Another question on these scanners - couldn't the terrorists form the bomb material into something anatomically inconspicuous, or do they show the composition of what they scan?
Yes. They could. They can mix something up in liquid or powder form.
They could even wear a shirt with a nitro-cellulose collar or some other explodable material made into a fabric. Ir fabricate more explosively formulated rolls of film. I seem to remember that the chemistry that makes film photoactive can be modified to make it an explosive, yet still a passable film.
They could carry non-binary explosives up their butt beyond the range of the tera-hertz scanner and back-scatter x-rays.
Or swallow it in a condom like drug mule and poop it out during the flight. Or have it inserted into a sinus cavity like some Name era booby traps.
They have gotten smarter. The scanning equipment will not stop them. We have to profile, we have to wipe out the places terrorists congregate freely and train. We have to shut down the religious teachings of hatred — because that is an act of war.
We have to go Israeli, hire and train SMART security people to interview those on line and scout suspects in the terminal areas for random interviews and follow-up observations.
But we are American, we also have to invent non-debasing methods of scanning and sampling to make up for the our inability to go full Israeli. But mostly we have to go OFFENSE on them, and take them out before they get to the points of embarcation and areas of assembly. That’s what Israel can’t do and we can.