New Explosive Detection Tech 173
cruci writes to tell us Yahoo! is reporting that a New Zealand company, Syft, has developed a new way to detect many different kinds of explosives (and their individual ingredients) in real time. Designed for what the company calls "photocopier simplicity", CEO Geoff Peck claims that the technology is ready to deploy immediately and is already deployed in some ports and hospitals. From the article: "The Voice100(TM) employs Selected Ion Flow Tube - Mass Spectrometry (SIFT-MS). While SIFT-MS has been in academic use for more than 20 years, Syft Technologies is the first company to offer a commercial instrument with the full discriminating analytical power of a laboratory-grade mass spectrometer."
I have some cool technology (Score:1)
What's the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's the point (Score:3, Funny)
Then of course there is the question of people smuggling explosives on
board in their body cavities, so in addition to nudity, you need body
cavity searches. That will, I'm sure, provide additional airport
entertainment. By the way, if you really don't think a terrorist could
smuggle enough explosives on board in their rectum to make a
difference, you haven't been following how people in prison store
their shivs and heroin.
Puts a whole new spin on "blow it out your ass"...
Re:What's the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of you will probably already know that the timing of the "bust" was carefully planned between Bush and Blair to coincide with a vote of no confidence planned against Blair on the same day.
In a very similar way, Syrian intelligence has been known to produce extremely convenient intelligence. They were the guys who said Al-Zarqawi was in the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq - and sole proof of the Saddam-Terrorism connection - in the beginning of 2003, when Al-Zarqawi was neither a leader, nor an Al-Qaeda member, nor in Iraq.
The above is not off topic, but means there is no reason to be surprised when the whole story is implausible. It also means there is no reason to be surprised that Scotland Yard and all involved intelligence services, despite the knowledge of their weapon experts, fail to announce the plan was nonsensical.
Re:What's the point (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Liquid explosives don't make the idea of a bomb attack fishy. It does, however, make the government response fishy. OMFG! Liquid bombs! We never thought of that before! Everybody dump their vaseline! Just as we learned that the Bush administration response to 9/11 was a lie (They claimed to have never had any idea terrorist would crash planes into things), their response that this is new is also a lie. The 1995 Bojinka plot was financed by bin L
Re: (Score:2)
Source: The Scotsman, 9 Aug 2006 - MP quits government over Blair's policy on Middle East [scotsman.com]
Key quote:
"His resignation came as ministers furious at Mr Blair's handling of the crisis said they would push for an emergency recall of parliament in a manoeuvre they hoped would trigger the Prime Minister's downfall.
More than 150 MPs have urged Jack Straw, the
Re: (Score:2)
Key quote:
"The timing of the hysteria was even more useful to Blair, who was on the verge of being thrown out of Downing Street last night."
Re:I have some cool technology (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I have some cool technology (Score:2)
Tubes (Score:5, Funny)
"The Voice100(TM) employs Selected Ion Flow Tube..."
It's a bunch of tubes I tell you!
Re:Tubes (Score:1)
And this is funny, why?
Because the internet is just a bunch of tubes. (Score:2)
Re:Because the internet is just a bunch of tubes. (Score:1)
Re:Because the internet is just a bunch of tubes. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Because the internet is just a bunch of tubes. (Score:2)
No, no you dont. [google.ca]
Re:Because the internet is just a bunch of tubes. (Score:2)
Re:Tubes (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, mass spectrometry [asms.org] is an interesting technology that works very very well in the lab. The question is how practical can they make this machine? How much does it cost? TFA talks about how terrorism is mega expesive, so I get the feeling that they are just trying to lessen the sticker shock. And as the saying goes, no matter how idiotproof they make the device, TSA will just make a better idiot.
Fortunately (according to the manufacturer) this machine finds more than your run of the mill explosives, it can also find drugs:
Re:Tubes (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't RTFA, but from hearing what he said about it is that it can do the detection in a decent sized area (~1 sq. meter or so) pretty quickly (less than 10 sec). So, it could scan the area of a person + carry on in probably less than 20-30 seconds. If they did this right after you walked through the metal detectors, I doublt it would take that much
Re:Tubes (Score:2)
Sure, you can screen for hashes of piss or shit, but you also have to look for hashes of eat shit, shit., !shit, sHit, lalala shit haha, etc etc
It is trivial for a trained chemist to modify a compound just enough so that the measured spectrum does not match any of the stored spectra.
Even easier way is to mix some other stuff into your compound.
