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Dogs Trained to Sniff Out Piracy
RockDoctor writes "Northern Ireland has for decades been using sniffer dogs to detect bombs and bomb-making materials. According to the BBC, a dog trainer in the Province has trained two dogs to sniff out some of the chemicals used in the manufacture of optical discs. While this has an obvious risk of false positives (polycarbonate plastics and their associated plasticizer additives are used in many other industries, for example), it does seem to be effective at locating discs which are not declared in customs manifests, and doing so much faster than human inspection of the cargo can do."
Fly with your external hdd to transport your piracy overseas.
Well, at least the dogs should not get addicted to plastics, like the drug sniffing dogs...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What if the dog gets interested in the content of the disk?
First they do this... and then they train the dogs to sniff out the actual pirates.
Once these dogs have the secent of basement dwelling teenager with poor hygiene... it's all over.
RIAA is probably training them now. What exactly is the scent of p2p?
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Incredible.
Slashdot needs dupe-sniffing dogs.
The sniffer dog is trained by a trainer who eats fast food which is served by a waitress who has a boyfriend with a computer connected to the internet.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Do these dogs die of cancer?
Arr, thar be no pirates aboard me ship. She be yar and she be true as spit shine as all me laddies. Ye nay be needin' th' poochie here cap'n. Wha? Why tha' be chemicals fer me special scurvy cream. I swar I ne'er heard o' no Day-vee-day piratein' They be like gold bar? Arr! L'emme go ye scalliwags! Ye, canna keel haul a-man fer youst ha'in chemicals fer the scurvy! I swar ser it's medicinal! Don' let 'em lock me in thar brig! I did'na heard no Day-vee-day pirates! Dis is per-poster-mos!
Poor Long Burn Silver Disc we never saw him again.
[signature]
We're constantly learning that animals can accomplish feats we've been too arrogant to suspect them of: reasoning, memory, abstract concepts, tool use, eleven dimensional bee dances...
Indeed. For anyone who hasn't seen any of the recent stories in the press or on TV, dogs are also said to be able to sniff out cancer..
A bit more useful to mankind than sniffing out polycarbonate disks in luggage, but what the hell. A dog's nose is pretty amazing, but I still like the cold and wet part best.
So now the pirated discs will be declared as DVD-Rs or something, perhaps with a few real DVD-Rs on top to fool lazy customs inspectors.
At least it's better than the magic 8 ball method the RIAA seems to have been using. :)
The filthy beggars ne'er get a wash. A man can sniff 'em out himself at thirty fathoms!
to train them to sniff out films and music that smell bad? A single copy of The Wickerman remake can be smelled by a human with a head cold at a hundred yards. A good bloodhound should be able to sniff out a box of them from the next county.
ship burnt disks rather than making them in the destination country?
not transfer files over the net rather than by airplane?
Anyway...
I guess these dogs will be used at the docks rather than the airports, to make sure cargo contains what the manifest claims.
I'm pretty amazed that dogs can smell these solvents in such tiny amounts, and also that they can distinguish a very specific solvent among all the millions of others that will be all around the docks!
They must use more intelligence than we think, perhaps taking into account how the concentration varies as they move around the suspect cargo. I bet it's not just that they can identify it in the air.
I had no idea the Brits were having such a problem with piracy? I had no idea the pirates were resorting to putting disks on planes for the purpose of taking the planes over. I mean, it has to be actual pirates to which this refers, I would hate to believe _this_ much effort is going into simply looking for undeclared optical media, esp. when a hard drive can hold so much more.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I think the first dogs will be put to use on april 1st ... ;-)
they could train a dog to sniff the riaa assholes... And bite while they are at it.
More money and effort is going toward finding copied disks than in finding Bin Laden? I thought sniff-dogs were in short supply after 9/11? What gives? Big corps have way too much power of late.
Table-ized A.I.
I fer one welcome me new pirate-sniffing houndy overlords!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
done with sheep! (The Scottish version) -- With apologies to ACDC.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As in, "aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
When are people going to figure out that a "false positive" is not a nuisance, it's a death blow to any proposed technology--unless the risk of false positives is orders of magnitude lower than the actual frequency of the rare event being detected?
Doesn't anyone ever read Æsop's fable about the boy who cried wolf?
Polycarbonate plastic is just the generic name for Lexan®, and if you follow that link you'll notice that GE mentions many uses besides DVD's: automotive lenses, "blow molding," eyewear, water bottles, structural foam, etc. The example they show in the picture is a cell phone. I believe the original iMacs (the CRT-based ones) had Lexan housings. The company I work for uses Lexan strips to protect a surface where thin metal plates slide over and would otherwise scrap a painted shelf. The stuff is used everywhere.
