The Rise of the Airport Metal Detector: Colorblind Racism, Police Discretion, and Surveillance Across Borders

Abstract

  Metal detectors became ubiquitous throughout the United States after their use in airports during the late-1960s and early 1970s when they were installed to address hijackings. While earlier perceptions of the technology’s invasiveness prevented the metal detector’s deployment in the United States beyond jails and prisons, security officials came to identify the device as a means to address the carceral-security state’s legitimacy crises and square mass surveillance with demands for civil and political rights. Those designing and implementing the first airport security program understood hijackings as elements of global rebellions against U.S. empire and drew from policing efforts at home and abroad in their efforts to securitize airports. Officials and courts argued that the universality and objectivity of the machine that determined potential danger solely through the presence of metal removed individual police discretion and was thus race-neutral. Claims of the technology’s novelty not only obscured its carceral and counterinsurgent origins but helped propel the metal detector’s deployment to new spaces including public schools and workplaces. The metal detector reproduced existing class and racial hierarchies and strengthened police discretionary authority.