While the detection fidelity might be increased by adding infrared spect
Re: (Score:2)
Oh no, it's far worse than that. It's more like examining word length to screen for profanity. Which is sort of possible if you use a variable-width font, but you are still going to get a lot of false positives. Emmission spectroscopy is more like the "hash" technique.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right though: the only way this can work if we have a defined 'allow' list instead of trying to include every imaginable threat in a 'deny' list.
Raman is an overkill if all you are testing for is water/not water. It is usually used to get rid of the water signal in sample.
Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have these exquisitly sensitive machines that can detect even a few molecules of material, aren't they by the same token super-vulnerable to being attacked by "chaffing" or overloading?
You have to look at the false positive and negative rates for detection. If you have a test that is 99.99% specific, it will still fail in practical use in an airport, as that means that 1 out of 10,000 people will come up positive. If you have a lot of people going through you will still have a big problem (London had over a million flights last year). This is the same issue as using automatic detection of terrorists – It's one thing to match/no match a known ID (e.g. biometric passport) to a person; it's another to match every passer by to every known terrorist.
Going back to chemical detection: this level of sensitivity will mean that every person runs the risk of coming up positive eventually. This amounts probably about 100,000 people in the U.S., and lots more elsewhere in the world.
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2, Insightful)
So? Take each positive aside and check 'em! Where's the problem there?
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:1, Insightful)
AddressException said:
The problem is that, if Heathrow Airport has about 70,000,000 passengers per year (1,000,000 flights × 70 passengers per flight [just guessing on this!]), that we'll have 70,000 suspected terrorists a year. That's about 2000 searches a day.
Something tells me that, despite how popular Al-Qaeda looks on television, that there aren't 2000 terrorists in an airport at any given time. See what I'm saying?
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:1)
OK - don't use the super sensitive machine and let *ONE* terrorist through. See what I'm saying?
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:1)
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
There's a difference between selecting people at random and having a machine say "A BOMB! A BOMB! THIS GUY HAS A BOMB!". After the first 5 or so people to set it off have been shot 9 times in the head, you'll have to consider the "crying wolf" factor too. After the alarm goes off 19 times, is anyone really going to take it seriously on the 20th?
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
Because he can
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing is stopping terrorists from blowing up airport loading docks at will. They're not. Go figure.
Looking at all the possibilities for terrorism in the U.S, I can only conclude that any terrorists around here are not only incompetent, they have no imagination. I could probably think of half a dozen ways twenty guys with the drive to blow themselves up could halt half the U.S. economy in a week. Does tha
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:5, Insightful)
AddressException said:
Nobody has found terrorists at any point in history with chemical analysis machines, and they've been in use for years (they can't detect a ceramic knife). The incident at Heathrow was taken care of by good old-fashioned detective work.
Maybe you've lost your faith in the art of investigation, but I sure haven't. I have, however, lost my faith in having a civilized conversation with you on Slashdot. (mods: feel free to mod this down as "flamebait")
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:4, Interesting)
You are correct that this detection methods are nearly useless by themselves. Any terrorist will know about them and figure out a way around them. However, the more hoops you make the terrorists jump through, the more likely your detectives will be able to find them.
If it's really easy to hijack/blow up a plane, then any jerk can do it. If it doesn't take much planning for a terrorist to pull it off, your detectives will have hard time catching the terrorists during the planning stage. If, however, you need special planning overcome obstacles, your investigators have much more time to catch the terrorists while they do the research/recruitment to execute their plans. In addition, the harder you make it for the terrorists, the more likely they are to simply screw up and get caught.
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
If *I* were going to organise a 9/11-style hijacking with guys taking over a plane with hand-to-hand combat, I'd get them all trained in flint knapping [wikipedia.org] and have them each carry on a couple of glass 'paperweights'.
No need to have any visible weapon; just go to the toilet midflight and *make* a weapon out of glass ovoids.
Theres a lot to be said for the old
Re: (Score:2)
Why must it be a case of either/or? Why not have both first-rate detective work and highly accurate chemical sensors? You have nothing to lose but your tax dollars....
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes. You're suggesting we use a system where we check 2000 people a day. You'll be checking a few people every minute, and by checking I mean looking through all their stuff, asking them questions etc. You'd probably need 20 people working all the time. And given that the components of explosive are stuff like sugar, hair spray etc, you'd have to limit precisely which components you look for, and then peop
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
>checking a few people every minute, and by checking I mean looking through all their
>stuff, asking them questions etc. You'd probably need 20 people working all the time.
>And given that the components of explosive are stuff like sugar, hair spray etc, you'd
>have to limit precisely which components you look for, and then people will just make
>bombs out of those things anyway.
