Explosive Detecting Devices Face Off With Bomb Dogs 115
First time accepted submitter titan1070 writes "French scientist Dr. Spitzer and his colleagues have been working on a device that can sense faint traces of TNT and other explosives being smuggled into airports and other transportation methods. the hope for this device is that it will surpass the best bomb finder in the business, the sniffer dog. From the article: ' While researchers like Dr. Spitzer are making progress — and there are some vapor detectors on the market — when it comes to sensitivity and selectivity, dogs still reign supreme.
“Dogs are awesome,” said Aimee Rose, a product sales director at the sensor manufacturer Flir Systems, which markets a line of explosives detectors called Fido. “They have by far the most developed ability to detect concealed threats,” she said.
But dogs get distracted, cannot work around the clock and require expensive training and handling, Dr. Rose said, so there is a need for instruments.'"
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In other words (Score:4, Informative)
"We can't use dogs to spy on everybody, everyplace, all the time."
You wouldn't want to anyway. In blind studies, drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs actually have a pretty terrible track record. A literally unacceptable percentage of false positives, for example.
Turned out, the dogs were responding to very subtle cues from their handlers, rather than their own senses. Which renders them completely inappropriate for law-enforcement use.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Funny)
"We can't use dogs to spy on everybody, everyplace, all the time."
You wouldn't want to anyway. In blind studies, drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs actually have a pretty terrible track record. A literally unacceptable percentage of false positives, for example. Turned out, the dogs were responding to very subtle cues from their handlers, rather than their own senses. Which renders them completely inappropriate for law-enforcement use.
Not to mention the probable fact that the dogs are most likely smarter than the average TSA employee.
Have any lawyers won with the argument that the dogs were taking cues from their handlers yet?
Re: (Score:2)
"Not to mention the probable fact that the dogs are most likely smarter than the average TSA employee."
Now THIS one needs modding up.
Re: (Score:3)
But can they be trained to steal iPads at checkpoints?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Turned out, the dogs were responding to very subtle cues from their handlers, rather than their own senses. Which renders them completely inappropriate for law-enforcement use.
Just think of them as adorable furry machines for turning a supply of dog food and free-floating suspicion into 'probable cause' without any judicial hassle. It's a feature!
Re: (Score:2)
You wouldn't want to anyway. In blind studies, drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs actually have a pretty terrible track record. A literally unacceptable percentage of false positives, for example.
Turned out, the dogs were responding to very subtle cues from their handlers, rather than their own senses. Which renders them completely inappropriate for law-enforcement use.
I don't understand? If the dogs were blind, how could they see their handlers' cues?
Joking, joking...
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
"Please link to proof of your "literally unacceptable percentage of false positives" for properly trained canines and handlers."
Easily done. [lvrj.com]
It amazes me how many people are so ready to call "bullshit" without taking 10 goddamned seconds on Google to check their facts.
If you think that is the only such study, you are mistaken. Google it dude. Learn something.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If having an anon call you out bothers you (I admit he was a bit obnoxious about it), you should include links in the original statement. Anyone could have said, "dogs are perfect" or "dogs are worthless" without any references.
It's worth noting that the article you link refers specifically to bad training, and does not suggest that all detection dogs have those same issues with being trained to take detection cues from their handlers. It goes on to suggest that this is a problem elsewhere, and that there's
Re: (Score:1)
"If having an anon call you out bothers you (I admit he was a bit obnoxious about it), you should include links in the original statement. Anyone could have said, "dogs are perfect" or "dogs are worthless" without any references."
Under a lot of circumstances I do that. But in cases where anybody can find the damned information themselves with a moment or even less on Google, I don't feel the need. I am not a library (or a paid librarian), to go look up information for any bozo's purposes at their whim.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't to say that all dogs are poorly trained, only that there are unscrupulous police forces employing animals that are expressly trained to respond to their handlers, giving them a sign on command to provide the local police the false probable cause needed to perform an illegal search.
In fact there are plenty of well trained animals and scrupulous security forces, you just can't assume that you're necessarily dealing with one anywhere you go.
Re: (Score:1)
They get away with it because there is no punishment for hassling people.
my friend was driving out of state (a crime on some highways apparently) and saw the cop obviously indicate to the trunk. Since she was clean, there was no recourse. Had she actually been transporting drugs there very well could have been (false arrest blah blah).
So only criminals have standing to challenge the practice, and only if they get a lawyer and fight rather than cut a deal. Good luck proving it too.
