ADE 651 | Hacker News Reader

ADE 651

en.wikipedia.org

127 pointsaww_dang85 comments

This reads like an April's fool joke:

> The ADE 651 consists of a swivelling antenna mounted via hinge to a plastic handgrip. It requires no battery or other power source; its manufacturer claimed that it is powered solely by the user's static electricity.

> After a substance-specific "programmed substance detection card" is inserted, the device is supposed to swivel in the user's hand to point its antenna in the direction of the target substance. The cards are claimed to be designed to "tune into" the "frequency" of a particular explosive or other substance named on the card

> The cards were supposedly "programmed" or "activated" by being placed in a jar for a week along with a sample of the target substance to absorb the substance's "vapours". Initially, McCormick reportedly used his own blood to "program" the cards for detecting human tissue

> [McCormick] told The Times that ATSC had been dealing with doubters for ten years and that the device was merely being criticized because of its "primitive" appearance. He said: "We are working on a new model that has flashing lights."

It reads just like a dowsing rod.

how do you spend 10s of thousands of dollars on something without checking such comical red flags like that?

You do government acquisitions.

You don't know how, your boss wants action, and it will cause you problems now to put up a fuss but not if you just go with it.

You really don’t need corruption, just people under pressure who don’t want to push back.

The answer is usually corruption and kickbacks.

> the device was merely being criticized because of its "primitive" appearance. He said: "We are working on a new model that has flashing lights."

I know. But the Mark 3 addresses the silence issue. It makes amazing noises.

I wonder if it wasn't just being used as an excuse for illegal searches. The high price just prevents third-parties from testing its efficacy.

By spending tax payers dollars, not your own dollars.

$60k buys you a lot of probable cause, I guess.

Kickbacks to purchasing agencies.

I love their sense of understatement.

> the technology used in the ADE 651 and similar devices is not suitable for bomb detection

It’s a friggin empty box! It’s just as suitable for bomb detection as my nose, if not less.

You can smell many of the chemicals used in explosives manufacturing. Your nose is definitely better.

It's kind of hard to tell what was really going on, but considering the following:

> The Iraqi government paid up to £37,000 for the devices despite the purchase price being put at around £11,500

and

> The training included instructions to Iraqi users to "shuffle their feet to generate static electricity to make the things work

The bigger story here is probably the utter corruption and incompetence of military related acquisitions.

Military spending is already politically untouchable >>> utterly corrupt even in the best cases >>> wildly wasteful … and then on top of that you add that it was American tax payer, i.e., someone else's money >>> in a collapsed country, Iraq >>> where there was even less oversight by the occupation forces >>> in a country that was utterly corrupt before it fell apart … and someone is surprised about any of this?

Literal pallets of billions of dollars of USD cash just disappeared in Iraq and things were built only on paper.

This wasn't an April fools' joke, it was a a tiny little side job in the biggest heist in human history. Let me put it this way… the USA was roughly $5 Trillion in debt in 2001, 20 years later we are $30 trillion in debt, just ignoring all the other squandered spending, these wars have essentially been a heist of $25 trillion dollars from American public coffers alone, not even to count all the other debt and spending and costs in human lives.

THAT's why the likes of Gates went from being a $10 billionaire, to a ~$150 billionaire and Bezos went from nothing to who north of $300 billion now???? Not even to mention all the other billionaires who were the ultimate recipients of all the money that was pillaged.

This guy was clearly just a tiny little easy bug the impotent government could manage to squash in an impotent show to the peasants not to step out of line.

> He said: "We are working on a new model that has flashing lights."

I have a hard time going back to my rank-and-file job after reading stuff like that :P

Reminds me of Wilhelm Reich, who believed in "orgone energy". He built these "orgone accumulators", which were boxy, small-phone-booth-looking, Faraday Cages. You'd sit in them for hours to accumulate your orgone energy and it would increase your libido. According to Wikipedia, "A professor at the University of Oregon who bought an accumulator told an FDA inspector that he knew the device was phoney, but found it helpful because his wife sat quietly in it for four hours every day."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich#Orgonomy

Hah! That's over the top brazen. Like purposefully designing the scam device to not require a battery? And making it look/work just like a "dowsing rod", which should raise suspicions?

Including a bit of fake circuitry seems like it would have made sales easier, though he seems to have sold plenty as-is.

It feels like he was trying to make a point about how stupid people can be.

I imagine the device may have been as effective as other parts of security theatre. Operators simply had to observe how nervous their suspects were. The high price added a needed prentense to the technobabble. Wondering if some buyers understood this?

