WASHINGTON - Airlines recently got a new warning from the Transportation Security Administration.
The TSA is telling airlines that human-bomb terrorists may try to surgically implant explosives to blow up planes. There is no intelligence about a specific plot.
"This is new intelligence about a possible technique that could be used but there is nothing to indicate an imminent threat," a U.S. security official released Wednesday. "Such a threat is likely to come from overseas rather than domestically, but precautionary steps are being taken internationally and in the United States."
People traveling into the U.S. may experience additional screening at airports because of the threat.
"These [extra precautions] are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same activity at every international airport. Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies," the TSA said.
Jeff Price, an associate professor and aviation security expert at Metropolitan State College of Denver, says this tactic is not new.
"Drug smugglers picked up on this one decades ago," Price said. "I think the imagination is probably boundless, you can probably do breast implants. You can certainly do false prosthesis of some sort.
Price says he thinks that a terrorist attack will not make use of advanced technology.
"You look for the lowest level of technology to be used in an attack. The more advanced you get, the harder it is to successfully pull off the attack. Once you start getting a lot of moving parts in an attack, you're getting very technologically advanced and relying on a chemist, an engineer and a lot of technology to work, that's lessening the chance the attack is going to work," Price said.
Price believes the TSA will be able to detect any threat coming through an airport.
"The computerized tomography scanners that are in use at some airports now are effective enough that they can tell there is an anomaly. Often times at that point, you're going to call somebody over who's knowledgeable about reading this imagery to make a determination as to what the machine is seeing."
"I think the real question is this: Hw secure do we want to be? Because the next level, we've got body imagers, let's get body imagers. Let's look under your clothes. Now let's go underneath the skin, let's go another step. All right, are we going to roll out more technology and have even more intrusive scans, more pat downs of people to try and detect possibly what's inside of you? That takes the 4th Amendment to a whole different level. It takes our civil rights to a different level as well. How secure do we want to be? Do we want to take the chance that our intelligence and our investigative agencies that are out there are going to stop this kind of attack before it even gets to an airport or do we want to continue to buy more and more technology, be subjected to more and more pat downs to try to prevent this at the last point of attack? That's really the decision we have to make now."
(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation with NBC Universal)