as well as metals but are not as full proof as the backscatter machine discussed above. If people had the choice between the two machines Im sure that they would want the one that was guaranteed to pick up more than just metals. The reason it is so important to pick up more than metal is because bombs and other weapons are now being made with plastic materials. Plastic is now popular in making bombs and uses no metal so the older X ray machines never would have picked it up. All guns up to this point in time always have contained metal in them so they have always been detected by x ray machines. The older machines were good when they first came out because the main focus was to pick up metals such as guns. (www.abcnews.com) Weapons that contain metals have been the main thing used by terrorist in the past.

The second new piece of technology that is being considered is mainly to catch people that have explosives or explosive material on them. This new machine is called the sentinel two. This new sentinel two machine involves a person walking through an air locked chamber. Once