For sale: Electronic Sniffer Dogs, noses not included

The widespread use of what are basically dowsing rods to detect bombs in Iraq and other trouble spots is a striking example of how a lack of critical thinking can lead to all manner of death and mayhem.

I have never tried to smuggle a bomb through airport security, or through an army checkpoint, or into a police station. I suspect not many of you ever have either. Despite the mayhem and carnage caused by the very few people who do do that sort of thing, not many people ever have. So however many people get searched or scanned passing through a checkpoint, very few bombs will be found, and therein lies an opportunity which was exploited for massive profit, at the cost of an unknown number of lives and mutilations.

"Fake bomb detector conman jailed for 10 years," the headline in the Guardian declared (2 May 2013). I first saw the story when browsing the BBC website for news, and since then it has spread around the world, although it hasn't received anything like the scrutiny I feel it deserves.

In late April this year, British businessman James McCormick was convicted of fraud at the Old Bailey in London and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. His crime was the marketing and selling of bomb detectors, known as Advanced Detection Equipment [ADE] 651, that it was proven he knew were useless. ADE 651 units were sold by McCormick and other agents from his UK-based business, ATSC, to more than 20 countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq. It was proven the units were knowingly manufactured without any effective working components and were based on a novelty golf ball finder, called The Gopher or Golfinder, which is sold for around US$20. It had been claimed that the ADE 651 could effectively and accurately detect the presence and location of various types of explosives and other substances, including $100 bills.

It is estimated McCormick's company made over US20 million in profits from sales of the device. When challenged by an employee who later went on to tell the BBC of his concerns, McCormick reportedly told him, "The device does exactly what it's supposed to do … it makes money." The sentencing judge gave McCormick the maximum term possible for this kind of crime, describing it as "a callous confidence trick" that "promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to … death and injury to innocent individuals". He said the case was the most serious of its kind he has known. Since then what remains of the assets of ATSC have been seized by the crown, and the Iraqi government (and maybe other unwitting customers) are now seeking millions in compensation. McCormick continues to vehemently deny the charges from behind bars.

According to promotional material, the ADE 651 is supposed to work by the principle of "electrostatic magnetic ion attraction". The ADE 651 consists of only a swiveling antenna mounted by hinge to a plastic handgrip, a plastic-coated cardboard 'detection' card and a collection of junk electronics. It has no power source, and is claimed to be powered by the user's static electricity. The electrical components are not connected to anything.

A multi-purpose device

The glossy promotional material issued by ATSC claimed that the ADE 651 could detect items including guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies, contraband ivory and bank notes at distances of up to one kilometre underground, through walls, underwater or even from aeroplanes at an altitude of up to five kilometres. According to ATSC the ADE651 could by-pass all known attempts to conceal the target substance. Resellers had also claimed the device worked on the principles of nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). McCormick went on to tell the BBC, in 2010, that dowsing rods and the ADE 651 worked in a very similar manner.

The substance-specific "programmed detection cards" were claimed by ATSC to "tune into the frequency" of a particular explosive or other substance, as named on the card. The cards were supposedly "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 said he had used his own blood to programme the cards for detecting human tissue, but eventually gave up even this pretence.

After inserting the detection card (in a plastic slot) the device was supposed to swivel in the user's hand to point its antenna in the direction of the target substance. One Iraqi police officer claimed, "If we are tense, the device doesn't work correctly. I start slow, and relax my body, and I try to clear my mind."

I hear the Twilight Zone theme playing in the background. Seriously, it makes me want to grab something from the $2 shop and turn it into a revolutionary faith-based bomb detector … all yours for only $200! That would be cheap: ATSC sold thousands of the ADE 651 units to countries including Bahrain, the Lebanon, Mexico, Niger, Pakistan, and Syria as well as Afghanistan and Iraq for up to US $40,000 per unit. The Iraqi government alone was said to have spent more than US$50 million on the devices. They are still being used by the Iraqi police and army, and reportedly also in the Middle East and possibly elsewhere. Similar gadgets, under different names, are used in Thailand.

