Freeze! You’re Being Smelled for Safety

Imagine wanting to enter a building. You walk up to the door, and a security offer stops you. “Freeze” he says, reminding the woman behind you to hold her skirt down. Suddenly you are buffeted by air jets. After a minute, no alarm goes off, and you are free to move. You have just been “sniffed” for bomb material. How ironic that you are standing in line to see the greatest symbol of liberation, an American icon of freedom, the Statue of Liberty. The “sniffer” is nothing new. They have been installed in military bases, nuclear power plants, and high security prisons. Now, even the average American and tourist is reminded every day that we aren’t as safe as we’d like to think, the government isn’t as sure of our safety as we’d like to believe, and Americans are so scared, we are taking extreme precautions to ensure our safety. The Statue of Liberty opened its doors August 3 to the public for the first time since the attacks of September 11. The machine, made by General Electric, costs about $40,000. There are other, more expensive versions as well. The Entryscan, as it is called, boasts a processing time of nine seconds per person, according to New York Times. General Electric claims their machine has a false alarm rate of only 1%. The Entryscan is cheaper than an X-Ray machine, but more expensive than metal detectors- both of which are also used at security check-points. The Entryscan works on a simple principle. Every person, including children, has an average body temperature, equivalent to the heat given off by a 60-watt light bulb. The puffs of air carry body particles that contain heat, which are sucked up a vacuum to be analyzed. The built-in laboratory compares the weight of the trapped particles. The Entryscan has many advantages over other types of sniffers. A computer doesn’t get tired, like a dog can, and dogs can only detect about 20 substances used in explosives. The Entryscan is so powerful, it should be able to detect even tiny particles of explosives, even if they are “hidden inside a sausage pizza with extra garlic,” according to The Times. Like any machine, though, there are problems with the Entryscan. Because the system is still fairly new, there could be things wrong scientists and analyzers haven’t discovered yet. Robert A. Pryor, a security technology tester for the Transportation Security Administration believes that the machine may react differently in different climates. While the Entryscan claims accuracy whether or not a person is sweating, climate means a different way of life, which may cause problems in warmer areas. Fertilizer may set off the alarm. For any landscaper or avid golfer, this could create problems, even if the fertilizer is stuck to the bottom of shoes. Pryor says that the sniffer only works in a controlled environment. At the Statue of Liberty, the machines are kept at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There are air conditioners for extra hot days, and heaters for extra cold days. There is also one extra machine kept in storage at Lady Liberty, just incase the first one breaks down. Kelly Collins, vice president of the General Electric subsidy that produced the Entryscan also recognizes that heating could be a major problem. The Entryscan “will react when it’s hot. If you have explosives in a trunk in the Middle East, they are sending off vapors like nobody’s business. But in Reykjavik, Iceland, they’re nice and quiet,” she told New York Times reporters. How far will all this go? Is it an invasion of privacy, or a necessary precaution? Researchers estimate it would only take between $60 and $70 million to install puffers at 29 airports. This would mean that three quarters of American air line traffic would be scanned. What about other modes of transportation? Would a sniffer have prevented the train bombings in Madrid in March? There is no time schedule to get into the Statue of Liberty, but at Grand Central Station in New York, or Union Station in Washington DC, a 9 second hold-up per person could mean long lines and missed flights. Could one machine report on the millions of people that walk into these, and stations like them, every day? Also, what about the small stations? Installing sniffers at every station entry is obviously not economical. One suggestion is to install the sniffers not at the entry way, but on the door of the train car. Currently, the sniffer at the Statue of Liberty is the first that average citizen will deal with, but it is definitely not the last. Will the Entryscan and other products like it eventually solve our fears, or will it merely mask them behind faulty technology? Children across the country are growing up with metal detectors at the entrances of their schools and increased amounts of locker searches. It seems that lady liberty’s new safety feature is only the beginning of a nation trapped by fear.