Friday, January 18, 2013

A Good Step Forward

It appears that the TSA has ended the acquisition of the X Ray scanners. From Bloomberg we have:

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn’t write software to make passenger images less revealing. ...

TSA has contracted with L-3, Smiths Group Plc (SMIN) and American Science & Engineering Inc. (ASEI) for new body-image scanners, all of which must have privacy software. L-3 and Smiths used millimeter-wave technology. American Science uses backscatter. 

The agency’s strategy for handling passenger traffic relies on the capability of L-3’s millimeter-wave machines to process passengers in about half the time for Rapiscan machines, Sanders said. TSA will be getting about 60 more L-3 scanners in January and February, he said. 

 Hopefully the last of the X Ray systems will be removed. As we had analyzed a couple of years ago the X Ray systems present in our opinion a potential clear and present danger.