Slashdot Mirror
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
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'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 don't think they have any usefulness... they don't have any electronic parts, batteries, or such - they use a paper card to "select" what you are searching for - it's basically a plastic handle with a metal antenna not connected to anything. It's a divining rod, and that's all. I think the buyers should have realized something was fishy when the manufacturer said they were powered by static electricity of the user "walking around."
He knew this because his tank detector was reading zero.
You know, about 15 years ago I worked in an electronics store. For an April fools joke I once stuck an antenna and an LED in a mains plug and put it in the shop window as a "wireless extension cord - 29.95" I got quite a few interested customers for this item. From what I have picked up from the coverage of the trial these devices are about as sophisticated as my five minute handywork.
I can build one and sell it to you for an inflation adjusted price. You could draw the conclusion from my post that I'm selling you a bunch of junk, but have you tested it? No.
Come to think of it, your post reminds me of the poor sods coming in for a 555 timer IC a 9V battery clip and a couple of passive components, convinced that they could build a cancer defeating device described in some quack book. No use in arguing with them but I felt sad after they'd gone, and bad for taking their money.
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.
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
Perhaps they would have benefited more from a gullible idiot detector.
Good news. These devices are equally effective at that as they are at detecting bombs!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Nevermind the fact that if there were that much static around it might set off a bomb. But there's so many types of explosives, they wouldn't all react anywhere near the same electrically.
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!
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."
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.