By Calvin Biesecker

Restrictions on the use of imaging technology at airport checkpoints that can peer beneath a person’s clothing to detect potential threats that metal detectors will limit the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) ability to detect threats, the acting chief of the agency said this week.

“In all honesty…based on the intel that I and the leadership team at TSA sees every single day, if we do not have the ability to deploy this technology and utilize it to the best of the abilities for the system, it will represent a severe limitation of our detection capability,” Gale Rossides, acting administrator at TSA, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection on Wednesday. “And we know that those who intend to do harm today have moved way beyond metal items and they are, in fact, looking for things that they can conceal, they are looking for things that the walk through metal detectors cannot detect and the whole body imagers (WBI) can.”

Rossides was responding to a question from Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who is concerned about a legislative provision approved by the House last week that would prohibit the use by TSA of the whole body imaging technology as a primary screening tool. The provision was approved 310-118 during debate on the TSA Authorization Act (H.R. 2200) that was passed by the House on June 4.

The authorization bill has bipartisan support in the House but Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee are concerned that TSA, because the Obama administration has yet to appoint an administrator for the agency, did not help in crafting the legislation. Dent said he hopes the agency will “weigh in” on the importance of the WBI technology as the authorization bill is taken up by the Senate.

TSA is using passive millimeter-wave based technology supplied by L-3 Communications [LLL] to do whole body imaging for both secondary and primary screening applications at airport checkpoints. The use of the systems is considered a pilot test, allowing TSA to continue to evaluate the technology. The imagers are being used as primary screening tools at six airports.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), one of the co-sponsors of the amendment restricting the use of the WBI technology, last week said the issue with the systems comes down to privacy.

“Whole body imaging is exactly what it says,” Chaffetz said. “It allows TSA employees to conduct the equivalent of a strip search. Nobody needs to see my wife and kids naked to secure an airplane.”

Although the WBI technology clearly allows whoever is viewing the images to see bodily detail, in the pilot tests the vast majority of travelers who have the chance to be screened by the technology instead of submitting to a pat down search do so.

Rossides said the technology has a 95 percent satisfaction rate with the traveling public.

Currently, to safeguard the privacy of individuals who opt to use the WBI systems, TSA screeners who view the images are located remotely so they can’t see the person being screened. Nor can the TSA officer manning that WBI system see the images as they are produced. As has been the case throughout the pilot test, TSA said the images cannot be stored, retrieved or printed.

In primary screening applications, passengers have a choice of using the WBI system or submitting to a pat down search. The same holds true in a secondary application, although in this case individuals are either randomly selected for a secondary search or TSA officers have reason, such as an alarm from a metal detector, to further scrutinize a person.

On the matter of air cargo security, Rossides testified that TSA is confident it will meet a congressional mandate to have all cargo screened for explosives that is bound for passenger aircraft departing from an airport in the United States by an August 2010 deadline. Earlier this year, the agency met a deadline to screen 50 percent of air cargo for explosives.

However, Rossides said, the mandate to screen cargo for explosives aboard passenger planes departing foreign airports for the United States is unlikely to be met because of the challenges in working with the foreign governments. She expects that about 80 to 85 percent of the cargo on international flights headed to the United States will be screened before the August 2010 deadline.

Rossides said it’s not a money issue for the international screening but the time it takes to work with the foreign governments on educating them about the security standards and the subsequent adoption of those standards.

TSA is requesting $108 million in FY ’10 for air cargo screening, $15 million less than the FY ’09 budget. Rossides said the decrease is due to a one-time investment in security technology in FY ’09 to provide certified private partners with scanning systems to screen air cargo and evaluate how well it performs. Once the 100 percent mandate is met for domestic flights, Rossides said that the staff that is educating the shippers and freight forwarders about how to accomplish the air cargo screening will shift to an auditing role.

Separately, on Wednesday TSA made two personnel announcements. One is elevating Robin Kane, who has been the acting assistant administrator for the Office of Security Technology, to be the assistant administrator for that office. Kane will oversee a variety of technology development and deployment programs, including the WBI effort.

TSA also appointed Emma Garrison-Alexander to be the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Information Technology. Her office has a $400 million budget. Previously Garrison-Alexander was Deputy for Counterterrorism for Signals Intelligence, Development, at the National Security Agency.