New security scanner shows it all, guns to fat rolls

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) The next generation of weapons detectors is deadly
accurate, able to look through clothes to find guns, explosives and even
syringes and drug vials that can be tucked into rolls of fat.

About the size of a voting booth, a machine manufactured by Nicolet Imaging
Systems of San Diego goes beyond metal detectors to show any solid object.
It is being tested at North Carolina's Central Prison and the federal
courthouse in Los Angeles.

``It's a very lowlevel Xray,'' Capt. Marshall Hudson, a correction
officer said during a demonstration Monday. ``It's going to show everybody
has something on them, keys and pens. Things you can't identify are things
you want to do a more thorough search on.''

Hudson, who looked at the image of a fellow officer flashed on a video
screen, said the $100,000 machine is capable of showing shin bones near the
skin and even a person's private parts on the ``uncloak mode.''

While police groups are intrigued, civil libertarians are concerned because
the same technology is being developed by other manufacturers into a
handheld model, which will enable police to detect a weapon hidden under
someone's clothing up to 60 feet away.

A version could be ready for testing in 18 months and in use in four years.

``It becomes a question of how intrusive they are,'' said Mark Kappelhoff,
legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which
questioned law enforcement's need to view the human anatomy.

The National Rifle Association also was concerned that the machines could
hinder the right in some states to carry a concealed firearm.

``I think right now there are a lot more questions than there are
answers,'' said NRA spokesman Chip Walker.

But officials who represent police officers disagreed.

``Anything that enhances public safety and officer safety, we're for,''
said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the
nation's largest police group with 277,000 members.

Gerald Arenberg, spokesman for the National Association of Chiefs of
Police, noted that a police officer is killed every 57 hours in the United
States and that 189 cops are assaulted daily.

``I don't think any police officer in his right mind would say that's an
invasion of privacy,'' Arenberg said of the devices. ``Those kinds of
statistics make the 600,000 sworn officers want everything they can get.''