Finally, A Backlash Against Iraq's Fake Bomb Detectors

The most recent terrorist attack in Baghdad killed more than 120 persons and employed a suicide car bomb in a shopping district. Also, it seems to have provoked a long overdue and richly deserved public backlash against the Iraqi government and its outrageous practice of using fake bomb detectors at checkpoints through the country.

From the WaPo story linked above, there is this:

On social media, Iraqis turned their anger toward a wand-style device that has been proved to be fake but is still widely used at checkpoints as a bomb detector. On Sunday night, Abadi announced that the devices should be withdrawn from checkpoints. Little more than an aerial attached to a plastic handle, they have been sold as capable of detecting explosives.

Earlier Sunday, after the bombing, the Interior Ministry’s website was hacked and a picture was posted of a bloodied baby and one of the supposed bomb detectors. “I don’t know how you sleep at night,” the hacked website read.

Hacked Iraq MOI website image

The scandal of these fraudulent devices, which were sold to Iraq under the name ADE 651, is well known and documented. See this Vanity Fair article for background. The Iraqi government purchased the scam detectors in 2008 at a cost of $85 million.

According to the WaPo's Baghdad Bureau Chief, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has finally, just tonight, ordered all the ADE 651s removed from Iraqi checkpoints. That decision comes about two years after he first acknowledged they were fake and promised to remove them.

Now, how about the governments of Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Mexico, and Thailand? So far as I know, they all still use the ADE 651 or a copy, under various names, to pretend to detect bombs at airports and other potential targets. Is a hacked website all it will take to cause them enough embarrassment that they'll stop that nonsense?

The Fake Bomb Detectors Are Back, And This Time They're Egyptian

Hey, a guy with an empty box! 

The notorious fake bomb detector that was sold under the name ADE 651, among others, before its manufacturers were sent to prison in the UK for fraud, is back in use once again. This time it's Egyptian hotels in Sharm El Sheik that are using them to not find hidden bombs.

The Daily Mail reports:

British families in Sharm El Sheikh are being guarded with useless bomb detectors based on a bogus device produced by UK fraudsters, the Mail can reveal.

The revelation comes as Egyptian police investigate whether a Sharm hotel worker might be responsible for a suspected attack on a Russian passenger jet. Police fear a bomb may have been smuggled inside luggage.

As thousands of UK families were still waiting to fly home yesterday, the Mail discovered fraudulent 'scanning devices' were being used to protect at least five top hotels packed with Britons. Security guards use them to 'sweep' guests, their cars and luggage.

But experts say these 'screening tools' are almost identical to the bogus devices produced by British fraudsters and sold for millions to foreign governments, resulting in prosecutions in 2013 and 2014.

The Egyptian army appears to have copied these devices and produced its own version called C-Fast, which is being used across Sharm.

It means a terrorist bomb could easily have been smuggled into a hotel, put in a passenger's luggage and potentially taken on to a plane. Since C-Fast devices are made by the Egyptian army, it is likely they are also used at Sharm's airport.

Why not use them at the Sharm airport? The same scam detectors were, and possibly still are, in use at airports in Jordan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iraq, among other places.

The ADE 651 consists of an empty box and a telescoping antenna. And nothing else. They have no operating parts, or technology, or theory of operation, or test results, or any history of actually detecting anything. It's an empty box. And yet, the government of Iraq spent $85 million to equip its forces with them. So did other nations. Click on the "ADE 651" label below this post and prepare to be amazed at how many nations bought them, defended them, and continued to use them even after the UK locked up the snake oil salesmen who sold them.

So now the Egyptian Army has joined the scam with its own knock-off version called the C-Fast. Well, there's a fool born every minute. I just wonder whether the Army is fooling itself, or only those British tourists?