Justin Brighty attends more high-profile events than most of us watch on TV — the NBA All-Star Game, space shuttle launches, the Oscars, the Republican debates in North Carolina, university speeches by the Dalai Lama, and every NFL Championship Game since Super Bowl XL. Brighty attends with work, not play, on his mind — he's the security director for Security Detection Metal Detectors. The Sylvania company supplies x-ray, metal detectors and body scanners nationwide. He answered our questions about the business’ national success, and whether he'd go through those notorious body scanners himself.
What‘s the most recent event you've provided equipment for?
We just finished up with the general assembly in New York City for the United Nations in September, where we set up X-ray machines and metal detectors. That’s a very high profile event.
Your job sounds glamorous.
It’s a little bit of a misconception, because we’re working while everyone else is having fun. You get to go to some nice places every once in a while, but it’s not all fun and games.
Is it like Men In Black-level protocol — lots of sunglasses?
We supply the equipment, and wherever the equipment is set up there are operators there. We train them on how to operate the equipment, so we’re kind of like one of the guys in the background making sure everything is running smoothly.
As unfortunate as it was, did 9/11 create a boom in business for you?
We were in business well before 9/11. You’d be surprised at the amount of people that were using the equipment before then, but it definitely expanded after 9/11. We were doing other smaller events in urban areas, where they were concerned about gun and knife crime. Now you have to worry about terrorism.
What's the difference between political events and big sporting events, security-wise?
The Super Bowl is a Level One national security event, so that’s just as tight as any political event.
How much work goes into providing security for a large event like the Super Bowl?
The Super Bowl is like the Holy Grail of security jobs. It's what we normally do, but on a grand scale, where everyone, even celebrities, goes through security. The Super Bowl is only one day, but we're there three weeks beforehand clearing vendors and TV crews.
At least you get to go to the Super Bowl every year, right?
My friends think I always get to see the Super Bowl, but we're too busy. It's work, you know. None of us actually gets to see the game.
Will metal detectors become archaic with the arrival of full-body scanners?
There’s not really much more technology-wise that can surpass metal detectors and x-ray machines. With body scanners you’re dealing with a whole other privacy issue and a whole other price tag. Getting a body scanner installed is about $185,000, where a typical walk-through detector is about $3,500. So it would never be practical to set up 30 body scanners for an event.
The body scanners endured a bit of controversy when they first debuted. Would you be willing to walk through one?
Oh, yeah. We’re a distributor for L3 Communications, which make the body scanners, and they’re not harmful at all. It’s more dangerous to be on your cell phone or stand near your microwave than it is to go through one of these body scanners. The media makes them out to be more intrusive than they are. How our machines work is they show a standard silhouette regardless of size or body type and the computer recognizes certain objects and highlights them in red. I go through them all the time, with all the traveling I have to do.
Does working in security make you more paranoid than the average person?
Because of the line of business I’m in, you’re always sort of keeping your eye out. You almost have to think about that — wherever there’s a large group of people gathering, those are targets. As a country, we need to keep this going and not let our guard down, because that’s what these terrorists are waiting for. So hopefully it never comes to the point where we do start to put our guard down.