Real detectors

There are real bomb detectors, but they work rather differently. The most common 'bomb detector' is of course the dog; dogs can be trained to identify the scents of several common explosive materials and notify their handler when they detect one. However, whilst generally very effective, dogs can lose efficiency if they become tired or bored.

Several types of machines have therefore been developed to detect trace signatures for various explosive materials. The most common technology is ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) in which molecules are ionised and then moved in an electric field in a vacuum or gas. The time that it takes for an ion to move a specified distance in an electric field is indicative of that ion's size to charge ratio, which can be matched to the signature of the ions in various explosives.

Thirdly, x-ray machines can detect explosives by looking at the density of the items being examined. They may use dedicated software, containing an explosives threat library, to identify substances using tomography or, more commonly, related components such as detonators. However, x- rays can be foiled if devices-substances are hidden, for example, inside electronic equipment.

Lastly, a detection taggant has been added to many explosive substances to make detection easier. An example is Semtex, which now is made with 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane (DMDNB) added as a detection taggant which dogs are sensitive to.

As yet there is no credible hand-held device for detecting explosives, and most detection methods can only work when relatively close to the explosive they are trying to detect.

The path to prison

McCormick's con had been slowly unravelling for some time prior to his trial. As long ago as 2008 skeptic James Randi had offered one million dollars to anyone who could prove the ADE 651 worked, describing it as "a useless quack device which cannot perform any other function than separating naive persons from their money… a blatant fraud." Der Spiegel reported in 2010 that the ADE-651 had been tested by the Israelis in 2008 but was "kicked out of the country". An explosives expert at an arms and security fair in Beirut in April 2009 described it as "one big fraud".

A New York Times investigation in 2009 reported that the US military believed the device was no more use than a magic wand for detecting explosives, whilst a former national security aide in the Clinton and Bush administrations condemned the device as "laughable". As a result the US military notified all military and civilian personnel in Iraq that the bomb detection device was ineffective and should not be relied upon as a means of ensuring the safety of any personnel. Whether the Iraqi police and military willfully chose to ignore this advice is not entirely clear.

In 2010 BBC's Newsnight programme investigated the ADE 651 and scientifically assessed the "programmed substance detection cards". They found that the cards contained only a standard radio frequency security tag of the type used in stores to prevent shoplifting and that it was impossible for the cards to detect anything. The card could not be programmed, had no memory, no microprocessor and no form of information could be stored on it. Despite the high cost of the devices, the cards were worth only about two to three pence (four to six cents) each. Furthermore, the card reader was found to be no more than an empty plastic box. Following this investigation export of the device was banned by the British government and McCormick was arrested on suspicion of fraud. ATSC was dissolved in March of this year and millions of dollars worth of McCormick's and ATSC's assets were seized.

James McCormick himself is an interesting fellow. A former Merseyside police officer, he makes no claim to having any scientific or technical knowledge. McCormick owns, or used to own, a plush country home in Somerset, a mansion in Bath (formerly owned by one Nicholas Cage) as well as houses in Florida and Cyprus, and a luxury yacht. He is the founder, managing director and sole shareholder of ATSC and its sister company ATSC Exports. ATSC was claimed to be a broadcasting and telecommunications company on its inception, although its primary product became the ADE 651.

The question then seems obvious: why the heck would a sane person believe the ADE 651 actually worked? To no small degree the British government must bear some responsibility as it, perhaps unwittingly, gave McCormick a shield of respectability by marketing the ADE 651 at government-backed trade fairs. McCormick also made his devices look the part by selling them in Pelican rigid cases as used to carry genuine military products, using the logo of the International Association of Bomb Technicians (without authorisation) on each unit, and putting official-looking stickers that warned users not to open the detectors. Still, why would you just believe that they worked, except by being too lazy to check?

This brings me back to my original point: bombings are relatively rare events. In almost any environment, even downtown Baghdad, the vast majority of people, vehicles and items going through a security checkpoint will be innocent and harmless. This isn't really any different to us passing through the scanner at Auckland International; if a device detects a possible threat, then a search is made and, assuming nothing is found, the person searched happily goes on his or her way. Such events occur routinely every day at security checkpoints, with all devices, and if nothing is found the assumption is not that the device doesn't work, but instead that it gave off a false alarm. Thus the ADE 651's false alarms were-are routinely ignored and thereby a non-working bomb detector was considered to be working correctly. It behaved in the same way most working detection devices do in that it often indicated false positives: think of your smoke alarm.