Re: (Score:2)
Having read the link, that does not really prove that dogs are useless, just that they can give false positives if the handlers lead them into it. But no-one gets prosecuted because the dog thinks they might have a bomb unless it turns out they really do have a bomb. False positives are not a big problem if the alternative is either much more thorough/time-consuming/intrusive investigation or random selection.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Link shows problem with handlers, not dogs.
Try again.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
Also, they are probably not the best things we have. [sciencedaily.com] And even if they were, that "best" is pretty obviously not good enough.
You can't just argue that it's "the best". It has to be good enough. Not only that, but the huge potential for intentional cuing of the animals is seldom considered.
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Your link there, and below, aren't studies, they're articles that vaguely reference some study done somewhere that measures the rate of false positives.
Well good job, you've shown that handlers want to find drugs on people and don't train their dogs, and that trained dogs can detect trace amounts of drugs.
What you haven't shown is that dogs are not the best choice.
Do you think a machine would be any better in terms of sensitivity? Give me a study showing a machine that can detect an entire smorgasboard of
Re: (Score:2)
Dogs are the absolute best tool we have for the job. There's a reason we use dogs to hunt animals, guard animals, property, and people, track fugitives, search for survivors, bodies, drugs, and explosives, detect cancer or seizures, lead the blind, etc. They have incredible senses and are very intelligent.
Yes, and some of those senses are of their masters and what they want. Dogs don't even need vocal commands to respond to you. If you have one, try telling them "sit" without actually making any noise. If the dog is decently well trained, they will, simply from your body language alone. And that's a problem in law enforcement, because it means when a police officer (even subconsciously) wants or thinks there might be explosives, the dog will quite often react as if there is. Because that is what dogs do: ple
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Turned out, the dogs were responding to very subtle cues from their handlers, rather than their own senses. Which renders them completely inappropriate for law-enforcement use.
Please Mod -1000: Utter Bullshit.
Dogs are the absolute best tool we have for the job. There's a reason we use dogs to hunt animals, guard animals, property, and people, track fugitives, search for survivors, bodies, drugs, and explosives, detect cancer or seizures, lead the blind, etc. They have incredible senses and are very intelligent.
Please link to proof of your "literally unacceptable percentage of false positives" for properly trained canines and handlers.
Seems to me that she wasn't saying anything about properly trained handler and dog teams, but about the likelihood that so many trainers have biases that lead to false positives that dogs cannot be relied upon. She said "the dogs were responding to very subtle cues from their handlers." I don't see anything in that post about well trained dogs paired with unbiased trainers. It is very well documented that handler bias frequently leads to false positives. For example, this article [smh.com.au] notes that sniffer dogs got it wrong four out of five times in 14,102 searches. This article [chicagotribune.com]claims that over a three year period only 44 percent of alerts by dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia. A UC Davis study found [sfgate.com] that if handlers expected their dogs to find drugs they consistently found drugs, even when there weren't any. A little bit of searching will turn up plenty of other examples. In some cases defenders of using dogs claim that the high rate of false positives is due to drug residue being left in a vehicle or on a person. That the mere presence of someone carrying a substance the dog was trained to detect, like marijuana, in a vehicle hours earlier could result in a false positive. Medical marijuana is legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Which means that just transporting someone to legally obtain some marijuana for a medical condition could result in being searched and detained.
Re: (Score:2)
In fact a young woman, an honor student in Jr. College, unwisely gave her boyfriend's mother a ride. The woman was a meth addict and while out of sight in the house bought a small bag of her drug of choice. They left together and were picked up a couple blocks later in a drug sting operation. The young woman was found guilty of transporting someone involved in buying an illegal substance, itself a felony and because of hard on crime mandatory sentencing was given an automatic 8 year prison sentence. The jud
Re: (Score:3)
This is the biggest BS thing I've ever heard. If a judge feels that finding someone guilty will lead to a miscarriage of justice, the judge should find for innocence. Jury nullification has a rich history, nothing wrong with judges doing it as well.
Re: (Score:2)
There are both state and federal "Minimum Sentencing Guidelines" that judges were REQUIRED to follow, and in some cases lead to ridiculous prison terms for what would otherwise be petty crimes. If you want to read about it start here [mandatorymadness.org]. This has nothing to do with juries, it has everything to do with laws passed by representatives on "Hard on Crime" planks and basically took crimes that deserved a wrist slap and shot them in the head instead. One more reason we have the largest prison population in the Wester
Re: (Score:2)
Except that judges can issue directed verdicts of "Not Guilty" at their discretion regardless of the jury and the minimum sentencing laws.
