New surveillance camera cheers police, worries ACLU

Insight on the News, Sept 9, 1996 by Joyce Price

The `millimeter wave imager' allows guards to peer inside people's clothing for concealed weapons. Is this a valuable new weapon in the struggle against terrorism or a gross intrusion of privacy?

A new weapon against terrorism works like Superman's vision: It looks right through you.

The high-tech camera, known as the passive millimeter wave imager, boasts the equivalent of X-ray vision that can penetrate clothing to "see" a concealed weapon, plastic explosives or drugs -- any material that's "significantly different from human flesh," says Stephen Bohrer, "Millivision" program manager at the Massachusetts-based Millimetrix Corp., which received a $1.4 million federal grant to develop the device.

If someone concealing a weapon passes within 10 feet of the camera, for example, the weapon's image will appear on a display screen. "You could definitely see the difference between a gun and something like a fountain pen," Bohrer says.

While the wave imager can provide X-raylike vision, the device is not and X-ray. "X-rays transmit energy through something," says Bohrer. "With passive millimeter wave imagery, we just look at whatever energy is coming off the body." Anything that blocks waves from the body, such as a gun, or that is weaker than those waves, such as plastics or drugs, appears as a dark silhouette on the screen.

Millimetrix is working on two versions of the wave imager. The larger one, useful at airports and courthouses, will cost about $70,000. (It can be mounted on tripods or in patrol cars.) A battery-operated, handheld version will run about $10,000. Neither is in production, although Millimetrix has been flooded with calls from law-enforcement agencies around the globe. The company expects to have a demonstration model available this fall and to market the product by the end of 1997.

Critics of the imager, including civil libertarians and gun owners, fear the device may violate constitutional rights. "I'm familiar with the millimeter-wave technology and it's an incredible invasion of privacy," says Don Haines, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It produces a virtual 3-D image, and you can see the contours of breasts, buttocks and genitals."

Bohrer denied Haines' assertion. "You don't have that kind of resolution," he says. The imager's display screen "does not reveal intimate anatomical details of the person," according to a statement issued by the company.

Chip Walker, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, admits the technology would be useful for airport security and in situations "where police arrive on the scene of drug- or gang-related activities." But he says the NRA is worried that the device might threaten the rights of citizens in 31 states that issue permits to carry concealed weapons.

Jack King, spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, says the imager "seems to be highly intrusive and in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure." His organization contends that using this device constitutes a "warrantless search."

Bohrer recognizes that "search-and-seizure" concerns will come with the introduction of the imager. "But it's not different from a visual inspection," he says. "It just looks for a different part of the [radiation] spectrum. It's really no different from the metal detectors that are used at airports, except that it puts out a television image."

The Clinton administration has proposed increased wiretapping and other antiterrorism steps and is awarding research grants for cutting-edge anticrime technology originally intended for military use. Last year, the National Institute of Justice awarded $2.1 million to three companies to develop weapon detectors for airports and other buildings, including the Millimetrix grant.

Indeed, after the crash of TWA Flight 800, which many believe was caused by a bomb, more Americans are security-conscious. A Los Angeles Times poll recently found that 58 percent of American would be willing to lose some liberties to help thwart terrorism.