Dogs Trained to Sniff Out Piracy 147
RockDoctor writes "Northern Ireland has for decades been using sniffer dogs to detect bombs and bomb-making materials. According to the BBC, a dog trainer in the Province has trained two dogs to sniff out some of the chemicals used in the manufacture of optical discs. While this has an obvious risk of false positives (polycarbonate plastics and their associated plasticizer additives are used in many other industries, for example), it does seem to be effective at locating discs which are not declared in customs manifests, and doing so much faster than human inspection of the cargo can do."
Workaround (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Workaround (Score:5, Funny)
That's what gets me wondering (Score:2)
4. It's a measure that doesn't even work, and is so easily circumvented it's not even funny. As you noted. You don't even need to get a dedicated external HDD, just use your iPod/Zen/whatever. Or use an USB stick or card. E.g., there are 4GB memory card for the PSP, and they're smaller than a stamp. And the PSP has an USB port too. So if you brought a portable console along for the long airplane trip, y
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So how long until they start forcing you to (re)format the "empty" drive?
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Even so, it's still easier to restore from backup than it is to pay $150,000 in fines.
LK
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If you're only carrying personal stuff, I'd concur.
If you're carrying sensitive stuff you're doing business with, for example, you may have backups stored somewhere in a safe.
Though I guess a mostly empty drive with an operating system, some pics of your family and several desktop icons, with the rest of the drive encrypted, would be a more plausible way to ensure plausible deniability.
I'm so playing with it as soon as I get a laptop.
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In the UK we have the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (RIP) which can get you sent to prison for 5 years if you refuse to release your encryption keys.
I have had a quick look at the truecrypt site and see it supposedly can create a hidden volume within an enrypted volume, but you still have to be very careful. If they find any evidence of the hidden volume they can force the decryption key out of you or send you to prison.
Dog substance addiction (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dog substance addiction (Score:4, Funny)
The credit card industry is really making irresponsible loans these days. There's no way these dogs make enough money to cover all the treats they'll buy if they're given half a chance preapproved with a 0% teaser rate.
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I know you're joking, but this comment is also in response to the "Won't dogs get cancer sniffing chemicals?" question. The dogs take in the same amount of particles no matter what they trained to detect. Imagine them like a vacuum cleaner that picks up every scent that every bag gives off. They are trained to notice certain smells, but they inhale everything equally. Bomb sniffing dogs were inhaling drugs long be
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Well, at least the dogs should not get addicted to plastics, like the drug sniffing dogs...
I know you're joking, but this comment is also in response to the "Won't dogs get cancer sniffing chemicals?" question. The dogs take in the same amount of particles no matter what they trained to detect. Imagine them like a vacuum cleaner that picks up every scent that every bag gives off. They are trained to notice certain smells, but they inhale everything equally. Bomb sniffing dogs were inhaling drugs long before they were trained to detect them, and both drug and bomb dogs have been inhaling these chemicals since they were put in action.
So are veterinarians on Slashdot able to answer this? In general, do airport dogs, or any other group of law enforcement trained scent finding dogs, tend to get different sicknesses than the general population of dogs of the same breed? I would think that state and municipal dogs tend to get more variety in their environment. Howerver, dogs assigned to railroad and airport security details tend to breath air from the same mostly closed system day in and day out. If they tend to get lung cancer or other di
Re:Dog substance addiction (Score:5, Informative)
I have never seen any research or data on this question you bring up. Usually, something this far from "Mainstream Public Awareness" never gets studied unless someone with vested interest in the specific topic is interested in pursuing the subject, and has enough influence to make it happen.
(Disclaimer: my awareness of research is NOT all encompassing!!!)
The answers you are looking for have probably not been addressed, if they have been- not public knowledge. It may have been addressed by the Humane Society, or the SPCA, but if so, has remained fairly quiet.
Hate to say it, but even tho' "man's best friend" is man's best friend, the dog is still considered a domesticated beast to serve us; Thus only to be considered on a "how useful to us" basis.
My experience with K-9's (Police Dogs and US Military MP's) suggest several things:
1. The handlers/partners usually have the dogs as family pets in addition to being their work partner. This may limit overall what the dogs get exposed to compared to all human teams doing the same job.
2. The dogs have REALLY sensitive olofactory organs- if it's too "strong", they will keep their distance and "point" to indicate a detection or hit.
3.Uhmm... they're not immune to "specialized training":(http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?si
4. A lot of this has been covered here:(http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0
5. Mostly, if it's not considered hazardous for the human handlers, then it's not considered hazardous for the "k-9"'s on the same duty.
I doubt that the issues you are adressing have been fully thought about...I commend you, and feel slightly ashamed that I have not thought about this.
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That only makes sense if the atmosphere has a uniform distribution of every kind of particle. Clearly this is not true. If the distribution is uniform then the dogs would have no differential to determine direction with.
