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New Explosive Detection Tech
cruci writes to tell us Yahoo! is reporting that a New Zealand company, Syft, has developed a new way to detect many different kinds of explosives (and their individual ingredients) in real time. Designed for what the company calls "photocopier simplicity", CEO Geoff Peck claims that the technology is ready to deploy immediately and is already deployed in some ports and hospitals. From the article: "The Voice100(TM) employs Selected Ion Flow Tube - Mass Spectrometry (SIFT-MS). While SIFT-MS has been in academic use for more than 20 years, Syft Technologies is the first company to offer a commercial instrument with the full discriminating analytical power of a laboratory-grade mass spectrometer."
"The Voice100(TM) employs Selected Ion Flow Tube..."
It's a bunch of tubes I tell you!
If you have these exquisitly sensitive machines that can detect even a few molecules of material, aren't they by the same token super-vulnerable to being attacked by "chaffing" or overloading?
You have to look at the false positive and negative rates for detection. If you have a test that is 99.99% specific, it will still fail in practical use in an airport, as that means that 1 out of 10,000 people will come up positive. If you have a lot of people going through you will still have a big problem (London had over a million flights last year). This is the same issue as using automatic detection of terrorists – It's one thing to match/no match a known ID (e.g. biometric passport) to a person; it's another to match every passer by to every known terrorist.
Going back to chemical detection: this level of sensitivity will mean that every person runs the risk of coming up positive eventually. This amounts probably about 100,000 people in the U.S., and lots more elsewhere in the world.
IANAC (I am not a chemist) but this guy seems to make a pretty solid arguement: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/200608/msg00087.html
Resonance cascade.
Here's a schematic
It also says that it can detect compounds in the ppb levels out of breath (in real time). What I am wondering is how large/portable this machine is. Could a baggage handler walk around with it and wand things, or would you need to put all the bags through the machine on a conveyor belt?
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Not the U.S. I think we made it adequately clear that our DHS doesn't exist to improve homeland security, rather just to scare the citizenry.
Someone had to do it.
OK, I've got to put something in here to post. What a waste of perfectly good electrons. :)
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
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>The Voice100(TM) instrument's core feature is its ability to continuously detect and quantify the concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in whole air.
In other words, if the bad guy's dumb enough to make his explosive before passing through the screening station, he gets picked up.
But since hydrogen peroxide isn't an organic compound, Abdul walks up to the scanner and it says "Nothing to see here. Move along."
And since acetone is a VOC, when Mohammed walks up to the scanner, the scanner screams bloody murder... which would be fine, except that it also probably screams bloody murder for every woman with a bottle of nail polish remover in her purse. So Mohammed gets told to move along, too.
*blam*
Airlines are like democracies: We have to destroy them to save them.
And how high will the fee that is added to the cost of a ticket going to be to pay for this?
Try to light all suspicious materials on fire. Nice and cheap (all you need is some guy you pay minimum wage with a handheld lighter). For larger items, have a can of hairspray handy to use as a cheap flamethrower.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
While we are at it, why don't we check athletes at the airport for doping drugs before they compete in important sporting events. Maybe take away their plane ticket if the detector smells the synthetics from their sweat glands.
You know, kill two birds with one stone. Heck, I bet that this machine could establish paternity as well.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
This technology, as well as some others I have seen, has a major problem. All the terrorists have to do is spend some time seeding the people in line with small amounts of powdered explosives. Make the detector go off on every one. The minimum wage security person decides the unit is broke; his almost minimum wage manager puts in the fix request which will take weeks. In the mean time, it is back to business as usual.
This is a mess and a waist of time.
Next you know, they will be selling them to your boss to check you as you come to work.
Be careful, if the government can get it, the private sector can get it and they do not have to honnor your rights.
1- High profile terror case/natural disaster/act of God has just occurred
2- Previously unknown company proposes its bulletproof and cheap product which they claim have been proposing for years
3- Get suckers to invest in your product by tapping into people's irrational fears that naturally follow 1-
4- Profit!!!
In this case, 1- is obviously the UK terror plot to blow up planes by smuggling explosives onto the plane (like that's gonna work, but whatever gets the thinkofthechildren crowd going)...
By calling a terrorist Mohammed, you are profiling. Why not call him John. John Mohammed.