The vast majority of things that
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
Ideally.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:5, Informative)
70,000 / 365 is 200, not 2,000, which doesn't really matter because:
70,000,000 *
So it would still be about 20 per day. They already do more random searches per day than this.
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
Well, your math is off, based on the numbers provided. You have 99.9% accuracy (1 in 1 000 false positives), rather than 99.99% accuracy (1 in 10 000 false positives). Something tells me 200 searches per day isn't too much more than is already happening in many air
Re:Machine super-sensitivity: not "a good thing" (Score:2)
The problem I see with this implementation, or any implementation
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Machine super-sensitivity: is a good thing (Score:3, Informative)
The nice thing about this tech is it's very fast compared to gcms or
Two words: (Score:1)
A schematic of the technique involved (Score:1)
It also says that it can detect compounds in the ppb levels out of breath (in real time). What I am wondering is how large/portable this machine is. Could a baggage handler walk around with it and wand things, or would you need to put all the bags through the machine on a conveyor belt?
But who's going to buy it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But who's going to buy it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong conclusion (Score:2)
You want dramatic, practical scientific advances? Don't fund it with government money.
Note that it was a New Zealand company, not the New Zealand government, in the article...
Re: (Score:2)
The amusing thing about the above post is that it was composed using a computer, delivered via TCP/IP, and posted to a web site. At every step, the above post was made possible by technologies whose development was funded by government money.
Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:3, Insightful)
>
>[...]
>
>The Voice100(TM) instrument's core feature is its ability to continuously detect and quantify the concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in whole air.
In other words, if the bad guy's dumb enough to make his explosive before passing through the screening station, he gets picked up.
But since hydrogen peroxide isn't an organic compound, Abdul walks up to the scanner and it says "Nothing to see here. Move along."
And since acetone is a VOC, when Mohammed walks up to the scanner, the scanner screams bloody murder... which would be fine, except that it also probably screams bloody murder for every woman with a bottle of nail polish remover in her purse. So Mohammed gets told to move along, too.
*blam*
Airlines are like democracies: We have to destroy them to save them.
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:2, Funny)
You should instead use a last name like "Doe"
Banned before all of this (Score:2)
cost (Score:1)
Re:cost (Score:1)
Re:cost (Score:2)
Re:cost (Score:2)
Alternate method (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, here's an idea (Score:2)
You know, kill two birds with one stone. Heck, I bet that this machine could establish paternity as well.
Re:Hey, here's an idea (Score:2)
Well, obviously, that's a great idea. "Mr. Smith, you must be a terrorist, because you state that the person you're traveling with is your daughter, but our security detector clearly shows that she is not." Oops.
oh, great! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a mess and a waist of time.
Next you know, they will be selling them to your boss to check you as you come to work.
Be careful, if the government can get it, the private sector can get it and they do not have to honnor your rights.
Re:oh, great! (Score:2)
How do you do that (seed people in line with small amounts of powder)? If you do that *at the airport*, you're going to get caught on surveillence video somewhere. The FBI will track you down.
A more general point is worth making here: the terrorists aren't stupid, and, l
Re:oh, great! (Score:2)
The issue at the airport is not a technical issue. It is not that they do not have the equipment to do the job. It is that they do not want to pay the people. If they would pay th
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, I think here you've come across the real problem.
Re:oh, great! (Score:3, Funny)
There was no Slashdot in the 1970s, but... (Score:2)
Lo, and behold, September 11, 2001 shows up and a group of dedicated people does what "no one would ever anticipate" and hijack several planes with nothing more than metal box-cutters. Yes,
Ad nauseam... (Score:2)
1- High profile terror case/natural disaster/act of God has just occurred
2- Previously unknown company proposes its bulletproof and cheap product which they claim have been proposing for years
3- Get suckers to invest in your product by tapping into people's irrational fears that naturally follow 1-
4- Profit!!!
In this case, 1- is obviously the UK terror plot to blow up planes by smuggling explosives onto the plane (like that's gonna work, but whatever gets the thinkofthechildren crowd going)...
Re:Ad nauseam... (Score:2)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to wear my anthrax-repellent dust mask while I clean out the commie-proof bomb shelter in my backyard. I think I left my anti-Halley's-Comet pills down there..
They have it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They have it backwards (Score:2)
Of course, if the bomber slips a bomb into somebody else's luggage, which would you rather detect?
Now that's taken care of (Score:2)
Re:Now that's taken care of (Score:2)
Press release -- take a grain of salt (Score:2)
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060816/lnw002.html?.v= 31 [yahoo.com]
This company is certainly not the first company to promote an easy-to-use bomb detector, or to talk about how their product is better then the competitor's products.
