
The Fake Bomb Detectors in Iraq - pepys
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/06/fake-bomb-detectors-iraq
======
_nedR
Oh God. This is sounds like the cruelest prank in the world.

From the wikipedia article is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651)

" It requires no battery or other power source; its manufacturer claimed that
it is powered solely by the user's static electricity. To use the device, the
operator must walk for a few moments to "charge" it before holding it at right
angles to the body... According to Husam Muhammad, an Iraqi police officer and
user of the ADE 651, using the device properly is more of an art than a
science: 'If we are tense, the device doesn't work correctly. I start slow,
and relax my body, and I try to clear my mind.' In one promotional video
McCormick claimed that the device could detect elephants from 48 kilometres
(30 mi) away."

They should be charging this guy with murder. Not fraud.

~~~
sneak
Selling magic sticks should not be illegal.

Buying them with public funds for public safety applications, however...

~~~
gutnor
Being able to sell magic/fraud legally only means that client will be more
cautious when buying.

Regulation is not to protect the dumb, it is to promote competition when the
majority of consumers are clever enough to not try a service that has not been
proven not to be a fraud.

For example, Amazon would never have worked if it was legal to sell book
online and not sending them. People would only shop in local shop where they
pay for the book they have in their hands and we would be all laughing at the
(few) morons that thought they could trust a website. And that works for
simpler things too - would you try a different brand of food if it is legal to
poison stupid people, would you even try another shop than the one you trust
the owner ?

~~~
im3w1l
Spot on. I am very reluctant to try supplements from unknown brands, because
I've heard previous scandals (in my country) where the amount of supplement
has been way off (both too much and too little), without any serious action
taken against them.

~~~
Nursie
'supplements' in general are snake-oil, so I wouldn't worry about it too
much...

------
cnvogel
For one thing, as far as bribes have been payed, I'd like to see this guy
being charged to the full extent.

Also there are charlatans selling magic stones or other nonsense to the
mentally weak, and I think that humans susceptible to this kind of fraud
should be protected from it, so I'd say if he had sold this to private persons
I'd love to see him convicted of fraud.

That being said, apparently many of his loyal satisfied customers have been
the military or police, and seriously that's pretty disturbing: These are the
people trusted by their citizens (well... in theory...) to keep up the peace
and safety in their country. And in exchange they get to arrest people, and
run around with guns. At the sam time these are the people who were not able
to distinguish the equivalent of a dead rock from a scientific device to
detect miniscule traces of chemical compounds used in explosives. Sure,
there's _some_ blame to put on the guy selling the disfunctional device, but
quite an insignificant amount of blame, given how gullible his highly
decorated customers were.

~~~
dragonsky67
I'm not sure that this is necessarily a valid claim. The people who have to
use the device are not normally the people who purchased it.

I'm sure that most of us have been in a position where we have been forced to
use a product that is inferior or even completely broken, trying valiantly to
make up for the shortcomings in the product. The person who purchased the
product may have done so in good faith; misled by a smooth sales pitch, or may
be actively corrupt and complicit in the deception.

I have no doubt that many of the people who were forced to use this product
were aware that something was not right, but I doubt many of them were in a
position to do anything but shut up and soldier.

~~~
cnvogel

        > most of us have been in a position where we have
        > been forced to use a product that is inferior
        > or even completely broken
    

I might have used equipment that was inferior, or been made to perform a
procedure of which I thought it will add very little, or maybe _almost_ none
value. I definitely haven't been in a position where I have been forced to use
something equivalent of a dead brick, and pretend as if it would do something
very technically sophisticated (bomb detection).

    
    
        > I have no doubt that many of the people who were
        > forced to use this product were aware that something
        > was not right
    

For some almost-untrained security guard, I'd say this is probably right. Add
to this the context of living in a very hierarchical system where you "just do
what you're told" and I certainly can imagine someone wielding a stick around
a car claiming to examine it, "as long as I get paid..."...

But then, this person isn't the one being deceived about the effectiveness
"bomb detector" but rather it was the leadership of the whole
army/police/security-service who obviously didn't care the least to invest
even 1 second of thought into what's being bought (for thousands of $, no
less...). So how much thought was put into the effectiveness of the weapons
being bought? The procedures of checking cars? The method by which locations
of checkpoints around sensitive areas were determined?

The death of people being killed by bombs was the result of the complete
ineffectiveness of these "bomb detectors" only to a very little extent, but
likely mainly because the whole organization responsible for safety was unable
of rational thought and planning.

~~~
lmm
> I might have used equipment that was inferior, or been made to perform a
> procedure of which I thought it will add very little, or maybe almost none
> value. I definitely haven't been in a position where I have been forced to
> use something equivalent of a dead brick, and pretend as if it would do
> something very technically sophisticated (bomb detection).

I've had to use a very expensive product from a big-name tech company that
was, as far as I or anyone technical could tell, a JVM that took even longer
to start than usual.

------
frooxie
According to other articles I've read about the devices, they were advertised
as "running on the body's static electricity", and able to detect not only
bombs, but also "illegal immigrants, truffles, contraband ivory and 100 dollar
bills" from a distance of three miles.

It's utterly bizarre that various governments have paid over $100,000,000 for
these things.

