Jane Phare thought her image on an Auckland Airport body scanner looked more like a startled gingerbread person than a human.
Jane Phare wonders why her “golden triangle” created so much interest at Auckland Airport’s body scanner.
It happened so quickly I didn’t have much time to think about it. “Can you lift your shirt?” the Auckland Airport security woman asked me. And suddenly she was pat-searching me in what I now fondly regard as my “golden triangle” region: below the waist and between each groin.
At that moment I recalled an extremely agitated friend calling me about a similar pat-down search after body scanners were introduced at Queenstown Airport, an experience that left her shocked and traumatised.
“No one touches me there except my husband!” she told me angrily at the time.
At Auckland Airport, on my way to Wellington to scream-in-a-controlled fashion on the sidelines at my son’s rugby tournament, I had “beeped” as I walked through the metal detector or, in official speak, the WTMD, which unsurprisingly stands for walk-through metal detector.
I was asked to step into the body scanner, face sideways, feet apart, arms raised above my head. Dubbed “naked scanners” or a “digital strip search” when scanners first emerged, the ProVision 2 model used in New Zealand is not that exciting.
What the security staff see are the front and back views of a genderless mannequin, leaving me looking more like a startled androgynous Gingerbread Person than a human. Certainly no private parts show and no, I’m told the scanner can’t detect tampons.
But what did show up was a golden glow, a yellow inverted triangle below my waist and down to my pubic area. The operator pointed to the glow and asked me to step over to the woman to be searched; lifted the shirt and pat, pat, pat, it was all over in a few seconds.
It’s the speed of it all that left my friend shocked. Overwhelmed airports and their staff are trying to get people through security as quickly as possible and agitated passengers don’t want to miss their flights. The pat-pat happens so quickly no one has time to think or react until later.
It wasn’t until the return journey that I began to wonder why I’d been singled out. At Wellington Airport I “beeped” again; into the body scanner and another pat search. This time it was a wristwatch I had forgotten I was wearing. Fair enough.
But here’s the thing. I was wearing the watch in Auckland and it wasn’t picked up and yet my golden triangle was. And on the way back I was wearing the same stretch trousers - no zip, pocket, buttons or belt - and similar cotton undies. Yet the body scanner picked up the watch but nothing else. Go figure.
I decided to do a deep dive into what was going on. Sadly, it turned out to be a bit of a shallow splash because the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Aviation Security Service (AvSec) were tight-lipped. They declined to answer some of my questions due to security reasons, and wouldn’t provide anyone I could talk to, or supply one of the Gingerbread Person images. They wouldn’t even confirm the colour yellow was used, even though it shows up on the CAA website. However, they did send a useful statement and I did learn some new acronyms.
The woman who pat-searched me was an Aviation Security Officer (ASO) and the body scanner is Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT), operating at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Queenstown and Invercargill airports.
Airport security is looking for metallic and non-metallic weapons - guns, knives and the like – explosives, dangerous chemicals, powder, liquids, gels, metals and other solids - none of which I had in my stretch pants
AvSec’s group manager operations, Karen Urwin, said my initial metal-detector alert in Auckland was probably random but that the staff wouldn’t know that.
The ASOs aren’t able to distinguish whether an AIT alarm is random as staff are required to treat all alarms with the “utmost of caution”, she said.
“Random screening is of an unpredictable nature to ensure that individuals with sinister intent are not able to ‘game’ the system.”
Random selection also removed the risk of an ASO being influenced by any inherent bias when selecting people for additional screening, Urwin said.
I assume that means that surly-looking characters with shifty eyes don’t get picked on constantly while innocent-looking grannies slip through with cocaine and gunpowder in their pockets. Quite why the AIT body scanner glowed yellow and I was pat-searched is still a bit of a mystery.
I called my friend – I’ll call her Distressed of Herne Bay, DOHB for short – to compare notes. She was still agitated and said the pat-down search left her feeling helpless, angry and traumatised.
“I don’t know why they (AvSec) are continuing with this. It is so offensive.”
She insists that she clearly remembers a security officer at Queenstown Airport telling her she had been randomly selected, and that she would be searched in her groin area.
“I was wearing a tight dress. I thought ‘they have to be kidding. What do I hide in my underpants?’”
She went as far as describing the incident “a sexual assault”.
“I was totally psychologically unprepared. Nobody puts their hand there, nobody.”
Urwin said security staff were trained to conduct pat-down searches “respectfully and safely”. That involved an ASO of the same gender running their hand over the identified clothed area.
“For sensitive areas, the back of the hand is be used,” Urwin said. “We acknowledge that it can be an uncomfortable experience for some.”
The pat-down search can be requested to occur in private, out of the view of others, she said. (Neither DOHB nor I were offered this option but it’s good to know it exists.)
Urwin said if a person considered a pat-down search had been conducted inappropriately, a complaint could be laid via the website, and the CCTV footage could be reviewed.
DOHB argues there should be a justifiable reason for a pat-down search. She and her lawyer husband have written to the CAA and AvSec to complain and say the matter is ongoing.
AvSec says the AIT body scanners reduce the number of pat-down searches needed. The Herald on Sunday inquired about the number of complaints it had received about pat-down searches in the past two years and whether or not that number had decreased since the introduction of AIT body scanners last year. AvSec said it did not have the information immediately available and might need as many as 20 days to gather it, the time limit on Official Information Act requests.
It appears that the artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms controlling the Provision 2 body scanners are still a work in progress, and that false alarms can and do occur.
According to CAA’s website, the scanner uses radio waves – millimetre waves – that travel through most clothing and bounce back off the moisture layer of the skin. Those waves are processed by automatic target detection software (the detection algorithm), designed to detect items close to the skin. Once the “potential threat” is identified, the area in question lights up.
The algorithm is trained to detect a variety of threat objects using “deep-learning artificial intelligence techniques”, the website says. It’s also trained to clear “innocuous items that cause nuisance and false alarms”.
But occasionally the system may provide a false alarm which could be caused by additional moisture (including perspiration) on the body or differing thicknesses of clothing.
“The software is being continually improved with the aim of delivering far fewer false indications.”
Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.
Three councils were together recognised for a ground-breaking high-risk properties buyout.