Re: (Score:2)
Judges can be impeached, but typically only for serious crimes (perjury in a criminal case, corruption, etc.).
Judges can also be recalled by election in some states, but that is a different matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Firing a judge for refusing to throw an innocent in prison for 8 years would raise a huge crapstorm. Nobody with any sort of political ambition would want to have the stink of that on them.
I'll bet the judge talking to the DA about it quietly in chambers would be enough to get the whole thing tossed.
Re: (Score:1)
Judges are REQUIRED to do the following:
Hear and preside over cases, judging them objectively and fairly against both the spirit and letter of the law, or instructing a jury to do so and then executing their verdict as a ruling.
When a law is bullshit a judge absolutely can and should piss on it.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the judge wasn't trying very hard.
Re: (Score:2)
"In some cases defenders of using dogs claim that the high rate of false positives is due to drug residue being left in a vehicle or on a person."
That sounds like a reasonable claim, we know dogs can detect to this degree, yet we can't recreate instruments to detect to this degree.
"That the mere presence of someone carrying a substance the dog was trained to detect, like marijuana, in a vehicle hours earlier could result in a false positive. Medical marijuana is legal in 17 states and the District of Columb
Re: (Score:1)
The dogs are detecting drugs.
The fact that the police jump from "There is some amount of drugs present." to "You're going to jail." does not mean the dogs were wrong.
Wrong! (Score:2)
We could certainly employ dogs 24-7 by buying enough trained dogs for all airports an sea ports. Expensive? Yes. More expensive than TSA nudy scanners? Hell no.
Dogs are dirt cheap compared with high tech stuff, but that's their problem : DHS doesn't care one iota about security. DHS cares only about the kick backs. And good kick backs require pumping serious money into something that's basically fake, exploitive, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
especially since their are very easy ways to bypass sniffer tests.
It involves a little bit of work but an extra step or two isn't hard. It just means that the person who packs the bomb. has to be different from the the person who packs the bag, and who delivers the bomb.
since that is usually the case anyways,all you need is to add a cleaning and sterlization routine to the bomb packaging. and make sure none of the three people actually get close to one another.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, who cares about bombs killing people!? This infringes on my right to secretly carry my lucky bag of ANFO with me wherever I go!
Re: (Score:1)
"Yeah, who cares about bombs killing people!? This infringes on my right to secretly carry my lucky bag of ANFO with me wherever I go!"
Please show me where sniffer dogs have uncovered ANYBODY carrying explosives at airports during the years since 9/11. I can certainly point out a few cases where they didn't...
Re: (Score:2)
Who says this is only going to be used in American airports? Are you really so blissfully unaware of what goes on outside our borders? A cheap system that could detect bombs reliably and discreetly* would save countless lives in the Middle East. And making sure people aren't carrying explosives hardly counts as spying on them.
But no. This is Slashdot. America is the source of all evil. Technology enables the evil Americans. All other people in the world are simply animals reacting to the evil America
Re: (Score:1)
"Who says this is only going to be used in American airports?"
I wasn't. *I* was responding only to GP, and asking where that cheapness and reliability actually is.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, that's what it's all about. Nobody's actually afraid of any real bombs going off anywhere.
If it meant drastically reducing the size and power of the federal government, I would gladly take the chance of dying because of a terrorist's bomb.
I'd be more likely to die by being struck by lightning, in fact.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, that's what it's all about. Nobody's actually afraid of any real bombs going off anywhere.
It's all an act so they can spy on your porn habits and find your drug stash.
The risk distribution of explosives incidents makes generalizations (while statistically possible) fairly useless.
There are high-risk demographics and applications: de-mining, certain flavors of perimeter security in areas with a fondness for truck bombs, the occasional booby trap hunt. People involved with such things tend to have an urgent and honest enthusiasm for explosives detection.
The K-9 units of a zillion dinky municipalities? Yeah, they spend an awful lot of time providing probable cause for traff
Re: (Score:1)
"For a comparatively small number of people, who are at high risk, the legitimate applications are most salient. For the people presently at little or no risk, there isn't much room for improvement and there is fairly obvious room for trouble."
But there you go. For the vast majority of domestic cases, there is little to no legitimate justification. At least a properly-calibrated machine (presumably) has no bias.
devices don't poop (Score:1)
and sniff each others asses, so they have an inherent advantage. or maybe that's a disadvantage becasue TSA,
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm always wondering why dogs who have a such good and sensible odorate have to be so close to other dogs arses to sniff 'em.