~~~
pjc50
There are a lot of very expensive weapon systems that are only slightly less
of a fraud than this.

~~~
kenrikm
Like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, go watch "the pentagon wars" you're in for
a treat.

~~~
cnvogel
Thanks for bringing up that to my attention, it's pretty funny!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA)

------
tamersalama
A similar device showed up with the Egyptian military to detect nothing less
than 'viruses' in what's been known as Koftagate.

[http://muftah.org/countdown-kofta-gate-egypts-called-cure-
ai...](http://muftah.org/countdown-kofta-gate-egypts-called-cure-
aids/#.VYuSb7OCPCQ)

~~~
skeuomorf
Yeah, the cure for AIDS and Hepatitis Virus C was a nice touch on top of that
as well.

------
aptwebapps
Even if you believed the claims in general, wouldn't you want to test the
things on live explosives just to get a feel for their behavior?

~~~
russdill
Here in lies the problem. People who don't understand proper testing protocols
won't blind their testing. And they'll subconsciously influence it to work.
And if it doesn't work, they'll let someone else who is more "experienced" try
it.

~~~
minot
Testing is not the end of things though. Here in the US, TSA failed in DHS
tests:

> In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening
> officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover
> agent's back. In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents
> posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70
> tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-
breaches-u...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-
airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851)

They pushed the agency chief out and ordered more training. Are we doing some
kind of Sun Tzu's Art of War style of management?

The writing is on the wall. We should dismantle the TSA. We won't do it
though.

~~~
chrisBob
That is completely different. The TSA is there to make passengers _feel_
safer. As long as you don't read news stories about their failures then it
works.

~~~
minot
The fake bomb detectors make people feel safer as well. It acts as a small
deterrent as long as nobody knows it is bs.

We know that security through obscurity is a doomed idea in the long run. I am
not trying to defend the purchases. I'm just trying to present a view of the
lowly peon who has to operate this magic wand. They need people to believe
this thing works.

------
SagelyGuru
Well, it is easy to come up with glib moral indignation. However, more
interesting aspect of this story is the prevailing atmosphere of hysterical
wars on "terror" and "drugs" which provide fertile breeding ground for this
kind of operation. Clearly, authorities everywhere want these kinds of devices
at any price. So, whether they work or not is just a boring detail. This is a
typical symptom of advanced irrationality, of course. This time, worryingly,
on the side of the authorities.

Mr McCormick is a genius at spotting timely market opportunities. The only
thing he missed out on is an internet startup around that idea <irony
warning>.

------
billyhoffman
As everyone here has said, this is clearly fraud, if not worse. Which makes
this line from the article completely crazy:

"Meanwhile, Roe’s device had attracted the attention of the F.B.I., which
tested one, determined it was worthless, and sent out a Teletype warning to
law-enforcement agencies."

The FBI tested this thing, found it was bogus, and did the equivalent of
writing a letter to Consumer Reports. If only the FBI were, I don't know,
familiar with some kind of department of the government whose job it was to
prosecute illegal interstate acts. Some kind of Justice Department maybe? It's
wild that they didn't relay this to a federal prosecutor.

~~~
mring33621
"...sent out a Teletype warning..."

WAT?

This is what we use in the USA for inter-agency comms in the 21st century?

~~~
stephengillie
It's hard to tell with the way the article is written, but I think the FBI
tested the device in the 1980s or early 1990s.

------
leroy_masochist
I was in Iraq when these were first starting to hit police checkpoints and the
article's description of the utterly absurd spectacle of the technology in
action is not exaggerated.

The article made me wonder whether McCormick eventually started to believe the
technology actually worked. The fact that he spent hours trying to patiently
explain the science behind it when first arrested suggests that either he
started to believe his own story or was really, really confident in his
ability to lie to others. Of course, the best liars to some extent do believe
their own lies to some extent, which is what makes them so good at it....

~~~
knodi123
> he fact that he spent hours trying to patiently explain the science behind
> it when first arrested suggests that either he started to believe his own
> story or was really, really confident in his ability to lie to others.

Or he knew that what he was going to be charged with was fraud, which requires
intentional deception. Therefore failing to keep up the lie would be exactly
the same as pleading guilty.

If this guy can convincingly maintain the lie that _he personally_ believes
they work, then he has plausible deniability.

