New X-Ray Imager

[azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear)]

New X-ray gun trades privacy for safety

Reported by Andy C

Seen in The Nando Times on 13 August 1996

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The Passive Millimeter Wave Imager can X-ray through clothing to "see" a
concealed weapon, plastic explosives or drugs. A police officer can
surreptitiously aim it into a crowd from as far away as 90 feet.

The new X-ray gun is becoming a symbol for an unlikely alliance of civil
libertarians and gun owners who fear the fight against crime and terrorism
may be waged at the expense of personal freedoms.

"I'm incredibly concerned," said John Henry Hingson, a past president of the
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, meeting here this past
week. "The entire nation could become a victim of illegal searches and
seizures and the law is powerless to protect them from these police abuses."

But in these nervous times following the the crash of TWA Fight 800 and
bombings at the Olympics, Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center, many
Americans are now willing to trade some of their privacy and civil liberties
for greater security.

A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of people --
58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help
thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were
at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights.

The Clinton administration has proposed increased wiretapping and other
anti-terrorism steps, and is doling out research grants for cutting edge
anti-crime technology that once may have been intended for only military
use.

Last year, the National Institute of Justice awarded $2.1 million to three
companies to develop weapon detectors for airports, stores and public
buildings.

Two models are being developed of the Passive Millimeter Wave Imager, a
creation of Hadley, Massachusetts-based Millimetrix Corp.

The larger one, about the size of a shoebox, is mounted on a patrol car and
pointed at the unsuspecting person. The gadget doesn't send out X-rays;
instead, it picks up electromagnetic waves emitted by human flesh.

Anything that stands in the way of those waves -- like a gun -- or anything
that emits weaker waves -- like a bag of cocaine or a plastic explosive --
will show up on a little screen in the patrol car.

Clothes emit no waves. Neither do walls, allowing the device to be used from
even outside a room.

A second model is a smaller, battery-operated version that an officer can
operate by hand, like a radar gun.

Millimetrix hopes to field test the larger model soon at a police agency.

Hingson argues the device runs roughshod over bans against illegal searches
and seizures. The law says police can stop and frisk a person only when an
officer has a "reasonable suspicion" the person is armed or involved in a
crime.

Millimetrix points out that while the imager can see through clothing, it
still leaves people some privacy. The device's display screen, the company
says, "does not reveal intimate anatomical details of the person."

Chip Walker, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, noted that
devices like the imager threaten the legal rights of people in 31 states who
are allowed to carry concealed weapons with proper licenses.

"We certainly support efforts to disarm criminals, but we need to be careful
that we're not painting with too broad a brush here," he said.

Walker said that as troubling as terrorism is, people may be playing into
terrorists' hands by giving up their privacy.

"One of the broader issues is that if we start giving up certain civil
liberties, that essentially means that the terrorists are starting to
accomplish one of their goals," he said.

     Contact email address: acobley@mic.dundee.ac.uk

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(From a TRW development program description)

The Passive Millimeter Wave sensor detects thermal energy, which is
radiated from objects and reflected from other objects such as the sky in
the 94 Giga Hertz frequency band. The advantage of this frequency is that
there is little attenuation of the energy by water particles in the air
(fog).

The camera operates very much like a television camera except that it
operates at mm-wave frequencies (near 90 GHz) instead of in the visible
spectrum. It has components analogous to a television camera: optics to
focus the image, a readout device to convert the electromagnetic energy
into electrical signals, signal processing electronics to prepare the
signals for display, and display unit to view the scene. The optical system
images the blackbody radiation emanating from the scene on the Focal Plane
Array (FPA), which consists of an array of small antennas, each coupled to
a very small MMIC W-band (90 GHz) direct-detection receiver.

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>From a description of the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology
Center/Northeast (NLECTC) at Rome Laboratory (more on that later).

The Millimeter Wave Imaging Radar Consortium seeks development of a
suitable technology and effective, affordable products for concealed weapon
detection (CWD) and through-the-wall surveillance (TWS) application ---
well-established objectives for both military operations other than war and
civilian law enforcement agencies. Consortium members include Millimetrix
Corp., South Deerfield, Mass.; Technology Service Corp., Trumbull, Conn.;
and Riverside Research Institute of Lexington, Mass. They will contribute
$2,035,087 to the research program, while the government's share will be
$2,018,491. Military applications of the envisioned technology, in addition
to operations other than war, would include use by military police and
special forces personnel, all weather aircraft operation, shipboard and
airborne missile warning, helicopter
obstacle avoidance, battlefield surveillance, fire control, and missile
seekers. Civilian law enforcement agencies would be able to use the
technology in curtailing terrorist acts and juvenile handgun crimes that
frequently involve the use of concealed weapons, bombs and other contraband
that cannot be detected using currently available technology

   see <http://www.nlectc.org/E144T127/june.htm>

--Steve