Montreal inventor unveils 3-D baggage scanner
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 9, 2010 | 9:03 PM ET
CBC News
A Montreal inventor has developed a three-dimensional baggage scanner that he says can make air travel safer and more convenient for passengers.
A three-dimensional view of a piece of luggage appears on the display monitor of a scanner developed by Montreal inventor William Awad. (CBC)William Awad is also putting the finishing touches on a more modest body scanner, which highlights metal or organic material on a generic human outline but does not show the contours under people's clothing.
Canada is installing 44 scanners to be used on passengers selected for secondary screening at airports in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
The plan to use the technology has stirred controversy because the scanner produces a three-dimensional outline of a person's naked body.
Experts said Awad's toughest challenge could prove to be getting his machines into airports. During a recent demonstration in Awad's Montreal office, when he put a carry-on suitcase through a conventional baggage scanner, nothing of concern showed up.
Then, when the bag was put through Awad's machine — which has the power to reveal many of the blind spots inside suitcases — several knives and mock explosives were found.
Reid Morden, a former director of Canada's spy agency CSIS, called Awad's inventions a quantum step forward in passenger safety.
"The current technology is really passé, and the people who want to do bad things in the air, and there are a lot of them, are increasingly sophisticated," he said.
But it will be a challenge for a small Canadian company to crack the U.S.-dominated airline security market, said Andrew Thomas, editor of the Journal of Transportation Security.
Obtaining approval from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is a political process more than anything, he said.
"There still is the ability to influence the process through congressional or bureaucratic connections and you could just simply look at the board of directors of a lot of these companies to see that there is an influence there from former government officials."
Awad said he has started the lengthy process of obtaining TSA certification, which is key to getting into Canadian airports.
In the meantime, Awad says he is in talks to sell his machines to prisons, courts and hotels, mostly outside Canada.
