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Police Departments Are Training Dogs To Sniff Out Thumb Drives (cnet.com)
A CNET report provides some insight on an elite K-9 search class that trains dogs to sniff out electronics, including phones, hard drives and microSD cards smaller than your thumb. From the report: Only one out of every 50 dogs tested qualifies to become an electronic storage detection, or ESD, dog, says Kerry Halligan, a K-9 instructor with the Connecticut State Police. That's because it's a lot harder to detect the telltale chemical in electronics than it is to sniff out narcotics, bombs, fire accelerants or people, she says. But Labrador retrievers like Harley, with their long snouts and big muzzles, can pick up even the faintest olfactory clues. These tech-seeking dogs are helping law enforcement find child pornography stashed in hidden hard drives, uncover concealed phones, nab white-collar evidence kept on hard drives and track calls stored on SIM cards. The most famous case occurred in 2015, when a Labrador retriever named Bear found a hidden flash drive containing child pornography in the home of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle. The district attorney called the discovery vital to Fogle's conviction.
They use the dogs on rooms that all visible electronics have already been removed, so only hidden electronics would be in the room.
Someone did an interesting experiment. They invited police dogs, with their handlers, to an experiment. There were drugs hidden in certain places in a room. The test was explained to the cops "we want to see if your dog finds the drugs hidden under the blue bowl". The dogs all reliably signaled on the blue bowl.
The drugs were, of course, under the red bowl. The dog /handlers reliably signaled where the handler wanted them to, and not where the drugs were.
That's not to say there aren't a FEW dogs and handlers who are very good. The majority of them completely fail basic tests.