Re: (Score:2)
and sniff each others asses, so they have an inherent advantage. or maybe that's a disadvantage becasue TSA,
That calibrates their nose.
Rats! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Meow! (Score:2)
They'll throw a boobie-trapped Schrodinger's Cat into the mix just to fsck with everybody
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And they won't.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, anything is better than the 0% of the TSA. Yep - 0%. I've yet to see a single successful catch by the TSA.
Priorities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That statement, entirely by itself, should qualify dogs as a better option, but let me elaborate...
so do employees. What's your point?
Dogs work. They work well. They are unsurpassed in reliability by any instrument we've been able to devise.... the fact that they can't be used like machines could should no more be a reason to not use them than the fact that humans can't work like machines should be a reason to not employ people.
When a machine can do a *BETTER* job at it than a dog... then I could see replacing them being viable. Until then, however, let Spot and Fido keep their jobs.
Re: (Score:1)
The international airport around here uses pigs. May have something to do with the fact that they mostly just ship freight and that pigs are cheaper in the midwest.
Re: (Score:2)
The international airport around here uses pigs. May have something to do with the fact that they mostly just ship freight and that pigs are cheaper in the midwest.
They don't like being called that you insensitive clod.
Re: (Score:1)
While what you said is all true, instruments are also much less likely to give false positives just because the handler wants it to do so. I agree that dogs can be reliable when used well, but in situations where the true positive rate is less than 0.01%, there are other issues with dogs.
Re: (Score:2)
Diebold spun off their voting machine division a while back, they might be up for a new project...
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure the TSA will require a 'test' function. To make sure the test is comprehensive, it will be indistinguishable from an actual alert.
Title (Score:5, Funny)
It took me several tries to parse the title without the image of a dog's face exploding spontaneously entering my mind.
Re:Title (Score:4, Funny)
This just reminds me of this from The Day Today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nvfQw8UCDE [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, you read it wrong: It wasn't the dogs exploding, but the detection devices exploding.
Re: (Score:2)
It could function as a fart sniffer (Score:2)
dogs vs machines (Score:3)
So why the hell does every airport I've been to swab me for explosives instead of using a dog? Those mass spectrometers aren't cheap.
Re: (Score:2)
Because the dogs are mobile and can search.
Re: (Score:2)
of course if you "wetjack" a dog you could have the transmitter in the dogs collar.
I think the biggest reason for making bomb detecting tech is the matter of false negatives (what happens if the package goes BOOM)
With Tech you just blew up a $XK device
With a Dog BENJI WENT BOOM!!!
Dog Handlers tend to get very miffed when they lose a dog.
from a police report where a perp hurt a K9 before getting nabbed
" number of shots fired: 30
number of shots hit : 12
reason for number of shots: RAN OUT OF AMMO"
Re: (Score:3)
Because there is far more money to be siphoned off using scanners and spectrometers.
Re: (Score:3)
So why the hell does every airport I've been to swab me for explosives instead of using a dog? Those mass spectrometers aren't cheap.
You assume the swab is then used in a mass spectrometer. Putting the swab in a precursor that changes color when it detects something works too.
Re: (Score:1)
"You assume the swab is then used in a mass spectrometer. Putting the swab in a precursor that changes color when it detects something works too."
About as well as a dog. Please list for me the precursors for the 200 or so common explosives used today.
Re: (Score:1)
About as well as a dog. Please list for me the precursors for the 200 or so common explosives used today.
Hydrocarbons. Ammonia. Oxygen. That should cover most of 'em right there.
Re: (Score:1)
Nitrates should be first on the list, probably, because they are the most common base, but by no means the only.
Re: (Score:2)
Are there any explosives I am missing?
Of course, explosives either commercial, in which case they could contain easily identifiable tracers (I don't know if they do, but it would seem likel
Re: (Score:2)
Whenever I've been able to see the hardware, it's been a mass spectrometer... Or a clever simulation that shows a series of peaks on the screen. Although I wouldn't put it past the TSA to fake such a simulation!
Cost? (Score:3)
They complain about the expense of training dogs. Yes, they require a lot of training and that takes a lot of time an money, but how many dogs could you train for the cost of these devices? Each FIDO device costs $21k. It costs $10k-$15k to train a bomb sniffing dog, and once you pay for their education dogs are willing to work for room and board. If more resources were put into training methods then the per-dog cost to train could probably be brought down quite a big too. Dogs are also a lot cuter, and the FIDO device doesn't like to cuddle, or so I've heard. I say forget all the fancy super expensive scanners, just go back to old-fashioned metal detectors for people and x-ray scanners for carry-ons, and get a lot of dogs.
