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Kenya Police: Our Fake Bomb Detectors Are Real
First time accepted submitter NF6X writes "Following the conviction of British conman James McCormick for selling fake bomb detectors which were in fact rebadged novelty golf ball divining rods, Nairobi police chief Benson Githinji stated to reporters that his department's fake bomb detectors are serviceable, and contributed towards a recent elimination of successful grenade attacks."
1) Give intern new shiny bomb detector
2) Send intern to walk around field for a while
3) Intern blows up
4) Success - bomb detected!
5) Added bonus - bomb removed!
You'd think if you were buying some devices claiming to detect something-or-other, you would try out a specimen and see if it works. Did all of these countries he sold them to fail to do any testing on whether they worked?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Perhaps they would have benefited more from a gullible idiot detector. Though thinking about it, I guess that's already an additional purpose of these devices. The irony being, of course, than you can't use them for that purpose when you're a gullible idiot yourself.
Good! Glad to know someone out there has developed easy-to-use technology to detect if a bomb is fake! That'll certainly be a load off my mind whenever I see a shoddily-constructed homemade bomb. I'll be able to easily check to see if it's authentic or if it's just made by some poser looking to bite a popular style.
I just detect them with my own built-in rod which isn't fake.
That works great until you get koro and can't find it...
:p
"There are no US tanks in Bagdad!"
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
About 2 years ago, when it came to light these bomb detectors were totally fake, the Thai government, who has bought a whole bunch of these came out insisting they were real and worked. My hunch is there are no "real" portable bomb detectors (other than a trained dog), and government middle managers under pressure to buy bomb detectors bought the only thing on the market claiming to do that regardless of whether it worked or not. They knew it didn't work, but the politicians further up the chain didn't care, they just wanted to be able to say they'd purchased bomb detectors and people would be safe. Alternately, maybe James was just really good at structuring kickbacks and bribes to the decision makers. Its not like Thailand, Iraq or Kenya's governments are corruption free.
Didn't you read the summary? It's a fake bomb detector. It won't detect real bombs.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I suppose I could read the stories of deception on this matter and draw the conclusion that the bomb detectors don't work. But have I tested them? No. I think it's important to know what it is we don't know while reading news stories.
I would not be surprised that the bomb detectors have some usefulness. I am sure they do not meet the quality and reliability standards of the Western world. But the third world is often making good use of technology we would simply throw away. Look at medical science. Third world hospitals will often solve problems without the use of million dollar medical devices because something works. Maggot therapy isn't very popular for fighting infection in the US, but it works and it works very well, without the side effect of developing resistive bacterial strains. It saves lives where "better solutions" are not available.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
You'd think if you were buying some devices claiming to detect something-or-other, you would try out a specimen and see if it works. Did all of these countries he sold them to fail to do any testing on whether they worked?
The inventor is being accused of bribery as well, paying "millions" of pounds to Iraqi politicians/leaders.
Set up a simple demo which "shows" the detector finding something so that they have plausible deniability or actually believe the "test", and then hand them a fat wad of cash so they don't care one way or the other.
I'm sure the demos consisted of someone walking up to a defused-but-otherwise-real "bomb" and the thing going "beep" either because it was basic metal detector, or because someone was pushing a button or twiddling a knob. I'd be amazed if they felt the need to demonstrate it *not* finding something.
Please help metamoderate.
I'm taking this story to mean that they've got these fake, non-functional bomb/drug/illicit substance detectors, and they know they're fake, but "officially" they work great, thus they use the fiction of their functionality to support their "finding" of said illicit substances, where in reality they used methods that otherwise would not be admissable in court; it's a con-job turned on it's head. I can't condone it, if I'm correct then they're completely corrupt, but it's still clever of them, if rather scary that any police force could be allowed to function that way.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I think we can figure out from the summary alone who took kickback money to buy these things.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So essentially it sounds to me like the Quadro QRS 250G "Detector" device sold a few decades back http://skepdic.com/quadro.html . Of which even after they were proven to be just an antenna, hooked to a box filled with dead ants. Many schools found it worth it to keep them for detecting drugs because the security theatre aspect, if the students think a machine can detect drugs... they will be afraid to bring drugs.
I'm sure they work just as well as other Security Theater props like porno-scanners and face-recognition cameras. In fact, they probably have a lot lower rate of false positives.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If these things don't work, it's great news for all those Nigerian princes trying to move money - just route it through Kenya! No more depending on those greedy and overly-skeptical first-world emailers.