Any Phil Hendrie fans (Score:2)
Hospitals, eh? Components of expolsives, eh? (Score:2)
BFG (Score:2)
Re:BFG (Score:2)
I'd think a TSA screener is smart enough to know "if you don't know what it is, don't let it onboard" even if this means that a few legitimate things are denied clearance. There's no reason someone needs to bring Mg strip
Re:BFG (Score:2)
You're making my point: the whole process assumes that the Bad Guys are so stupid that they're going to bring their thermite onboard as a jar of metallic powder, metallic paste (complete with nitrate igniter), or some such. Sheesh.
In case you haven't noticed, any (large) number of ordinary ite
These things don't really keep us safe (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the very narrow specificity of these machines is a major problem. You might be able to detect the 20 most common explosives, but it would be trivially easy for any competent organic chemist to come up with a new explosive that the detector wouldn't be looking for. Perhaps the detectors that we have now look for nitroglycerin, but what about nitroglycerin with an extra methyl group hung off the end of the carbon chain? Or an ethyl group? Or an isopropyl group? What if instead of ammonium nitrate you used butyl-ammonium nitrate? Or butyl ammonium with some other, less common oxidizer like permanganate/perchlorate/whatever? Do you see my point? You could make a slight modification to almost any existing explosive and render it undetectable to these bomb scanners, because the scanners only look for things that they have been specifically trained to look for. They have no capability to actually examine the structure of a molecule and judge whether it's explosive or not. It's kind of like using a "knife detector" that has been set to look for the most common brands of knifes, when in fact you could sharpen almost anything into a knife with a little effort.
Photocopier Simplicity (Score:2)
Photocopier simplicity, eh? I can see it now: "Bomb Ingredient Jam in detection device. Please open Door 2A and follow the instructions on the label inside of the door to clear the jam." Don't forget to turn knob 4C three complete rotations! But it doesnt' matter how many compartments you open, there is *always* one m
"Idiot" Proof (Score:2)
Great, so now we'll have to pry TSA goons' asses out of the machine after they decide to scan them.
Re:Even better than explosive detection tech!! (Score:2)
It won't work. It won't work because they will never see the positive side of the western world. Just as some people in this country will never call them anything nicer than "towel head" or "macaca" (hey, a Daily Show reference to my home state! Allen is such as ass).
Whether we do anything or not at this point is irrelevent. There are people who really, really hate us, and they have taught their children the same values. I know people who won't go some places beca
Re: (Score:2)
Terrorists hate us so much that after 8 years of t
Too late. (Score:2)
Too late. (Has been at LEAST since the "Monica Missiles".)
Re:Even better than explosive detection tech!! (Score:2)
Re:Even better than explosive detection tech!! (Score:2)
Look at who we support in the region: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, highly un-democratic, oppressive, and sometimes vicious regimes. When Iran had a democratic government, we got rid of it for economic reasons.
To many people in the region, the US is a behemoth that uses its military to ensure a cheap supply of oil and is willing to keep people from achieving self-determina
Re:Even better than explosive detection tech!! (Score:2)
No, and no.
Re:Even better than explosive detection tech!! (Score:2)
I'm not saying our behaviour
Re:Even better than explosive detection tech!! (Score:2)
Although many holocost survivors did wind up in Israel, most of the original Jewish population of Israel were Jews who were already in the area (or soon left other parts of the Middle East). Israel was proposed before WWII as part of the carving up of the Middle East. Although it was originally England's idea (England and France were pretty much in charge of dividing the Middle East
Re: (Score:2)
If you are willing to concede that I have a point about Israel then I will concede that you have a point about us messing in the Arab world's affairs. We have a history of meddling, and this certainly hasn't made us popular. Some of the policies, (particularly recent Iraq and killing de
Logical Fallacy (Score:2)
Re:How Accurate is too Accurate? (Score:3, Interesting)
Resin, Funny! What about GSR? (Score:2)
Incidently if I was fresh from either of two hobbies I would set this detector off quite admirably. Boat building and resin, or the shooting range and gunpowder smoke residue. I'd have to shower AND make sure that I was not wearing any article of clothing that I wore or handled during earlier activity.
Fall and hunting season are going to cause a shock with this one!
Phil
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, you should do that whenever you fly, out of consideration for the other passengers. Especially if it's a 6-hour flight. Thank you.
Re: (Score:2)
Small comfort, but you'll be safely on the ground in a jail cell when the bomb does go off...
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