Re: (Score:3)
The research is to make them more effective and cheaper. I would expect these to become cheaper as time goes by. I would support the research, but not buy these devices yet.
Re: (Score:2)
If the fido works as well as the dog, then it would seem better even at a price premium. The dog would cost a few grand a year in upkeep, needs round the clock care, need a place to be housed on premises, needs a place to relieve itself even if in a large building complex etc. A computerized device would have lower upkeep costs (hopefully), could be used irregularly (give one to each military unit, etc), can be redistributed from place to place as needs change without also relocating a handler, etc. I'm
Re: (Score:3)
man u dont know anything about the real world do you? dogs might seem cheaper but they die.... then the dogs are not "willing too work" they get beaten until they do... yes i would be "willing" to work then too
Wow! Are people really that ignorant, or are you troll? I really hope you're a troll, but maybe you're some PETA nut job? Dogs are not only willing to work, but they love it. I used to do K9 search and rescue. I moved and my dog is old and retired, but when she was working, it was her favorite thing (now her favorite activity is going to the beach, just like a retired human). She loved it! She had a special squeaky toy and wore a bear-bell (so I could hear where she was when she was ranging)...when s
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They complain about the expense of training dogs. Yes, they require a lot of training and that takes a lot of time an money, but how many dogs could you train for the cost of these devices? Each FIDO device costs $21k. It costs $10k-$15k to train a bomb sniffing dog, and once you pay for their education dogs are willing to work for room and board. If more resources were put into training methods then the per-dog cost to train could probably be brought down quite a big too. Dogs are also a lot cuter, and the FIDO device doesn't like to cuddle, or so I've heard. I say forget all the fancy super expensive scanners, just go back to old-fashioned metal detectors for people and x-ray scanners for carry-ons, and get a lot of dogs.
How about robotic dog trainers? Automate the process and drive costs down.
Re: (Score:2)
Trained dogs looking for drugs or explosives do interact with their trainers (for better or for worse), so the comparison should be to dog+trainer teams, and not just the dogs themselves. The trainers can reduce the search space through gentle, experience-driven heuristics.
Experience-driven heuristics are also known as profiles?
Re: (Score:2)
Dogs (Score:2)
You forgot another problem with dogs: They can be trained to respond to a surrepticious signal to indicate explosives or drugs when there are none... thus allowing the officers probable cause to go dig around for what they're actually looking for. Same thing with breathalyzers -- they're suseptible to near-field EM... like the kind that comes from a police radio being keyed up while the suspect is breathing into the device. Tools not only need to limit false negatives and positives, but also intentional man
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot another problem with dogs: They can be trained to respond to a surrepticious signal to indicate explosives or drugs when there are none... thus allowing the officers probable cause to go dig around for what they're actually looking for.
You do realize that in an airport they can pretty much search whoever and whatever they want, with or without a dog or machine, right?
Re: (Score:1)
"You do realize that in an airport they can pretty much search whoever and whatever they want, with or without a dog or machine, right?"
Only international airports, for international flights.
Other than those, what they "can do" is pretty much Constitutionally limited, although I admit the Supreme Court has not seemed to feel very constrained by the Constitution in recent, past years.
Re: (Score:3)
The law gives the TSA a lot of flexability, but that doesn't mean the real limits the public will tolerate will always match the law. Why would any police type agent want to demand that the public simply believe they are totally fair and unbiased just because the law says so, when they can simply say the dog made the decision so their potential bias doesn't enter into it? If I somehow got a law passed saying I had the authority to do X because I am totally fair and unbiased, would you start believing that a
But, can it detect Semtex? (Score:2)
That is the holy grail of electronic detectors. Right now the only thing that detect semtex in situ is the highly trained and sensitive nose of a springer spaniel. Bare semtex can be detected electronically by "sniffing" the RDX component, but most semtex that passes through civilian airports is encased hence undetectable. Lately the commercial production of semtex has included an internationally agreed volatile marking agent which makes it easier for dogs to detect even if the container is apparently herme
Better than a dog? (Score:2)
A few years ago I went to a talk by an expert on explosives detection. He said, "if someone tells you they can detect explosive better than a dog, don't believe them, because we don't really know how well dogs can detect explosives."
Was it just me... (Score:2)
Or did the Article headline seem to suggest dog detecting bombs explode and blow their faces off???
Let's Get Ready To Rumble! (Score:5, Funny)
Switches vs Bitches Smackdown.
This will foil my efforts (Score:2)