Maybe, but it's a handle with a hole in it and a rod with a 90 degree bend at one end. Pretty sure you could find a cheaper source :)

Where I grew up they had checkpoints and would sometimes scan for car bombs. One guy had a mirror he’d use to look under the car, while a couple of other guys had assault weapons strapped to their chest. That seems like enough to make someone nervous without needing a $60k kit.

> The high price added a needed prentense to the technobabble.

How is a bomber supposed to know how much you payed for your high-tech dowsing rod?

If they haven’t seen one in wild it must be very exclusive and hence expensive.

The stated goal is to make them think it's an expensive high end tool they haven't seen before to make them nervous. By definition if they don't know what it is you just wasted $60,000 to buy a rod they don't know about instead of... a $6 rod they also don't know about.

The only way the buyer was "in" on this being fake is via corruption and kickbacks.

Perhaps it has more to do with the personnel wielding the dowsing rod and the commanders who make them sign for the expensive equipment?

From the Wikipedia article:

McCormick told the BBC in 2010 that "the theory behind dowsing and the theory behind how we actually detect explosives is very similar"

Also:

He told The Times that ATSC had been dealing with doubters for ten years and that the device was merely being criticised because of its "primitive" appearance. He said: "We are working on a new model that has flashing lights."

Most likely, it's a fraud scheme in which their customers are also involved. Easy way to steal your country's military budget while pretending to be the victim of a fraud.

If it was deliberate fraud why would they not have tried to disguise it? They must be convinced it works.

Second that. Most of the countries mentioned have highly corrupt system.

Not requiring a battery is actually pretty genius because it covers up failure in testing as user error. "No, no, the device isn't useless - you just don't have enough static electricity to power it!" Repeat until you get an accidental positive result.

If your goal is to reliably manufacture probable cause on demand $60k for some glorified dowsing rods is a hell of a lot better than multiples of that for a trained dog that requires a "handler" and isn't as reliable.

The police literally said as much, in the Wikipedia article for a similar device, the Quadro Tracker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker), which hilariously "could detect hidden drugs, explosives, weapons and lost golf balls":

> The Jefferson County, Texas narcotics task force spent $3,250 on a Quadro Tracker. The task force's commander later said: "We played with it in the office and got mixed results. Sometimes we'd find something, sometimes not. Our rate of success was about half. I think it was either blind luck or a ouija board effect. It's not near as consistent as (drug-sniffing) dogs, but there are no vet bills."[13]

My uncle is an Industrial Engineer. He has worked for every company imaginable, setting up their production lines and fixing all manner of problems. He can fix or repair anything, and probably has.

This past weekend I saw him walk around the yard with divining rods. I asked him about it later. He said he was using them to find where the sewer pipe was run. He told me a story about how he got his first job in maintenance after passing a divining rod test. Said he always keeps the rods in the back of his truck.

Wasn't sure what to say.

I have used it to search for a pipe between a water spring and a storage tank. Some family members could do it, some could not.

Still think that the subject of the linked article is a fraud though.

You could have won James Randi's million dollar prize if you had a working dowsing rod.

Don't think the rod matters, it is just the indication that the person holding it has reacted to something.

It was very accurate the one time we tried it.

Fraud that resulted in the violent deaths of potentially hundreds of people and he only got ten years.

He got quite rich off it, too.

> James McCormick, 56, of Langport, Somerset, is said to have made £50m from sales and sold more than 6,000 in Iraq, the Old Bailey heard.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22266051

And ten years in prison.

If someone told you they'd pay you $5m per year spent in prison, would you take it?

I'd be a model prisoner.

To me the person to blame here are the people spending 52M buying it and using it as a protection without testing it.

I know it's a bit blaming the victim, but in this case we're not talking about regular people, but about higher ups whose responsibility is precisely to be able to find solutions and handle a budget : if they get scammed (or more probably corrupted) by such ridiculous devices, the blood is on their hand from the minute they accepted the responsibility.

I saw Kenyan police use it on a bus I was in. At the time, I didn't think much about it for being asked to alight the bus and be searched was already an inconvenience for. Not shocked that the Kenyan government was duped. I am certain some top officials also made their killing off of this probably even getting them at a price a multiple of the quoted 60k. Fraud and corruption work together very well.

This looks like a scheme to siphon off money.

No one in the military would be that stupid.

Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani defended the use of the ADE 651.

