The Fake Bomb Detectors in Iraq | Hacker News Reader

The Fake Bomb Detectors in Iraq

vanityfair.com

120 pointspepys92 comments

Oh God. This is sounds like the cruelest prank in the world.

From the wikipedia article is 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.

Selling magic sticks should not be illegal.

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

Lying about what your product is and does should absolutely be illegal.

Tell that to the "super food" industry.

Pomegranate drinks, I'm looking at you.

I don't know the examples you are talking about, but yea, in an ideal world I'd fine the crap out of "super food" companies. The problem is that they tend to have copywriters talented enough to phrase things in such a way that it is just barely not a totally obvious lie.

For context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bml8KwCmob8

Yes, and at least there you can pick up on the marketing double-speak and guess that it doesn't work.

Also: "low fat" or "low sugar" products that normally don't contain much fat or sugar to begin with. Like "low fat" ice cream that compensates the reduced fat with more sugar (d'oh).

Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for failure... You can eat low fat ice-cream and low-sugar cake and end up eating more fat and sugar than you would get from regular ice cream and cake.

Funny you should mention that: http://consumerist.com/2015/01/30/appeals-court-sides-with-f...

Part of the problem is that the FTC is only so big, with only so many people, and the entire market is huge. I agree that even the allowable claims are suspect, but there are limits, even if they're not always enforced.

The problem is that there's no way of holding the buyers accountable if their own countries and the taxpayers whose funds they are misappropriating refuse to do so.

It turns out the American World Police isn't so effective in things that could actually use some policing. And even sections of their proper police bought into the scam.

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 ?

Yep. And you can see this firsthand in Third-world countries, where people are very reluctant to do business with anyone who isn't a close friend or family member for this very reason. The result is an enormous amount of inefficiency.

That's pretty dark/cynical view of the reasons for regulations.

The tone of the comments at the time when I replied was more like "fool and his money are easily parted" and I framed my reply focusing on why not allowing the fool being parted with his money is really good for everyone.

But you are right, I overdid it.

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.

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

Selling bomb-detecting magic sticks to military knowing in full that they are not working and people will be put in life-threatening situations trying to use them is malicious and sociopathic, not just fraudulent. If anyone got hurt because of his bullshit detectors let a bomb pass, he should be fully responsible.

>its manufacturer claimed that it is powered solely by the user's static electricity.

He missed out on a great opportunity to sell proprietary magic battery packs, then. A lump of concrete and a coin cell to shine a LED, all wrapped up in plastic with an oddball connector.

I agree that he should be charged with fraud.

However the purchasers should be charged with criminal negligence. It's up to them to check the claims of the device in question and test it before putting it in the hands of people.

Are you sure?

If I buy floor cleaner based on a sales brochure describing a safe and sanitary cleaning product, and it turns out to be Hydrofluoric Acid - am I supposed to double check? How? By sending samples to a private lab?

What about software, I can't see the plugin source code, I can't see any tests done, should I have my own internal team test every possible code path before deploying as part of my app (said plugin might leak GPS data and something something idk I'm straw manning).

Essentially "Buyer Beware" is a very limiting ethos, because buyers cannot be experts in everything.

If people will be eating off that floor, or conducting surgical procedures on that floor, then yes: You're supposed to send samples to a private lab, and you would be negligent if you were buying soapy water without checking.

Do you send samples of your dish-washing liquid to a private lab?

When one makes decisions about what to purchase for a large organization, for a product which needs to perform well or people die, one assumes a degree of due diligence. A novel product requires more stringent due diligence than one which is a market standard. If no plausible mechanism of action is purported for a novel product that attempts to do things with several orders of magnitude more efficacy and less complexity than competitors, then yeah, I'm not buying it without independent testing.

If an underling at my restaurant replaced all dish-washing liquid and bleach solutions with a series of small metal figurines taped to the dishwasher and the prep tables, and told me "It cleans the surfaces galvanically", I'm not going to say "Brilliant!", I'm going to say "Brilliant, now prove it before it's allowed near my kitchen."

BOOM

(Let it go @mapt)

What about the lab itself? What if it's fraudulent? Do I need to send reports from that lab to another private lab?

More seriously though, at some point you need to stop. Capitalism is a fun game for adults, and entrepreneurship is a prestigious sport, but when people start dying because someone sold them something built with the purpose of earning him money by making other people die, one should stop hoping for the market forces to bankrupt him and just jail the murderous SOB directly.

Absolutely. The argument is not that he should be free to defraud people, the argument is that credulous buyers may still be liable for negligence charges (and certainly a civil suit and firing) after we prosecute this muppet for something in the vicinity of second or third degree murder / manslaughter by gross criminal negligence, plus fraud.

If I'm a large institution buying floor cleaner, I'll probably wash a floor or two before buying. If I notice holes being burned in my floor, maybe I'll go with an alternate vendor.

For this device, it's pretty clear how to beware of it for anyone who took stats 101. Put a grenade or a soda can (depending on a coin flip) into a bag. Point the detector at the bag, record the # of times the detector goes off when grenade vs soda can. Do this double blind.

Use this calculator to determine how many times to do this: http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.html

Then type the results into this calculator:

http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/chi-squared.html

Don't buy if it says "No Significant Difference".