After customs inspectors have wasted two or three days opening crates of various products with tough molded Lexan housings, they'll forget the whole silly business.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
All Pirates have to do is "seed" every crate with pieces of broken cdroms in the packing material.
The **AA should get together with the trainer of these dogs and Ted Stevens. Imagine what they could do with trained dogs sniffing the tubes! Piracy would drop significantly!
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Arrrghh! Smells like booty!
considering this story
3 31237
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/2
"MPAA train dogs to sniff piracy"
smells like an urban legend/propaganda disemminated by the *IAA to try to put the "scare" on the physical pirates, quick somebody call Mythbusters
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/23 31237 shows that the MPAA has tried this before. Altogether, I can't say this is a very smart idea. Additionally, it would be remarkably easy to DDOS by adding fragments of DVDs to every package you ship. Lastly, how many of us have our warez shipped to us? As people wisely noticed before, this is a ridiculous invasion of privacy and all the more reason to hate the MPAA and to download movies instead of buying them.
YRO is overused as a class, but there is something to rights arguements about trained dogs, etc. that whole pesky "Unreasonable Search and Seizure" clause in the U. S. Constitution implies that some searches are more reasonable than others. Dogs provide an extension of search capabilities. So do X-Ray scans, cavity searches, DNA tests, retasking military grade spy sats to look for pot plantations, or compulsory urine testing. Dogs at customs are generally considered a reasonable search tool for the kinds of things customs has to detect.
BUT, customs is generally charged with detecting some very odd things, such as livestock or pets that are not normally illegal to own, but are illegal to import, and with detecting drugs. Checking for bootleg CDs has certain implications that can't be avoided in this context. First, the society is assuming that catching this particular form of copyright violation is roughly on a par with catching heroin smuggling. That's pretty damned strongly implied if we put similar amounts of money into training dogs for both (and if anything, it's cheaper to train a dog to detect several related opiates and other drugs than it is one plasticiser*). Second, discovering CDs proves nothing, unless the humans associated with the dogs can make a proper determination that the CDs aren't legal ones. That implies we (as a society) are devoting resources to training the human customs agents in telling bootleg CDs from legitimate ones, AT A TIME WHEN WE HAVE SERIOUS DOUBTS ABOUT THEIR TRAINING IN DETECTING INCOMING TERRORISTS WITH WMDS!
* I've actually helped local law enforcement train drug and explosive sniffing dogs. It's difficult fun to try and outwit a well trained sniffer dog, and I have no doubts at all they can be trained to accurately find polycarbonate plasticizers, but I really, seriously doubt it's as easy as training them for much more aromatic explosive nitrate compounds, and that is weeks or months of work. Typical training involves taking the dogs to an unfamiliar location, which means setting aside a national guard armory, old courthouse or other state owned building, often for several days, and having about 20 people previously unknown to the dogs available to plant the 'evidence'. You can't use just one or two people over and over or the dog starts using their scent markers to shortcut training. Instead you have to have several people take turns, hand off packages to each other, and otherwise mix things up so the dog trains properly on the chemical desired. That can be 20 people on a payroll all day even if they are going to actually do only 15 minutes work each, and this is far from cheap.
Who is John Cabal?
I knew there was a reason I'm a cat person. They'd never help The Man.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
Sigh, predictably slashbots mod the uncomfortable truth as a troll. YRO is frequently misused, and this story is a good example.
I've used Linux for years, donate to a couple of different projects, and I'm a member of the AFFSFor those who don't know, that'll be Taiyo Yuden disks :-)
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
After all, the Association of American Publishers claims they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in print piracy. Isn't it only fair that all pieces of paper be sniffed out and verified by customs authorities. Sure every other cardboard box and mystery novel might result in a false positive, but it is obviously worth the time and effort in a proud boot licking country like Malaysia.
Way to go Malaysia!
If I was involved in security, I would rather look for plastic cds, or ticketing drivers going a couple miles over the speed limit.
Who would want to go after criminals, they might shoot me, and why would I want to stand in front of a terrorist, they have a tendancy to explode.
F that, give me a desk job where I can sit down, snoop through my little security cameras, and check out the women.
