Fort Lauderdale, FL – Engineer Outsmarts Body Scanner At Airport Security

Fort Lauderdale, FL – An American engineer and blogger is receiving a lot of attention after he claimed that he found an incredibly simplistic way to get anything pass the Transport Security Administration’s body scanners undetected — with the help of a needle and thread.

Jonathan Corbett, who is attempting to sue the TSA for $1 billion for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, claims it was incredibly easy to fool the system.

On the post on his blog, “TSA Out of Our Pants,” Corbett claims that he sewed a “heavy metal carrying case that would easily alarm any of the ‘old’ metal detectors” into a hidden pocket on his shirt. He then walked through the scanners, undetected at Cleveland and Fort Lauderdale’s airports, in what he claims is proof that the scanners are ineffective.

“While I carried the metal case empty, by one with malintent, it could easily have been filled with razor blades, explosives or one of Charlie Sheen’s infamous 7-gram rocks of cocaine,” he wrote. “With a bigger pocket, perhaps sewn on the inside of the shirt, even a firearm could get through. It’s important to note that any metal object of any size can use this technique. … And I don’t urge you to try to bring contraband through security, as the nude body scanners often have false positives: So while the metal on your side might get through, a button on your shirt or a sweaty armpit might ‘look suspicious’ and earn you a patdown anyway.”

Expert, Philip Baum, told the Guardian newspaper that “pretty much every system you can fool.”

“Using advanced imaging technology has its benefit,” he says, “providing you know what you’re looking for. You need 67 machines to do the job of 20 metal detectors. So it’s certainly not cost-effective – and it’s questionable if it’s effective in any case. You can’t pick up internal carry – which is what drug smugglers do every day. And there is no technology currently screening people for explosives.”