$103 Million
To date, the government has wasted over $100 million in a flawed effort to improve airport security by identifying passengers and, well, doing something to the naughty ones. Meanwhile, the reality is that airport screeners continue to miss items like knives, guns and bombs.
Meanwhile, there’s lots of good work in computer vision systems, which can help screeners do better.
There’s an argument for pursuing every avenue, but here in reality-based communities, we like to think that at some point you give up on the bad ideas, and pursue the useful ones.
A nice side benefit is that the privacy impact of some of these real security systems is much lower. (I’ll talk about millimeter wave radars, which see through clothing, some other time.)