We should be detecting bombers not bombs. Bombs form a nearly endless variety. Bombers are an easier class of object to detect, I believe. The fact that the bombers try to hide the bombs on their person or in their carry on luggage suggests they they themselves don't fear the system's scruitiny. In the old days they had to figure out ways of getting the bomb on the aircraft without them being anywhere near it. How times have changed.
how about a detector that screens out people susceptible to claustrophobia and panic attacks, which could lead to passenger airplanes being diverted and escorted by fighter airplanes...?
There is nothing specific to the technique that prevents it from recognizing things that are not organic. This is just a highlighted capability. It is like assuming that Vista doesn't have a calculator because you haven't seen it mentioned in press releases.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
If you'll notice, it's not the folks who are researching pure "explosives detection" who are making the advances, it's folks who have been working on all sorts of other tech (mostly in the private sector) who are getting things done.
You want dramatic, practical scientific advances? Don't fund it with government money.
Note that it was a New Zealand company, not the New Zealand government, in the article...
Before anybody gets too excited, note that this is a Press Release from the Manufacturer of the device. Yahoo isn't "reporting" anything-- they are simply forwarding a Press Release from the PRNewswire.
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http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060816/lnw002.html?.v
This company is certainly not the first company to promote an easy-to-use bomb detector, or to talk about how their product is better then the competitor's products.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Thinking "Plane go boom"!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I know, don't feed the trolls. But still...
It won't work. It won't work because they will never see the positive side of the western world. Just as some people in this country will never call them anything nicer than "towel head" or "macaca" (hey, a Daily Show reference to my home state! Allen is such as ass).
Whether we do anything or not at this point is irrelevent. There are people who really, really hate us, and they have taught their children the same values. I know people who won't go some places because black people frequent it. I know some people who won't even go into a shop because they *think* that one of the employees is gay. (Virginia, gotta love it!). Those prejudices are passed from generation to generation. When you combine that with a social structure with very little upward mobility potential, you get hate. And hate takes a long time to die out. Just ask the Palestinians and the Jews how long it takes for everyone to set past wrongs aside.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Lets just hope there isn't a residence cascade
I will forever be a student.
How about ... Stop invading countries for the wrong reasons!! Maybe then they'll stop thinking about blowing us all up!!
Too late. (Has been at LEAST since the "Monica Missiles".)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So if you injure yourself changing your motor oil after fertilizing your yard, you're going to have a LOT of trouble at the emergency room.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Noble in theory, impossible in practice. This goes way beyond "I punched you, you punched me back." It's tough to reason with someone who believes they are in the right with their chosen deity by eradicating you and your way of life. Though, if you'd like to try, don't let any of us stop you. March yourself onto a plane and go explain it to them in person. I'm sure your face will end up on the 5 o'clock news...just before they decapitate you.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
yeah just follow follow the sirens.
When you get close you should hear wailing and screaming, and see debris and body parts, all of which are a good indication an explosion has in fact occured.
Could it ever work? Would we ever try this tactic?
No, and no.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
I object! You are merely playing into populist stances by using such a stereotypical last name!
... "Mohammed Doe"
You should instead use a last name like "Doe"
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
While I'd agree that our invasion into Iraq definitely falls into the "what were we thinking?" catagory, (and just so you know, I never thought it was a good idea), I'm not sure what differences we have that can realistically be resolved. Are you suggesting we simply bud out of the middle east, sacrificing Israel and letting the largest oil reserves in the world end up in the hands of a bunch of religious fanatics? Because that's what these people want (for starters at least).
I'm not saying our behaviour has ever been perfect, and there's certainly times we've added fuel to the fire. However, I don't think there's any realistic policy we can pursue that would make the fanatics happy.
Or, in a move to increase tie-ups and add confusion, make a concealed misting device and go through the area where people are waiting to check their baggage, misting random luggage and carryons with small concentrations of just those volatiles, to ensure that as many people as possible get caught in the explosives sniffer. Meanwhile, the actual bomb had casting resin poured over it and allowed to cure completely, eliminating any avenue for the escape of these VOCs...
This reads like the most disturbing piece of marketing fluff I have ever seen in analytical chem. I have seen things that are close, but they were in product brochures and never claimed to be news.
Nak.
If it can "quantify the concentration of volatile organic compounds" in the air, it can determine if there is a sufficient quantity to produce a dangerous reaction. Somehow, I suspect that a bottle of nail polish remover does not contain enough acetone to be a real threat, but IANAC (...chemist) so I could be wrong.
