Vincent Deery, CEO, 3DX-Ray outlines the ever-present issue of mail bombs and the latest technology being designed to thwart perpetrators.

Last month, inmate David Cassady, serving a sentence for kidnapping and gang rape at the Phillips State Prison in Georgia, US, is now facing new charges for ‘allegedly’ constructing and sending mail bombs to federal facilities. 

He’s charged with Making an Unregistered Destructive Device; two counts of Mailing a Destructive Device; and two counts of Attempted Malicious Use of an Explosive, in addition to those initial charges.  

Cassady allegedly constructed the mail bombs behind bars and mailed two of them via US Mail to the United States Courthouse and Federal Building in Anchorage, Alaska and to a federal facility at 1400 New York Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.  

The indictment alleged the bombs were sent in an attempt “to maliciously damage or destroy, by means of fire or explosive, a building in whole or in part owned or possessed by, or leased to, the United States,” and “created substantial risk of injury to a person.”  

In January 2023, the Spanish police arrested a man suspected of being behind a letter bombing campaign that targeted the Spanish prime minister and the Ukrainian embassy. 

Six letter bombs were sent in late November and early December 2022 to various sites in Spain.

Nobody was killed but an employee of the Ukrainian embassy was injured while opening one of the packages, but fortunately, not seriously. 

Back in 2018 in the US, a series of mail bombs were sent to prominent critics of the former Donald Trump administration.

The first bomb discovered was delivered to billionaire financier and activist George Soros. 

Subsequent devices were sent to political figures including former President Barack Obama, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Congresswoman Maxine Waters.  

In the febrile and polarised political atmosphere of today, it would be a mistake for anyone in public service or public life, high or low, to be complacent about their personal safety.  

Mail bombs are relatively easy to make, easily ‘delivered’ to their intended target and are low risk for the perpetrator. Making them an ever-present security threat!  

Colour-differentiating technology 

To further combat this threat, in September 2020 in a world first, 3DX-Ray launched the AXIS-CXi, a cabinet-based x-ray mail screening system, that utilises the same state-of-the-art colour-differentiating image technology used in airport baggage screening.   

This was a huge step forward as colour differentiated scans are the thing that enables operators to determine not just the shape but the nature of the materials being scanned.

Orange shows organics, such as explosives, chemicals and drugs, as well as more innocent items such as foodstuffs.  

Blue shows metals, such as guns, knives and potential IED components.

Green shows inorganic materials like those used in homemade explosives.

Grey scale is used for recognition of shapes and the form of objects.  

Another unique feature of the AXIS-CXi is that it has an extra-large inspection chamber, able to scan bags up to and including aircraft cabin bags, whilst maintaining a small footprint.

This, along with the fact that it is on wheels, allows it to be taken out of the mail room, into office and hotel lobbies or anywhere else that requires the ability to check baggage either routinely or at times of raised threat levels.  

That has seen the AXIS-CXi in operation in banks, prisons, police stations as well as the homes of high-net-worth, high-profile individuals.  

3DX-Ray has now gone a stage further by fully integrating AI machine learning software functionality into the AXIS-CXi.

Using AI algorithms, the software can identify and analyse potential threats with an unmatched level of precision and confidence.  

We are extremely proud of the AXIS-CXi.

Its launch meant that for the first time, colour-differentiating image technology was available in the mail room and now, combined with AI not only do you get better analysis of the images today, but because of the machine learning capability, the results are just going to get better and better over time.

Making us all safer. 

This article was originally published in the June Edition of Security Journal United Kingdom. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.