Think about the volume of physically produced pirate media within a country compared to that shipped between countries, especially given technology improvements such as BitTorrent. Also, now you'll have two people and two dogs sniffing for CD/DVS's (and not even indiscriminately with respect to pressed vs. burnable), and presumably you still have to have another two people and two dogs checking for drugs, too.
c ySniffing_Dogs/1147373267
BTW, this news originally came up 9-12 months ago:
http://www.betanews.com/article/MPAA_Employs_Pira
Based on the coverage, it seems that the industry associations might be going on another press rampage. If you read the various press articles these same two dogs are moved around different countries - they've already been in Malaysia and at Stanstead, near London. I wonder if in fact the plan is just to move them to various high-traffic airports around the globe and inform the populace "there are sniffer dogs here now!".
Guess which dogs will be used for most in the near future: cancer or piracy
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
...adding something that has a strong odor to mask the smell of plastic discs? I've heard of people using coffee beans to cover up the smell of pot in luggage, it should do the same thing here. Some really nasty people would probably spray their luggage with mace or cayenne pepper to burn out the dog's sense of smell.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Wrong. We are talking about government. If this turns out to be a huge waste of resources, more taxes will be levied in order to expand the operation into a gigantic waste of resources.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I remember a year or so ago FedEx allowed the MPAA to use these dogs on some of the packages they were shipping. Ever since then I started using UPS. I don't buy or send pirated disks, but if FedEx is going to sell out to those folks I figure I'll just go brown.
These trained dogs, unless deployed for a limited time in a specific area, are there for little more than show. Although they can be trained to sniff out almost anything, they aren't robots. The dogs treat it as a game, but they need frequent breaks or they'll quickly tire of it. You can't just march a dog for 8 hours around the airport and expect him to magically find any contraband that finds its way into the building. They may be the best choice in a situation such as a building collapse, where they need to find bodies in an area of a few thousand square feet, but to expect that even hundreds of these dogs will be able to sniff the millions of cargo containers that come into this country every year is laughable. Besides, since it's perfectly legal to ship blank media, anyone in the bootlegging business will just declare the cargo and it will get lost among the false positives of all the other blank DVDs that come in from overseas. But I guess that trained pooches do make for good press releases, letting everyone know that something is being done about this horrible scourge of bit copying.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Excuse me, but how is a dog supposed to sniff terrorism? WMD's, maybe, depending upon what, exactly, it is, but... Uh... No. Just no.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
No you are confusing dogs with mice. Mice experimented upon, develop cancer.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Good idea, you can get lion poop (sold as Zoo Poo) at the Pretoria zoo in South Africa. It is commonly used to keep dogs out of flower beds. However, naphtalene moth balls work just as well in flower beds and may be easier to explain when found in your luggage than Zoo Poo...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Customs declaration:
Qty 1: DVD with random data
Qty 9,999: Blank DVDs
Qty 1: Industrial-speed DVD duplicator
Random data, of course, is encrypted pirated material which looks random to anyone without the correct password
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The dogs in N. Ireland must have been trained by the same people that trained Lucky and Flo in this 2006 story.
& page=1
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1944531
The look on the dogs faces are saying to me: "What? Sniff out pirated media? That's so 2006."
I personally submitted this A WEEK AGO. I'm pretty sure this was submitted by someone else before that, too. How many thousands and thousands of submissions ago was that?! Stop wanking off to gay porn and get with it, Slashdot editors.
Interesting, at first i thought this was going to be a reference to this story:l
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070316/112645.shtm
Granted that dog's noses are quite amazing, are there enough subtle differences between the plastic my discs and, say, my phone, for a dog to tell them apart?
I guess i'll have to close down my buisiness of exporting copies of Benny and Joon to the UK.
I think most of the people saying "Well, why don't they just send it over the Net?" are missing the point here. We're not talking about P2P kid-in-a-basement "piracy" this is with reference to real, commercial piracy. These aren't burned discs they're looking for, these are real, pressed DVDs from a factory in China, the kind you see sold by guys on a blanket in Chinatown. They're "real" DVDs, but they are an unauthorized copy of the film in question.(This is a huge industry, BTW)
The utility of these sniffer dogs is to check cargo containers, not passenger luggage. If the manifest doesn't list DVDs but the dogs find it, it's a good bet that it's being imported illegally and is probably pirated (that would have to be confirmed by a human search, of course)
will be the first true "packet sniffer"? Can't wait!
sic transit gloria mundi
After customs inspectors have wasted two or three days opening crates of various products with tough molded Lexan housings, they'll forget the whole silly business.
Possibly, but most other products made with poly carbonate do not have the other chemical smells associated with CDs. Oh, and since I made them for five years please add baby bottles to the list.
Already been posted almost a year ago:3 31237
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/2
Wow, am I the only one left with anything approaching long-term memory? Maybe it does pay off that I watch almost no TV...
