Brány vnímání

It might be the wet dream of every police agent. A portable weapons-detector to see through the clothing of people on the street, checking for pistols, knives and brass knuckles. A futuristic fantasy? Actually, the technology already exists. Look at the security scanners installed at Amsterdam’s schiphol airport for flights to the US. They were a response to the thwarted bombing of a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day. So-called millimetre-wave technology helps the scanners detect banned items, explosive powders and liquids in pockets or on bodies.

So why not develop new, better and smaller versions as quickly as possible? Detectors that can see through people’s clothing from metres away, so portable they can be used on the street. That’s the question that occurred to the police in Rotterdam Rijnmond, the region surrounding Rotterdam.

The price of x-ray vision: 0.5 mln euros

“A lot of people are walking around in the open with weapons,” says Paul de Kruijf, innovation manager of the police force, who conducts research into how new technology can make police work more effective. “A lot of shootings are taking place. If we want security, mobile weapons detectors can help.”

Rotterdam’s police force has received a government grant to develop a mobile weapons detector worth half a million euros, a government spokesman confirmed. (It has to share the grant with another police organisation) Now the police are approaching companies, universities and research institutes with a proposal containing the requirements such a device must fulfill and the situations in which it would be applied. The goal is to develop a prototype ready for production and delivery to the Dutch police within three years.

The document, a copy of which has been obtained by NRC Handelsblad, proposes that the mobile scanner be initially introduced mainly as an alternative to random body searches that are now conducted on a regular basis I high-risk areas. “Apart from the fact that many innocent citizens have to undergo body searches (infringement of privacy), thorough body searches take at least two minutes per person,” states the document. The mobile weapons detector is thus good news both on privacy grounds and in saving time, the police argue.

Police want to scan unwitting citizens

“We would only have to search people of whom we can say, with reasonable surety, that they have something hidden under their clothing,” says De Kruijf.

According to the proposal, the device must be portable and “privacy proof”, meaning the body’s contours would not be visible, thus preventing its users from seeing people’s naked bodies. The security scanners at the airport produces images in which people look like dolls, and objects on the bodies or in pockets show up in bright yellow.

Later in the proposal, the police reveal plans to use the weapons detector in areas where they do not carry out body searches. “There is great urgency,” it reads. “The threat on the streets remains high. Preventative body-search alone is too limited a measure.”

Scenarios are mentioned in which citizens are, knowingly or not, scanned from distances ranging from under three metres to over ten metres. According to the police, the weapon detectors can be applied in car searches, at large-scale events such as football matches, and at the entrances and exits of public transport and shopping centers. In the last two categories, “the crowd will quickly and unknowingly be scanned for hidden weapons”.

Combinations are also proposed with camera surveillance and other sensors “such as ‘sniffers’”. Here, “visual surveillance would be supplemented with scent detection”. An “air sample" from a suspected person would be analysed for traces of explosives, ammunitions, drugs and so forth. Application to terrorist threat situations is also mentioned, and use within transportation services used by large numbers of people.

No science fiction: ready in a matter of years

In other words, there are many possible applications for the device. But can such a piece of equipment be developed in the coming years? “Yes,” says Giampiero Gerini, professor at the technical University of Eindhoven and senior researcher at the Security and Defense department of the research institute TNO. TNO has already developed a detector that can look through clothes from metres away, but it isn’t portable and requires that the scanned person stands still. The British company, Thruvisi, has also developed a scanner that has the same capacity from 25 metres distance, but that is also not portable. How long will it take for a suitable mobile detector to be developed? It depends on how much money is devoted to the project, says Gerini.

“The technology is already relatively mature,” he says. “That’s not the problem. The biggest challenge is making it portable and ensuring it can carry out a scan in seconds. That’s what the money is needed for.” He believes in a few years a suitable mobile device can be available which can be operated from a stand or a police vehicle. “Making it portable will take a few more years,” he says.

Big brother can see through you

But do we want it? Police officers on the street covertly looking through our clothing? “We will first investigate whether we can get a prototype developed,” says de Kruijf of the Rotterdam Rijnmond police. “If that succeeds, we will approach the politicians.”

Corien Prins is less enthusiastic. “Deplorable,” she says of the initiative. She is professor of privacy law at the University of Tilburg and a member of the Scientific Council for Government Policy. “I will behave differently if I know I may be under observation. If this secret form of surveillance becomes reality, our society will be in a dramatic state of affairs.”

Apart from privacy considerations, she points to the constitutional right to bodily integrity. “I hear much too little on this in discussions, including on the scanners at the airport. This technology infringes on our right to bodily integrity from a distance, and discussion of this basic right acquires a whole other dimension. People don’t have to accept just like that that they can be touched or x-rayed from a distance by a machine.”