Oh, don't get me wrong- the 'bomb detectors' most certainly cannot detect anything to do with real bombs, but that was NEVER their purpose. They are intended to be a tool of the police-state. Justification for uniformed goons to stop you, interrogate you, and take you off to torture centres using the 'bomb detector' as an excuse.
The USA has torture facilities all across our planet. Other states are able to argue that if kidnap and torture is good enough for America, it most certainly is good enough for them also. All that one needs is ANY justification to round up the 'suspects' in the first place.
The UK used exactly the same trick during its 'war' against the IRA. It employed (now discredited) forensic 'scientists' to create 'bomb tests' that almost everyone was certain to fail. Of course, positive results were only of interest when those that showed such results were already the targets of the British government. Hand swabs were used that would either detect bomb chemical residue, or common household plastics with exactly the same indication. Dozens of Irish men, women and children (yes, kids as well) were falsely accused as a result of such tests, and later convicted to decades in prison. All were subsequently released as completely innocent people set up by fake forensic evidence.
The intelligence services in the UK knew the people they accused of being bombers were innocent, but they needed to look as if they were making progress in combating the real militants in the IRA- people who were far too good, and far too well protected to easily fall prey to the public school chumps that attempted to catch them. To the public, an innocent Irish person could easily be sold as a deadly IRA terrorist because the British mass media (including the BBC) would run massive propaganda campaigns after each conviction 'proving' to the sheeple that the conviction was justified. The BBC and ITV in particular would produce documentaries detailing how the convicted patsies (each of whom would be later given a full pardon, remember) were clearly violent, radical, and well trained terrorists.
You Yankees are seeing exactly the same process with the aftermath coverage of the marathon bombings in Boston. Had the British tortured and murdered its fake IRA patsies, as you torture and murder your fake 'Muslim' patsies, even today people in Britain would think these people still responsible for IRA bombing atrocities. The truth came out in Britain because the innocent victims of Britain's intelligence agencies were (relatively) well treated, given an ordinary criminal trial, and sent to ordinary prisons after conviction. As a result, their supporters were able to ensure the truth eventually came out.
Britain has a long history of providing a full spectrum of police-state tools and services to 'friendly' despotic regimes. Britain's friends get the support required to ruthlessly quash even the mildest opposition to even the most brutal regime. Britain's enemies find that even their most vile and unreasonable opposition movements get full funding, military training, and all the most murderous arms they need to conduct the foulest of terrorist campaigns against the ordinary civilian population (see Libya and Syria for the most recent examples).
STOP REPLYING TO THESE. The only reason I can see them is because you reply and then get modded up which brings the entire post into my view.
When did all this anonymous post spamming start...I was off slashdot for only a few months, so is this pretty new?
you're just not holding it right.
Jobs
terrorist: so does that bomb detector really work? i need to know because it takes a super long time to put one of these things together and i dont want to waste a bunch of time just getting arrested.
trollface kenyan officer: they dont not work.
terrorist: ok but a court in the UK said the detectors were all fake.
trollface kenyan officer: our fake detectors work.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's not just a river with sources in Kenya.
I am officially gone from
If you didn't mind having the blood of thousands of innocents on your hands, you could drop them a revised user's manual documenting the 'witchcraft detector' and 'gaydar' features of this highly capable unit.
How do I modify my host files so I don't see this bullshit all the time?
because people are in fact ...
Idiots.
FTFY. Also MILR.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
is from kenya too.
(fake bomb) detector
or
fake (bomb detector)
They also get hazardous duty pay and any overtime multiplies that rate.
And you get to blow thing s up.
No brain, no pain.
This is a way to create probable cause. The "bomb detector" wriggled? That's our cue/excuse to take your car apart, call in the bomb sniffer dogs, and so on. It's science woo at its purest. These things were used in Iraq for a while as well, there was a similar scandal.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
The feedback of the indicator is open to interpretation. If you want to search a car, just use it and claim a positive reading. This gives you probable cause for a search. Same as K9 dogs. They are able to detect stuff, but that seems to be becoming merely an additional benefit.
Here's how it really works: Officer decides someone "looks funny" because of their race, religion, dress, etc. and goes looking for an excuse to search them. Consciously or unconsciously, they cause the dowsing rod to go off, seemingly validating their suspicion and providing a facade of objectivity.
As long as no one challenges whether the device actually detects bombs, they can search people arbitrarily without cause. Of course they don't want to admit it's a fraud.
STOP REPLYING TO THESE. The only reason I can see them is because you reply and then get modded up which brings the entire post into my view.
So true. Mod parent up!