Hmm with a later post about video games being used instead of books in schools and some research I watched once about pigs playing video games for food rewards, it's a pity we can't train drug sniffing dogs using a computer capable of producing smells and a VR helmet.
:P
Then again virtual reality would really confuse a dog that still doesn't quite understand it's own reflection isn't another dog in the mirror.
Video Game cheats, hints a
I think you must see this clip of Ali G to learn more about the national security :)e lated&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDQNpr2RnFI&mode=r
What a waste of a perfectly good dog.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
....and the Govt, keeps worrying about raising taxes to built a public transport system, etc.
We should have a way to selectively pay taxes to support initiatives we like, and MPAA initiatives like these should come out of Warner, and not me.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Well, the dune coons tend to smell rather bad. Anyone near them can be repulsed by their smell. Dogs have a better sense of smell. So, this is one way of finding the sand nigger terrorists...
is harder than you think
>>Why would anyone ship burnt disks rather than making them in the destination country?>>
Simple. You can have an industrial scale DVD burning operation in China operating in broad daylight, stamp enough DVDs to fill a cargo container (thats, ahem, "A lot"), and then move them to America to sell via the gray market. Marginal cost per DVD is far less than it would be trying to make them in America, because in the US you'd be using small setups, like some shareware writers have for servicing their customers, rather than commercial stamping services (which would say "Awwww hellllllllllll no" if you asked them to make a zillion pirated Pirates of the Carribean DVDs because they don't want the feds knocking on their door).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
This is really old news - there was a news report on cd sniffing dogs several months back being used in US airports.
If people could choose what they pay taxes for, social security and welfare would go right out the window, then we'd have a big problem with all the sick and disabled people dying in the streets. Charity workers don't make up for the difference.
Customs has the right to inspect everything that comes through the borders, with limits (reasonable suspicion) only on people.
There is no such thing as "Unreasonable Search and Seizure" when it comes to cargo, packages, mail, or 'things that are not people'.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Woof, woof, sniff, sniff... I smell those pirated ISO images and MP3s! Arrr! In any case, these dogs are PERFECT representations of the MAFIAA.
So anyone who burns our own CDs/DVDs is now going to get hassled by rabid barking dogs and "terrorism" cops as we travel. Geeks are second class citizens, until we prove we own the data on the discs we burn.
Not only is this abuse of the modern press freedom that burning our own media means. This is yet another example of how the infrastructure rationalized by terrorism gets extended well beyond terrorism defense into serving a corporate agenda having nothing to do with national security. And recycling the public's acceptance of tyranny in the name of security during an endless "emergency" to just protect corporate investments, especially the corporate mass media's.
How long has it been since Northern Ireland has needed extensive bomb-sniffing security? Maybe that's why their K9 corps is looking for a "new mission", instead of just embracing peace.
Nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
--
make install -not war
What could help to a degree to decrease the detection threshold is subjecting the discs and their packaging to elevated temperature (40-60 'C?) for few days under conditions of partial vacuum. This will remove the bulk of volatile chemicals from the material. The residues then can be handled with using packaging materials with added activated carbon, which absorbs the organic chemicals the characteristic scent consists from. Silica gel may do almost as good job too.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
This is most distressing. Why, pirates are already few in number, and heavily hunted. With this insidious new canine threat, the Flying Spaghetti Monster will become more furious. As you can see , natural weather disasters, globl warming, etc are all DIRECTLY related to the number of pirates (FSM's chosen Missionaries) in the world. If more begin disappearing, we're all doomed! We must stand as one and oppose his nefarious threat to our existence.
Checking for bootleg CDs has certain implications that can't be avoided in this context. First, the society is assuming that catching this particular form of copyright violation is roughly on a par with catching heroin smuggling.
What is the going rate for heroin? Is it more or less than a commercial CD? I'm seeing values of about $1.00/mg, and a dose being 10mg to 20mg. I can't say i've ever bought the stuff, nor do I know how many hours of entertainment it provides. I can not argue the distructive value of heroin, and I would agree it has a larger impact on the economy than a bootleg CD. But you can not argue that a bootleg CD doesn't have an impact on the economy and it's effect is easier to measure. A good bootleg can look like the real McCoy and divert funds intended for local industry to overseas pirates. This is exactly why we have customs.
But... I DOUBT highly that the entertainment industry is affected much by home brewed bootlegs. Unless these dogs are sniffing for pressed commercial grade bootleg import media I would agree that the effect on the local economy is so much less than heroin it's not even funny.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I guess since dogs are used to licking *ssholes, they are a natural choice for the movie and record industries to befriend. [Did I go to far?]