------
Turukawa
I was in Pakistan a few months ago on a project. Security at the main Benazir
Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad were using these. As I arrived at
the airport, with massive and completely over-the-top security everywhere,
stern-faced soldiers are marching up and down holding these devices out at
arms-length.

Terrifying to realise, in that moment, that this is all that stands between a
bomb and me.

------
josefresco
Obligatory Advertising Gripe: The site/article feature two(!) overlapping
modal windows - the top shows an ad, the second layer shows a subscribe call-
to-action. You have to close both to access the content. This takes bad UX to
a whole new level.

------
lordnacho
That's pretty clever. Unless you hand every operator a sample bomb (or
elephant!) they are very unlikely to ever come across the real thing. The
positive rate on things like this must be very, very small, so it would take a
really large number of samples to get even one detected bomb.

If you've ever been at an airport where they dust you with a pad (I guess for
drugs?), that device could be broken and you'd never suspect it unless you had
a sample of some sort.

But of course the authorities who spend the public's money on equipment must
have thought about this, right?

~~~
cpursley
The glove swipe tests for explosive material (supposedly).

------
upofadown
The conspiracy theory version of this is that the people responsible are
really just fighting against the larger nation states. The type of bomb that
these things are designed to detect are mostly used by people rebelling
against such nation states. So in a sense, McCormick has stuck a blow for the
"little guy" in a way that a reasonable person would think impossible.

A true anti-patriot... Possibly the most effective anarchist ever...

------
fla
What a nice feeling of accomplishment this guy must have, while chilling on
his yatch.

No seriously, this is an horrible story. I hope thy all end in jail. Karma
will take care of the rest.

~~~
jobigoud
"Karma will take care of the rest"

How ironic.

I have a batch of Positive Karma Inverter devices, do you want to buy some? It
works on the nuclear quadrupole resonance principles.

~~~
ps4fanboy
This reply is a master piece.

------
js2
Stories about this device have been posted to HN periodically, going back at
least 5 years -
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bomb%20detector&dateRange=all](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bomb%20detector&dateRange=all)

e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070732)

Shocking that these things are still out there.

------
MrZongle2
Not to be confused with the fake bomb detectors who work every day in the
airports in the United States, though their success rates appear to be
similar.

------
yawz
But... wait... Don't tell me they've never tested it! I mean with or near real
explosives, etc.

Regardless... the responsible should be charged with murder.

~~~
mfoy_
The article addressed both of your points.

The people in charge of "testing" the device before approving the purchase
were probably getting kickbacks.

The prosecution opted to go for fraud over corporate manslaughter because the
former was much easier to prove.

------
shiggerino
It's very hard to have sympathy for believers in dowsing. The victims of the
explosions resulting from the gross negligence, yes, but not the negligent,
superstitious idiots.

Just shows the whole Iraq project was doomed all along.

------
alaaibrahim
I thought everybody knew that they don't work.

------
pcrh
>McCormick’s income over five years approached $80 million.

What an astounding story. A complete con, but man... I wish I had that kind of
talent in sales...

~~~
DanBC
It's easier if you can change your sales patter to fit exactly what your
client wants to hear.

------
piyushpr134
:O :O :O

------
kushti
Corruption is the main reason of US&allies failures around the world.

~~~
aptwebapps
Not really, unless you mean that in some really broad sense. I think that when
US foreign policy fails it is usually because it is driven more by domestic
politics than foreign realities.

~~~
kushti
Afghanistan / Iraq (just two examples of reckless schemes) wars were started
just to transfer taxpayers money into war corporations accounts. Such an
absence of adequate goals could leads only to a failure(and that what was
seen). "Domestic politics" is just serves as a screen for corruption
schemes(as the whole american "political system" is just a screen for
corruption processes).

~~~
Happydayz
Assuming your premise is true, that the US government exists to transfer
taxpayer money into select corporate accounts, then there are far easier ways
to do this than venturing off to war. Most of the large private companies that
benefited financially from the Iraq and Afghan wars are primarily logistics or
general defense companies; there are plenty of other opportunities for these
guys to win new defense contracts outside of active war zones.

~~~
saiya-jin
unfortunately, in some way or other, his premises are true. more chaos it
creates, the longer it all takes, the more cash extracted.

take a look at afghanistan - there was never a critical mass of enough
soldiers/equipment to swiftly win the war, conquer whole territory. just
enough to appear winning, but not really (in reality, US lost the war, in
similar way as soviets did). look what's happening with iraq - US is/will be
coming back. oh gosh, what an unfortunate coincidence. is there still anybody
out there convinced that iraq game was about protecting US citizens anyhow? I
mean, look at the map, look 12 years back at politics, there was no threat,
there is still no threat to US citizens back home. Just enough to piss off
radical muslims, and radicalize rest. let's not forget we're talking about
oil-richest region on the planet. yes, coincidence again...

why are there so many lobbyists in Washington? i mean these people should be
put in jail for treason