However, given enough women carrying enough nail polish remover on board the aircraft, I suppose it could be a problem...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
"photocopier simplicity",
yes but can it copy your butt? i thought not.
You want Red Team? Have the CalTech prank-of-the-year be an airplane removal. You'd have hundreds in a matter of hours.
Proof of point: tell me how they're going to stop people from taking ferrite, aluminum, and magnesium on planes.
Instead we get programs to prevent baby bottles.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I work in a chemistry lab where we regularly synthesis small quantities of explosives. Last weekend I took a flight and (very stupidly) wore the same shoes that I normally wear to work. They swabbed my shoes down and passed me through without a second glance. It didn't occur to me until after I was through security that there was surely some trace amount of explosives on my shoes that should have been detectable. Upon further reflection I realized that the detector was probably only set to look for a few certain common explosives, and the explosive compounds that we work with in my lab are relatively esoteric.
I think that the very narrow specificity of these machines is a major problem. You might be able to detect the 20 most common explosives, but it would be trivially easy for any competent organic chemist to come up with a new explosive that the detector wouldn't be looking for. Perhaps the detectors that we have now look for nitroglycerin, but what about nitroglycerin with an extra methyl group hung off the end of the carbon chain? Or an ethyl group? Or an isopropyl group? What if instead of ammonium nitrate you used butyl-ammonium nitrate? Or butyl ammonium with some other, less common oxidizer like permanganate/perchlorate/whatever? Do you see my point? You could make a slight modification to almost any existing explosive and render it undetectable to these bomb scanners, because the scanners only look for things that they have been specifically trained to look for. They have no capability to actually examine the structure of a molecule and judge whether it's explosive or not. It's kind of like using a "knife detector" that has been set to look for the most common brands of knifes, when in fact you could sharpen almost anything into a knife with a little effort.
Photocopier simplicity, eh? I can see it now: "Bomb Ingredient Jam in detection device. Please open Door 2A and follow the instructions on the label inside of the door to clear the jam." Don't forget to turn knob 4C three complete rotations! But it doesnt' matter how many compartments you open, there is *always* one more page buried in there somewhere. And then the job restarts who knows where, and you'll get partial results of "0.396 bombs found".
I don't know what kind of photocopiers they have in New Zealand, but saying "Photocopier simplicity" is a sure way to make me avoid your product for being too complicated.
I'm not interested unless it detects these: http://img.2dehands.nl/f/normal/10427705-dell-lati tude-d600.jpg
Mass spectrometers are much better than 99.99% accurate. Down to parts per billion is fairly common, and the pre Mass Spectrometer stage (gas, liquid chromatograph, or in this case, selected ion flow tube) manipulates out compounds you don't want to analyse. That doesn't mean you set the trigger level of the number of molecules at 1, or 10 molecules, you set it at a level which would indicate that there are quantities of explosives present.
The nice thing about this tech is it's very fast compared to gcms or lcms. I wouldn't count it out, it looks interesting.
Deleted
can it spot a Dell?
just take all the laptops marked DELL...
Also, log to a database and crossreference unusual amounts of certain chemicals with another database with ingredients for known explosive compounds and you should have an idea if something is "brewing" ;)
It's tough to reason with someone who believes they are in the right with their chosen deity by eradicating you and your way of life.
Look at who we support in the region: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, highly un-democratic, oppressive, and sometimes vicious regimes. When Iran had a democratic government, we got rid of it for economic reasons.
To many people in the region, the US is a behemoth that uses its military to ensure a cheap supply of oil and is willing to keep people from achieving self-determination, economic development, and democracy in order to keep oil prices low. They don't want to "eradicate our way of life", they are pissed because they believe that we are preventing them from achieving it themselves.
Lo, and behold, September 11, 2001 shows up and a group of dedicated people does what "no one would ever anticipate" and hijack several planes with nothing more than metal box-cutters. Yes, that's right. The blades in box-cutters are made of metal. Yes, that's right. The hijackers were carrying legitimate identification. Yes, that's right. They all passed through the rigorous inspections that we had all been told would make us safe way back in the 1970s.
What makes you think this new set of intrusions, even given better technology, will make the skies any safer?
If someone is serious about hijacking one or more planes, there is NOTHING the TSA can do about it.