Just shred some coaster CDs, and sprinkle them in shipments. That oughta yield enough false positives to clog the system...
...would someone look to a dog in authoritative matters of conducting police activity that would otherwise be unconstitutional.
Make a few bad jokes on
The newest movie to hit theaters: Pirates on a plane. "I have had it with these (not safe for commercial) discs on this (not safe for commercial) plane!"
Did they train the dog to read the manifest?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Medical Insurance companies will get some cancer sniffers and if the dog jumps at you your application just got rejected.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Well, that's what gets me wondering. Mind you, I'm against piracy, but, starting with the least important:
4. It's a measure that doesn't even work, and is so easily circumvented it's not even funny. As you noted. You don't even need to get a dedicated external HDD, just use your iPod/Zen/whatever. Or use an USB stick or card. E.g., there are 4GB memory card for the PSP, and they're smaller than a stamp. And the PSP has an USB port too. So if you brought a portable console along for the long airplane trip, you could fill its memory card with whatever pirated stuff you wish. Then if you're paranoid, swap it with a card with only saved games, and put the one full of pirated stuff in a pocket of a folded shirt in the luggage.
3. It has a ton of false positives, as noted. Polycarbonate is more common than some people think. Chances are you have a cheap Bic pen made of that stuff, or a case for that PSP, or God knows what else. So what are they going to do? Search everyone who's brought along a couple of cheap ballpoint pens? Geesh. Plus, what about stuff that's not pirated, but is on CDR anyway. What if you're going to meet an overseas customers and brought a couple of CDRs with your demos or sources? (Laptops get stolen or damaged, so I wouldn't have any important stuff _only_ on the laptop.) Is everyone going on such a business trip going to be searched and delayed trying to explain the guards that that's not pirated stuff?
2. It's a waste of everyone's money, time and nerves. (Whether paid out of your tax money as part of airport security, or by the airlines out of your ticket price, it is your money.) I mean, wtf, I can understand sniffing and having security guards searching people when it's about a bomb threat. But for a fucking CD? Gimme a break. Waste my time and money when it's something that could bring the fucking plane down and kill everyone, not when it's about lining the BSA's or RIAA's pockets. Wasting my time and money just for a few bucks of corporate profits, is outright insulting.
And inconvenience and delay it will be. With a suspected bomb, most of the time it can be anything between just taking it out of the luggage to show it's just a camera and putting it in a sort of a sniffing machine. There, case solved. But with software, someone has to unpack it, examine the contents, maybe even install it to prove it's your newest program for your overseas corporate customers and not some pirated program. Or how about music? Are they going to listen to every track to make sure it's just me and a couple of friends singing, and not some renamed ripped song? Do they have to compare the lyrics to make sure I'm not singing some copyrighted song there? What about photos or videos? Do they have to watch it all to make sure it's really my vacation photos/videos or something ripped off DVD and disguised by appending 10 minutes of home video at the beginning?
Or will it, more likely, end up just taking a lot of time scratching their heads and a lot of trying to bully someone into admitting it's pirated stuff?
1. It takes away manpower from the real threats. Sorry, but if this doubles the false positives, there's no way I can believe that everyone will double the number of guards and rooms and everything. So basically the guards, even if there is a token increase in their numbers, will have to deal with more cases each, and spend more time on each case. (See above.) So every such "let's do something good for the BSA and RIAA" case, is less manpower -- and for that matter, more annoyed/bored manpower -- for watching out for the real suspects. So basically they're asking me to _also_ accept less actual security so they can protect some corporations' interests. Geesh.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Listen very carefully - I shall say this only once....
The dogs are used to sniff out large consignments of CDs or DVDs in cargo transit. If CDs or DVDs are a valid contents for that pallet, fine
If they're not, there's a good chance this is a bulk shipment of pirated s/w or films.
The dogs are used to identify hidden bulk cd cargo shipments, not to catch Jimmy with his walkman!
DoHHHHH!
Hey Slashdorks, why all of the whining? The MPA is actually targetting the right people for a change. It is the mass-producing counterfeiters who they should have been the most worried about all along, instead of the guy wanting to back up his purchase to his computer.
I guess now I'll have to wrap my shipped pirate discs in bags of cocaine.
More Twoson than Cupertino
you are trained to sniff out a dogs privacy!
Dogs love me 'cause I'm crazy sniffable...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
The article sounds like they are confusing smuggling with piracy. Just because a disc is not declaired on a manifest does not mean it is an illegal copy, just that it is being smuggled past customs.
There *IS* a difference.