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They seem to like dense things to be in their own bin. Books are pretty dense.
I always presumed that they wanted the laptops in a separate bin because they were comparing them to a set of known images (of commercially sold laptops), but perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.
If the TSA was shutdown entirely leading to terrorists blew up 10 planes a year in the US, flying would still be as safe as it was in the 1960s. http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/U-S-commercial-airlines...
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They're not putting them through a different detector, though. They take out the books and all papers the passenger has, put them in one of the normal trays, and run the trays through the xray. My wife traveled out of Kansas City last weekend and was subject to this. She's a teacher, and traveled with grading, so they took out tests, her books, everything that was paper. The line agent said they were worried about pa…
Trying to de-clutter the images by separating paper would fit the observed procedure too. It seems a little odd that it would start only now. Maybe screener testing recently showed better performance when paper is separated out.
I think the limiting factor is the spectral response of this specific material, given a limited radiant energy source.
Another way to do this, would be via resolution. Maybe they aren't doing spectra matching, they might be able to differentiate the physical pattern of the material, sorta like a scanning microphotograph.
EDIT: One of the comments says, "They went through the Xray machine in a separate bin, much like your laptop does."
There seem to be a lot of people theorizing that it could be something about the paper itself that they're looking for, i.e. flash paper, paper circuits or physical one-time encryption pads, but what if it's not about the paper at all? Maybe, the TSA is simply trying to discourage passengers from traveling with or using paper, thereby encouraging people to store their information digitally on phones and laptops where…
Or it's simpler than that: security theatre. We're adding a new level of annoyance so people have this false impression their jobs aren't totally beyond worthless. Fuck the TSA and the airlines. These days I'll pay more to take am AmTrak or just drive. Next time I fly, it will be after taking a train to Canada first. If I have to fly internationally, I'd rather not fly out of a US airport. I've flown through over a d…
I take it you've never been searched by Amtrak police. Once on a cross-country trip all my belongings were searched twice - in Chicago where I departed, and again mid-trip.
It's not a great time.
Maybe some intelligence that people are inserting sheets of metal foil into stacks of paper to attenuate the x-rays and hide something underneath? Assuming the airport X-ray machines aren't that powerful, I would guess that 15+ sheets of foil inserted into a book or similar might mask something underneath it fairly well?
but it would show up as masked or dark or low energy, then they can mark as "needs manual search". That does not require forcing "all" papers out of all bags.
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I always presumed that they wanted the laptops in a separate bin because they were comparing them to a set of known images (of commercially sold laptops), but perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.
I doubt it. There are too many makes and models out there to make this a reasonable thing to do. I imagine that it is just to see things more clearly. A laptop is many layers of densely packed electronics. It would be very easy to hide explosives (in place of the battery, for example) and triggering mechanism in there.
Wasn't there a scene in one of the recent Bond movies where a huge pile of cash had been treated in some kind of chemical that turned it into a bomb?
My understanding of these scanners is that they colour-code "organic" and "inorganic" material differently. Explosives generally show up as organic.
Now, if you have a block of such organic material in just the right position next to some electronics, the conveyor gets stopped and you will be taken to one side and asked some very direct questions about the contents of your bag.
I know this because I once had a protein bar in the same bag as a portable DVD player and that aisle went into lockdown for about 30 minutes because it looked exactly like a bomb, from all angles, in 3D. Expert called over, agreed they couldn't start the conveyor until they knew it was safe.
My guess is that paper (in the form of small pads) is the commonest cause of this type of false positive.
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I kinda doubt those body scanners have anything remotely close to the spatial resolution required to find text written on a sheet of paper.
He said the same band. That wouldn't have anything to do with spatial resolution.