Total resources needed: 2 soldiers, 1 grenade, 1 coin, internet.

The most important requirement for the testing methodology is double-blindness. Only someone familiar with proper scientific testing procedures would know that, and even scientists who should know better have gotten this wrong. Most people would probably think that single-blind testing would be enough to confirm whether this works or not (assuming you couldn't judge its plausibility on pure physics principles), but you would be amazed at the ability of humans to pick up informational cues unconsciously. The way dowsing works, in general, is through ideomotor responses[1]. The stick moves due to unconscious muscle movements that are amplified by the instability of the rod itself. The muscles move unconsciously based on what the person believes.

Even if the person who is operating the device doesn't know if the grenade is present, they may be able to pick up unconscious physical tells from the person who does (if he is present during the test). When the person who knows sees the tester approaching, they may unconsciously reveal this knowledge through body language that could be picked up by the tester. A similar phenomena occurred with a horse[2].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_phenomenon [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

This is all true. But on the other hand, this is all knowledge accessible to any college graduate who majored in a STEM field. Any army or other large organization should have at least one or two such people on hand.

    > 2 soldiers, 1 grenade, 1 coin, internet.

You forgot the soda can. :-)

Maybe.

But if a couple of hundred janitors and building occupants have died from breathing hydrofluoric acid fumes, and someone still chooses to order the continued use of the floor cleaner in question, that someone should in my opinion be charged with manslaughter if not murder.

You're expected to have some knowledge of what you're buying. And at every level above retail, you're paying enough to get some kind of demonstration or trial. And during this, you're supposed to demonstrate or try it and see if it actually works, and works for your organization.

You can't expect a seller to be at the beck and call of every buyer, especially ones who seem unconcerned about the sale.

The reason they like the dowsing rod (because that's basically what it is) is that they just like being able to justify any action they take.

The police here in the US would doubtless love these things. A "scientific" reason to search anyone you feel suspicious of? Sign them right up!

It's merely a less baroque version of "drug-sniffing" dogs (who cue from their handlers) and polygraph tests.

The problem with drug sniffing dogs is that these dogs can detect drugs, however it is difficult to prove that they haven't also been trained to alert on other signals (or are specifically trained to do so).

Unfortunately until someone invents a handheld device which can "smell" as well as a dog's nose, I don't see this changing.

I dunno, 85% failure rate seems like they aren't actually capable of detecting at the level you're claiming.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/legal-challen...

Who needs a dowsing rod when can actually control media outlets?

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.

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.

Indeed. Here in Thailand we also have brilliant generals who spent millions on these things, sold as model "GT200" here. Even after it was exposed as a fraud and the fraudsters jailed the Thai generals insisted they worked, and kept getting young army men killed using them in the south where there has been a insurgency for decades.

Emperors new clothes comes to mind...

I remember when travelling to Thailand reading in the tour guides that you have to be careful because the Thai are very keen on "saving face". If you ask a local for directions, they will give you wrong directions if they don't know the way rather than admitting that they just don't know.

Reminds me of why i don't like sitcoms. Because the joke all too often is about one or more people that can't admit fault and so end up dragging a issue along while the excuses etc snowballs.

But then i have the social graces of granite...

    > 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.

> 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.

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.

Someone somewhere has to be collecting commissions...

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

I agree. I'm fairly amazed that militaries or police forces would buy these devices without demanding tests for validation first.

I imagine this is just fraud. The government official's brother buys 10,000 of these for $5 and sells them for $5,000. He and the politician enjoy the spoils. Many autocratic and corrupt nations do this trick. Usually not this painfully obvious, but it just sounds like a typical mark-up scam.

Security forces probably love this thing because it gives them leeway into searching and stopping anyone for any reason.

This device is perfect for corrupt politicians and corrupt cops. From a purely amoral perspective its genius. It gives the politicians what they want (graft) and the police what they want (arbitrary searches).

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...

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

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?

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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>.

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.

"...sent out a Teletype warning..."

WAT?

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

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.

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....

> 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.

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.

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.

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?

The glove swipe tests for explosive material (supposedly).

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...

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.

"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.

This reply is a master piece.

If you read the article, you'd see he was sentenced to 10 years in jail (and some of his 'colleagues' also received custodial sentences) and they're beginning the slow process of clawing back some of his assets.

The real issue is that "officials in Baghdad continue to defend the A.D.E. 651" - either through embarrassment at being conned, or simply because they believe in it.

if you ask me (even if you don't), he has blood of hundreds on his hands. i wouldn't mind such people being executed, in some "human" way. i don't believe it serves much as deterrent for others, just simply permanent removal from our society, into which such persons bring only heaps of negative stuff... plenty of people on the planet and more coming every second, no need to cherish every ahole out there. rather put resources where they actually help

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

e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070732

Shocking that these things are still out there.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I thought everybody knew that they don't work.

>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...

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

:O :O :O

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

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.

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).

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.

A war is not the easiest way to steal money definitely, but an outcome is the biggest, due to huge budgets and secrecy of spendings. Only Iraq scheme costs taxpayers more than $ trillion.

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

So while it may not be corruption in the classic sense, it certainly approaches pork barrel politics.

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