Then why did the ADE 651 sometimes correctly find bombs? We know that the antenna on the ADE 651 isn't connected, electronically, to anything and is just loosely hinged to a plastic handle. The most likely explanation is that the swinging of the antenna, sometimes in the direction of a real threat, is merely due to its loose assembly and unconscious wrist movements of the user. Or, perhaps, the operator already strongly suspected a particular threat. Anyway, to quote a cliché, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Who's responsible?

There is then the broader question of whose responsibility it was to check that the units worked, and if they didn't then why not? Most likely those purchasing the ADE 651 en masse were either ignorant, or benefited by some percentage of the sales, or most likely a mixture of both. It would surely not be too hard or time-consuming to test the device's effectiveness but seemingly very few ever bothered. It has been shown that millions changed hands in kickbacks to those responsible for rubber stamping purchases in countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico, Syria, Lebanon, Niger, and Pakistan. Presumably those purchasing the device didn't bother to convey the lack of evidence for its effectiveness to those using the ADE 651 daily. It's as if a defence ministry purchaser had bought a load of sub-machine guns only to discover in the midst of a fire-fight that they had no firing mechanism or ammunition, despite the manufacturer claiming they would always score a direct hit from up to 10km away.

The Iraqi Interior minister responsible for combating explosives, Major-General Jihad al-Jabiri was a major purchaser of the ADE 651 and continues to vocally support the product. In a rather unscientific test undertaken by reporters investigating the fake bomb detector story, deliberately hidden explosives in al-Jabiri's office were detected by Iraqi police and security officers wielding the device but not by the reporters using the same device. Al-Jabiri's explanation: the reporters "needed more training in its use".

Despite the recent conviction of McCormick and the mountain of evidence against him the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to claim that the device is, at least partially, effective. Maybe when you have over US$50 million dollars worth of egg on your face you'd rather convince yourself it's not there. Of course, it can be argued that if everyone, including those trying to conceal explosives, believed it worked effectively then it was a working deterrent of sorts.

One defence used by McCormick was that the people who have purchased and used his product have rarely complained. However, as another skeptic noted to me, a suitable test for McCormick's confidence in his product would have been to make him distinguish three fake and three real letter-bombs with his device. He then has to open the three he decides are fakes…

Without doubt the consequences to the unwitting users of the ADE 651, and the people the devices are claimed to protect, must be dire. We know well that thousands of people have been killed and injured in devastating bomb attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan without the bombers being detected by ADE 651 devices at checkpoints. Who is to blame, beyond McCormick, is likely to be the subject of ongoing and numerous conspiracy theories.

Double standard

As abhorrent as the actions of McCormick and his cohorts are I can't help but see a huge double standard in the way he was treated compared with other pedlars of pseudo-scientific junk and snake oil. If, in the UK, 10 years' jail is to be the legal sanction that is taken against a manufacturer- seller of worthless, potentially dangerous, pseudo-scientific junk then why isn't such a strong stance taken against the manufacturers and purveyors of, for example, 'alternative vaccines', 'healing by prayer', or psychics? All of these products or services are guilty of creating a false sense of security that potentially puts people's lives at risk.

Sources used include:

• www.guardian.co.uk-uk-2013-may-02-fake-bomb-detector-conman-jailed
• www.guardian.co.uk-uk-2013-apr-23-magic-bomb-detector-lives-risk
• www.guardian.co.uk-world-2013-apr-23-fake-bomb-detectors-used-iraq
• news.discovery.com-human-psychology-why-people-believed-fake-bomb-detectors-worked-130430.htm
• www.france24.com-en-20130520-iraq-pm-insists-fake-bomb-detectors-work
• motherboard.vice.com-read-iraqs-most-popular-bomb-detection-device-is-useless-video