One political problem (for liberals) is that scanners and detectors that can find more than explosives may “Violate Constitutional Rights”.
It works like this- a mule with bags of dope taped to his body is not a threat to the airplane, so an “administrative search” conducted by non-sworn people (not cops) that might find bags of dope, diamonds, and bundles of cash is unconstitutional.
Detecting a terrorist with a new way to set off a bomb without using metal or batteries IS a constitutional search.
But really, a bag of PETN, TNT, cocaine, heroin, RDX and so forth will ALL go through a magnetometer without a beep, and this has been a continuing problem. The shoe bomber’s device had no metal but required a match, so we are all banned from having matches and lighters on board.
A lot of the public talk about the whole-body scanners is about the detailed body view. ACLU and court documents bring up the other issues about detection of non-threat objects. Mules have been let go over constitutional issues on search legalities, some with significant masses of dope on them.
The chemical sensors and baggage wipers and the air puffer thing are all deliberately set so they won’t detect dope or money, just certain compounds including explosives.
Things are going to change. The whole body scanners that show your body shape under your clothes and zap you with either RF or Xray are going to be used much more frequently. Expect the ACLU to yell, as well as other groups, but we can’t allow people to walk on board with unidentified stuff any more.
I imagine that we’ll have Raman spectrometers and more GCMS at check-in to assure everyone that your bar of soap is soap, and that your clothes really are cotton-poly and not some new explosive trick.
The enemy is very clever and they will dream up techniques constantly, and test us until they get something that works.
Well, of course!
A gas chromatagraph nitrogen sniffer, on the other hand, will detect ALL high explosives. They use those detectors at all major airports in the US. I have been pulled out of line several times because junk I carry around has "nitrogen smells" associated with them. One got "sniffed" just because I assembled it on the same table I use for ammo reloading.
The explosive sniffers are very sensitive and very reliable. Only a few molecules are needed to trigger those sensors.