The Powers-that-be required a fast scanner (example), costing who-knows-how-many-thousands-of-dollars, the pelican case was probably a custom case to fit such a big monstrosity of a scanner (kind of a vertical wedge, 18 inches at least, on every side), plus the laptop, which was incidental by comparison in both size and price, plus the enormous per-seat licensing costs of the scanning software and security software by themselves might have been the largest cost.
How were these "portable" scanning stations ever taken in travel? They now look hardly portable, right? Remember, they never were taken on trips. These big, bulky boxes simply languished in the computer room.