Which is exactly what you would do if you were part of said scheme to siphon off money, or at least paid off by its participants.

Even the Belgian government bought them - it's not like it was just less educated countries.

Sure, but they bought only one, then quickly concluded it did not work.

> A scheme to siphon off money.

The war in Afganistan was exactly that. I wouldn't put it past the US military.

I served in the US Navy and can confirm that people can be that stupid.

A friend of mine was in the Marines and witnessed a guy blow his hand off after someone else bet him that he wouldn't hit a 50mm round with a hammer.

The amazing Randi would talk about those often during his interviews.

Apparently some were a bunch of random hardware glued together + a bunch of ants in the inside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTmqfGJhTI

I guess they tried it without the ants, and it didn't work?

Randi also spoke about the ideomotor effect, which is the basis of how these things "work". The short version is that if someone believes a force is present, there is a tendency to subconsciously generate a corresponding body movement. To the extent that any actual information is involved, the user is feeding information to the device, not the other way around. See also: Ouija boards, facilitated communication, no-touch martial arts, etc..

Don't think the users of this device are dumb or unintelligent people. Devices like this are successful for two reasons:

  1 - corruption and
  2 - blind faith.

Although education may reduce the second, it does nothing to minimize the first.

10 years for selling a thousand of these? That feels like the bargain sentence you get because other people were in on the scheme and you are the guy that takes the fall.

He only served 5 years and is now a free man

Sweet deal.

I wonder how many people died.

It definitely reads like the beginning of a revenge action movie.

Detecting fake bombs might be quite useful in some cases. I think it's well worth the price.

The perfect accessory to go with some fake explosives!

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/prop-bomb-explosive-f...

Had seen a few of these "protecting" malls in Beirut... Eventually I'd borderline ignore the mall security guard operating the worthless device.

Shame they weren't using them near the port...

The GT200 article that this one links to is even more absurd (horrifying), especially the Thailand part.

Could have prevented this disaster if they not turned it on but taken it apart first.

Surely customers would have returned the device after trying it out for five minutes?

I remember this story in the UK press. The awful thing is, how many died due to this?

Honestly, the pitch here is so over the top, so brazen, and so patently unbelievable, I don't think he should be charged with fraud.

I think the people he defrauded should be charged with incompetence.

You are quite literally blaming the victim.

No the victims are the dead people it didn’t protect - they aren’t blaming them. They’re blaming people who didn’t do due diligence when buying it.

Exactly, these people are in position of power, with mutiple degrees, staff and million dollar equipment. They are not just a rando off the street

Exactly. I'm being tongue-in-cheek when I say he shouldn't be charged with fraud.

But if people died because of this, he definitely should not be considered liable for their deaths. That lies strictly with the people who bought this without thinking about it for even two seconds.

People who spend money on a useless products are also victims. Of fraud. Yes, even particularly clueless people should be held blameless of the crimes of fraudsters.

To be fair, you have to be pretty damned stupid to actually believe this device would work. So it's hard to believe that the "victims" weren't in on this somehow.

the victims were the people who died from undetected bombs going off.

I doubt they had any knowledge of what devices were being used to sweep areas for bombs

It's incredibly unfortunate and disgusting that people died because this fake device was used in real settings, but that's obviously not the context being discussed here.

Blaming the victim isn't necessarily always wrong.

The definition of 'Victim' is thay they are not the one at fault

No it isn't. Someone who succumbs to lung cancer after smoking 1000 cigarettes a day for 20 years is still a victim of lung cancer. The definition of victim says nothing about causation.

So as long as your fraud is funny enough or over the top enough you should get a free pass?

It's not that it's funny. It's that it's obviously false.

It's so false and wrong, I think that the people who bought it from him are more criminals than he is. You can't buy a tricorder from star trek for $60k.

It does seem rather astonishing that they don't test these devices. It's not only fraud you need to rule out, but also genuine manufacturing errors, equipment wear and tear, etc.

The only explanation I could understand is that these were deliberate false positive machines (either for illegitimate profiling or parallel construction), but that doesn't seem to be how they functioned.

Although exact numbers are hard to determine[0], something like 90% of the global population believes in the supernatural. I don't see how a magical bomb detector is any less plausible than the other things they believe in.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

You're very intelligent.

Have an upvote on me, good sir!

I think the appropriate saying here is "You can't con an honest man"

Amazing. I'm reminded of a similar scam where a conman claimed to have developed a device that could decode terrorist messages sent via Al-Jazeera TV and sold the CIA on it.

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