WAIT - did I just say that?!?!?!?!?!?
Anyway, this is supposed to be about airport security here at Birmingham International. It’s rather fancy, or at least that’s what I thought.
The first thing to say, and I'm sorry all you Linux fans, its running Windows XP - why, don’t ask me. For airport security to be running windows, and at that XP, is quite risky, so many security flaws that people will find, and I bet (but can’t confirm this) that they have some sort of internet connection, or maybe still have solitaire or minesweeper installed or that "I can’t be bothered" day.
So, I thought I'd explain the process, but since I'm on my Touchbook with limited programs, I can’t create a flow chart. But I may add one in the future, It'ld be quite cool **Is It'ld actually used?**
So, it starts with the bog standard 'show your boarding card to a person because the machine is broken' starting gate. This is followed by the expected snake queue system guided by a biological person saying numbers (I also hate the person who said "Lane 7 Ma'am" to me, she definitely won’t be in my will).
So, when in the queue, there are those normal announcements, "remove belts and high heel shoes." or the "laptops and liquids must be removed from bags". So still no different to a normal airport security. But the next bit is where it gets fancy.
The trays have barcodes on them, which are scanned when they enter the X-Ray machine. Above the entry is a camera, with a live feed to the scanning assistant, so he can see what’s going in the scanner. The exit point has a push bar, which allows the "interesting" or potentially dangerous bags to be pushed into a different shoot, so that the owner can’t get to it and run off and end the world or similar. Otherwise the tray goes down the good shoot, and you get all of your irradiated possessions back (including my belt so that’s the world doesn’t have to see my patterned Topman boxers).
Now onto the computer side of security. As I said, they are running Windows XP (some would argue for, others against - please argue on this in the comments sections). They operator has a touch screen with all the controls for the system - stop and start the belt, good shoot or bad shoot, change scan layers etc. - and plays God with your possessions.
If your tray goes down the bad shoot, the scan data is saved and assigned to the barcode. This allows the bag rummagers to scan the barcode at their "desk" and bring up all the scan data on their touch screen, where they again can go through all the layers.
Now, hopefully they delete that data - but then being an airport, for "security" reasons, they may store this data indefinitely. They don’t state the data storage terms anywhere and I think asking might be suspicious.
Now I have to admit, that is a cleaver system, however I am worried a bit about the data storage of the scan data and photos taken by the camera. Maybe a sign would be useful. On the other hand, maybe freedom of information would make them give me a copy of my tray scan?
Right, that’s the end of my Black Forest hot chocolate from Costa (it was very nice). Just time to spell check and post, and I still have one and a half hours to wait for boarding, the down side of Aberystwyth and its 1tp2hrs (one trains per two hours) service.
Tie to enjoy some more free Wi-Fi - iPlayer downloading maybe???