Until after the fact, when they impose NEW regulations to make the skies safe once again.
Geez, they never learn.
But, boy, do they ever earn.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Think about this one: Who's profiting from all these "terror scares"?
Stop the brainwash
While such things do influence people for the worse, this is not the root cause. The root cause of Islamic facism and terrorism is due to a couple of things. First we need to acknowledge that the largest Islamic country in the world is Indonesia which does not seem to produce large numbers of terrorists and suicide bombers. Therefore the root cause cannot be Islam itself. Rather the root cause has more to do with the fact that the Arab world (not necessarily the Islamic world) is, in terms of thinking, almost a century behind the rest of the world. Repressive regimes (which we prop up) create essentially a gang-neighborhood environment. In fact terrorism is caused by the same things that the inner-city gang problems are caused by. Instead of drugs and rap music we have extreme religious points of view that people turn to to get a sense of belonging and value, even though these things are ultimately destructive and cause a chain of violence. All of these factors combine to cause Arabs in particular to feel that they are victims. They are victims of Israel, victims of the US, victims of the west. Even if the US was not in Iraq, and if Israel did not exist, many would still feel this way. It's really a way of avoiding responsibility for one's own actions (you caused me to blow myself up in your city because you're oppressing me).
So the combination of having one's society be so far behind the rest of the world and the feeling of victimhood are the real root causes. Sure our foreign policy doesn't help things, but on the other hand I don't see that changing anytime soon. There is no ethical way the US can abandon Israel. There is, however, lots we can do to build good will in the Arab world (and no, abandoning Iraq will *not* foster good will on the part of the Arab world).
Israel was imposed in 1948 mainly so Britain and The US did not have to take in all those refugees from the German nastiness.
Although many holocost survivors did wind up in Israel, most of the original Jewish population of Israel were Jews who were already in the area (or soon left other parts of the Middle East). Israel was proposed before WWII as part of the carving up of the Middle East. Although it was originally England's idea (England and France were pretty much in charge of dividing the Middle East after WWI), the UN was the one who finally adopted it. The Arabs rejected the plan, war ensued, and Israel grabbed a little more land than the UN mandated. This is the what has sinced been the formally recognized boundaries of Israel (at least by the UN).
Designed for what the company calls "photocopier simplicity"
Great, so now we'll have to pry TSA goons' asses out of the machine after they decide to scan them.
It was live video on CNN today that they found a suspicious container shipment, and they didn't have the bomb-detecting equipment there.
I should point out, like many other professionals, that it is fairly easy to make said explosives undetectable using a clean room with non-permeable plastic sealant. Still works just as well in going boom, of course, but you need to have an oxygen-rich explosive or one that requires certain ignitors. Also, certain "safe" chemicals, when mixed, or ignited beyond a certain thermal limit, will still explode real good, and if you have a nice "dirty bomb" payload, it still works fine.
Don't believe all the industry hype, you never will be safe, but you don't have to live in fear. More people die of sunstroke in northern states than have ever been at risk from terrorist bombs in the USA.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Would people stop ranting on about this story ?
So Dell are recalling a bunch of batteries that were shipped with their machines because the company that they subcontracted, SONY, have admitted that there may be flaws, so what, Dell are doing the responsible thing. I have yet to see any statement from Lenovo or HP that they are recalling batteries which they have also subcontracted out to SONY ?
I guess it boils down to who you would prefer to be:
1. Aware that things do not always work and accept reasonable measures to remedy them.
2. Be blissfully unaware and get burned (literally).
BTW before anybody comments, I don't work for Dell but have and do purchase equipment from Dell,Hp,Lenovo and Sony.
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Dude, why did you give away my secret intellectual property for detecting explosions??!!!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Resin is chock full of VOC and will probably set the sensor off as well. It is also porous and will still let VOC's out over time.
Incidently if I was fresh from either of two hobbies I would set this detector off quite admirably. Boat building and resin, or the shooting range and gunpowder smoke residue. I'd have to shower AND make sure that I was not wearing any article of clothing that I wore or handled during earlier activity.
Fall and hunting season are going to cause a shock with this one!
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
Nail polish remover and other volatile liquids were banned before the "liquid explosive" panic.