...a while back at http://viewfromll2.com/
as well as some other interesting articles if you're into lawyer stuff.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Law enforcement has no interest in verifiable accurate technology, those things only provide "proof." What they really want is plausible "probable cause," which allows them get around all those pesky rights that citizens seem to think they want.
I live in one of the countries where they sold this (hence the Anonymous Coward). The understanding here is that the higher ups knew very well what they were buying. And how much they would be getting in kickbacks. It's just that they didn't give a shit about what happened to the grunt who had to look for bombs with this piece of junk.
The denials (they did that here too) is their way to justify why they spent millions of USD in empty plastic boxes with a swiveling antenna at a cost of tenths of thousands per unit.
I always thought that the solution to this concrete fraud is rather simple:
1. You get the Army's Head of Purchasing into a room with 10 boxes. Inside of the boxes 3 grenades with a timer.
2. Give him one of these detectors and 10 minutes to choose which 5 boxes he wants to remove from the room.
3. Boom
4. Post opening for honest Head of Purchasing
A pair of L-shaped brass rods, one in each hand, seems to work for 'dowsing'. They swing across each other over a target. But if you clamp the handles in a swivelling frame, they (unsurprisingly) swing only parallel. Hypothesis, the kit indicates only what the operator is subliminally suspecting (just like the traditional stressed hazel twig, or magic pendulum). So you can do a bit of theatre with such things (especially if the credulous believe they work), but it's fake, but/and it's fake for a reason.
Because /. has been very consistently anti-censorship (even on their own servers) over the years. It is a part of the corporate culture there and it is a wonderful part. It means we have to deal with this, the goat thing, and many other moronic things that have come and gone over the years. This policy has, for the most part, been well followed and I respect them for it though it does mean that we have to put up with silly shit like this.
What? Don't blame me. You asked why.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You're embarassing yourself Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 since you posted that using your registered username by mistake (instead of your usual anonymous coward submissions by the 100's the past 2-3 months now on slashdot) giving away it's you spamming this forums almost constantly, just as you have in the post I just replied to.
you'd think that the fact that, as the BBC news item pointed out, the detectors needed no battery or other power supply might have been a first clue.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The moron at the top of thread started that foolishness a month or two ago, and its posts have gotten longer and more frequent. This other idiot is new.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
This also occurred in Thailand a few years ago, and it's a very sad story of (military) politics triumphing over reason.
During the early years of the Thaksin Shinawatra government, Pornthip Rojanasunand, a very high-profile CSI official, claimed that there was corruption in the Thai police. She became something of a media personality, and a National Geographic documentary was even made of her. She became very popular with the Thai military, who are rivals with the police and eventually launched a coup to remove Thaksin from power. After the coup, the military government spent over $20 million on the "bomb detectors" (not including "commissions") for and gave them to patrols in the deep South to deal with Muslim insurgents.
The military junta eventually organized an election, which a Thaksin-friendly government won. During an anti-government protest, a lady died in an explosion, and many protestors lost limbs. There was some suspicion that the protestors were carrying IEDs which exploded prematurely. "Our team has used a GT200 substance detector and found no substance used in making bombs. We've already checked the clash scenes and the bodies and clothing of the injured victims," Pornthip Rojanasunand said. She concluded that police tear-gas grenades used by the police caused the injuries and death. Despite evidence to the contrary. The public trusted her and the forensic powers of the "bomb detectors," the Queen attended the funeral of the dead lady, and a military-appointed court soon replaced the elected government with one that supported the military.
Soon, evidence started accumulating the the "bomb detectors" weren't working in the South and civilians and low-level soldiers were dying as a result. Pornthip lended her public credibility to the devices. "Personally, I have never handled the device myself. But my people have used it and it is accurate every time. Long long time ago, people believed that the Earth is flat and anyone who said otherwise faced execution. Things which are not visible does not necessarily mean they do not exist. The devices are there and no one has the right to ban their use. I will continue to use it."
The basic detector costs about $20,000, but additional "sensor cards" can be bought to "detect" things like dead bodies. The military-leaning government later killed many protestors in a large protest a few years ago. There were rumors that even more were killed and their bodies placed in containers and sunk off the coast. When containers was found sunk off the coast, Pornthip put a dead-body sensor card into her "bomb detector" and concluded that the containers didn't have dead bodies. Therefore, it wouldn't be cost effective to actually open one of the containers up to check and see.
In conclusion, people like Pornthip support such non-sense "bomb detectors" - not because they personally have to use them - but because they or people they have a vested interest in have supported the frauds in the past, and suddenly recanting and saying that they don't actually work would cause them to lose face.
omg, it's "faggot", "their"... oh fuckin' forget it. EAT A FUCKING DICTIONARY!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.