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This Blows: $36 million “Puffer” Screening Program Scrapped

May 21, 2009 | Posted in: DOT,Security,Travel Safety

I’m sure you’ve read about those machines that were designed to detect bombs on passengers by shooting puffs of air on them, which was supposed to dislodge explosive particles. Unfortunately, these screening devices had trouble detecting bombs. Whoops.

Another problem according to USA Today was getting the machines to work at all. Apparently the TSA spent more than $6 million on maintenance for these puffer machines due to problems caused by dirt and humidity. Bad news: it’ll cost about $1 million to remove the machines. Good news: it could have been more expensive, but most of the machines were never installed!

Don’t worry, the TSA has a replacement for the “puffer” machines, already in use: the “body imagining” scanners.

You know – the machines folks are calling the “virtual strip search”.

One Response to “This Blows: $36 million “Puffer” Screening Program Scrapped”

  1. I’m all for actual security improvements – but these machines were pretty useless. At CVG, I’ve never seen them consistently used. This morning, and often, they directed every second or third person through. Sometimes, they were only used when no one was in them, so not to cause an extra line, so if the machine was in use, they would just direct passengers around. At T3 at EWR, these machines were placed in the dumbest place possible, blocking access for most people to be able to finish pushing your bags through the x-ray machine. So on the one hand, you had TSA personal insisting each passenger make sure they push their own bags through, since they were not there to do that, and on the other, you have this $100,000 + machine, which wasn’t even doing what it was supposed to do, blocking the way.

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