To bring some perspective to PenGun's pithy statement, "Yes indeed ... but not by the locals whose land was largly stolen from them. Certainly there was a sizable Jewish presense in Palestine at the time but the religious state that ensued wanted Israel for the Jews. Zionist terrorists persuded the locals to leave.", I include below an excerpt from Wikipedia's article on Israel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel), from the section titled "Jewish Underground groups" (the section in bold type was bolded by me, not by Wikipedia, for emphasis):
As tensions grew between the Jewish and Arab populations, and with little apparent support from the British Mandate authorities, the Jewish community began to rely on itself for defense. Arab nationalists, opposed to the Balfour declaration, the mandate, and the Jewish National Home, instigated riots and pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, and Haifa. As a result of the 1921 Arab attacks, the Haganah was formed to protect Jewish settlements. The Haganah was mostly defensive in nature, which among other things caused several members to split off and form the militant group Irgun (initially known as Hagana Bet) in 1931. The Irgun adhered to a much more active approach, which included attacks and initiation of armed actions against the British, such as attacking British military headquarters, the King David Hotel, which killed 91 people. Haganah on the other hand often preferred restraint. A further split occurred when Avraham Stern left the Irgun to form Lehi, (also known as the Stern Gang) which was much more extreme in its methods. Unlike the Irgun, they refused any co-operation with the British during World War II and even attempted to work with the Nazis to secure European Jewry's immigration to Israel.
You might also read the parts in that article (section title: "Zionism and Immigration") about how much of the land was purchased from the Arab landowners; not all of it was a "gift" from England or the UN/League of Nations. And you can also read about how Britain later restricted the purchase of land by Jews to placate the Arab nationalist groups.
The conflict has a very long history, and you, PenGun, apparently have an agenda.
Surely we're forgetting something important here? If we prevent terrorists from blowing up planes, won't they just go elsewhere? Hell, they could even get to the airport and blow themselves up before they get to the security check.
Also, if they get to the detector at say a London tube station and it goes off, who's to say they can't just knife the bloke operating it, run in and blow themselves up in the crowds? Are they gonna put armed police at every single detector? Even at an airport they could just blow themselves up at the security desk which is bound to have a massive queue behind it and loads of people surrounding it in general.
Terrorism will only be properly dealt with when certain countries admit to their own terrorist acts around the world and realise violence answered with violence only spews forth more.. you guessed it, violence. Such a simple principal with an enormous historical precident, and yet people never learn.
I brought up Israel and oil-reserves as separate issues. Israel is sitting on virtually no oil, so there's no reason to discuss Israel when speaking about oil. You focused on Israel, so that's were I took the discussion.
If you are willing to concede that I have a point about Israel then I will concede that you have a point about us messing in the Arab world's affairs. We have a history of meddling, and this certainly hasn't made us popular. Some of the policies, (particularly recent Iraq and killing democracy in Iran) I don't agree with, so I can't really defend them. I do wonder if we had taken a different path, if it would have really made any difference?
One thing is apparent from Iraq: without brutally strong leaders willing to ruthlessly put down insurgencies, these countries are time-bombs waiting to go off. Whether or not I agree with everything my country has done I could understand why we might take short cuts (such as supporting monarchs and dictators) to avoid such explosions. I suspect that if oil (and Israel) wasn't involved, we would just let the time-bombs go off. (See Africa for example)
Let me clarify..."liberating" the middle east is not one of my favorite US policies. I belive that _most_ of the people around Israel, including Israel itself, would prefer to work together. The problem is that there are a few people who will always hate Israel (do you hear that phrase from Tom Lehrer's National Brotherhood Week in the back of your mind?), and will forever call for their annihilation. That will never change no matter what the US attitude is.
Terrorists hate us so much that after 8 years of the "cut and run" party being in the drivers seat, they flew four planes into US landmarks (okay 3, technically). It doesn't matter. They hate us because we are different (to put it insimple terms).
And as for planes, they have been hijacked for as long as I can remember. It's a big news thing. One plane and you get headlines. You have to blow up a lot of trains to get that kind of press. They will always be targets for those wishing to go out in a flash of media.
Again, I'm not suggesting that we continue our imperialistic ways, just that our cessation of any contact will not stop the terrorism.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
> What if you are standing close by some fellow planning on blowing the plane out of the sky, and you are first in line at the Mass-Spectrometer? In all the brew-haha of you getting tackled/cuffed/cavity-searched, the terror monger walks right in...
Small comfort, but you'll be safely on the ground in a jail cell when the bomb does go off...
Virg