Drug dogs are trained to seek out areas with higher concentrations of drugs. How else do you think they are able to de
But.. but... (Score:2, Funny)
Dirty deeds, (Score:2)
Re:But.. but... (Score:5, Funny)
Slippery slope (Score:3, Funny)
Once these dogs have the secent of basement dwelling teenager with poor hygiene... it's all over.
RIAA is probably training them now. What exactly is the scent of p2p?
Re:Slippery slope (Score:5, Funny)
Rum.
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animals are much more intelligent that we credit (Score:5, Funny)
Incredible.
Re:animals are much more intelligent that we credi (Score:2)
Indeed. For anyone who hasn't seen any of the recent stories in the press or on TV, dogs are also said to be able to sniff out cancer.. [nationalgeographic.com]
A bit more useful to mankind than sniffing out polycarbonate disks in luggage, but what the hell. A dog's nose is pretty amazing, but I still like the cold and wet part best.
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Re:animals are much more intelligent that we credi (Score:3, Funny)
About Sniffing out chemicals: (Score:2)
Mice (Score:2)
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Argh, ye matey, and yer poochie too! (Score:5, Funny)
Poor Long Burn Silver Disc we never saw him again.
Dog-and-mouse (Score:2)
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Who needs dogs to sniff out pirates? (Score:3, Funny)
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Yes, they did [wikipedia.org]. At least the sailors who were undisciplined enough to become pirates did.
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Wouldn't it be easier ...... (Score:3, Funny)
Why would anyone.... (Score:1, Insightful)
not transfer files over the net rather than by airplane?
Anyway...
I guess these dogs will be used at the docks rather than the airports, to make sure cargo contains what the manifest claims.
I'm pretty amazed that dogs can smell these solvents in such tiny amounts, and also that they can distinguish a very specific solvent among all the millions of others that will be all around the docks!
They must use more intelligence than we think, perhaps
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not transfer files over the net rather than by airplane?
Because this is a plot by Microsoft to prevent the shipment of Ubuntu discs!
IANASD (Score:2)
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Isn't it kind of pointless to explain extremely common acronyms like that?
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Industrial scale piracy requires industry (Score:2)
Simple. You can have an industrial scale DVD burning operation in China operating in broad daylight, stamp enough DVDs to fill a cargo container (thats, ahem, "A lot"), and then move them to America to sell via the gray market. Marginal cost per DVD is far less than it would be trying to make them in America, because in the US you'd be using small setups, like some shareware writers have for servicing thei
Who would have though? (Score:2)
Re:Who would have though? (Score:5, Interesting)
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They also go after anime which defames the church, especially if it's some sort of porn anime with religious overtones. They don't play games with that stuff. It'll get you busted like kiddy porn over here e
Hmm ... suspicious ... (Score:1)
Priorities? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What makes you think we don't know where Osama is? The thing to understand is that operationally, Osama has no power anymore, he's only good for PR. GWB and his boys are simply waiting until it's closer to the election to spring him a la October Surprise...
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Only? That's a lot of PR.
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Hell, the East India Company wasn't named that just because it was a cool name, it was the first corporation (well, equivalent, they didn't wall it that), to actually own a country.
Wouldn't you do the same? (Score:1)
Who would want to go after criminals, they might shoot me, and why would I want to stand in front of a terrorist, they have a tendancy to explode.
F that, give me a desk job where I can sit down, snoop through my little security cameras, and check out the women.
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I'm pretty sure Bin Landen's not in Northern Ireland. Too much competition.
TWW
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Hmmm, where do you suppose they get it from? Government? And where do they get theirs from?
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Corp. campaign donations. Voters don't have the granularity to pick and choose individual issues, so politicians favor corps to get money and accept the risk of looking like a corporate kisser and even hide it by emphasizing issues such as abortion and gays. This is what has happened.
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(Set karma burn in 3..2..1)
Rescue dogs, yes, for obvious reasons, but the attempt to retrain the drug dogs failed as they all
kept following Pres. Bush around for some reason.
Yaaar! Yaaar! (Score:2)
"obvious risk of false positives" = Mrs. Lincoln (Score:3, Insightful)
When are people going to figure out that a "false positive" is not a nuisance, it's a death blow to any proposed technology--unless the risk of false positives is orders of magnitude lower than the actual frequency of the rare event being detected?
Doesn't anyone ever read Æsop's fable about the boy who cried wolf?
Polycarbonate plastic is just the generic name for Lexan® [geplastics.com], and if you follow that link you'll notice that GE mentions many uses besides DVD's: automotive lenses, "blow molding," eyewear, water bottles, structural foam, etc. The example they show in the picture is a cell phone. I believe the original iMacs (the CRT-based ones) had Lexan housings. The company I work for uses Lexan strips to protect a surface where thin metal plates slide over and would otherwise scrap a painted shelf. The stuff is used everywhere.
After customs inspectors have wasted two or three days opening crates of various products with tough molded Lexan housings, they'll forget the whole silly business.
Re:"obvious risk of false positives" = Mrs. Lincol (Score:4, Insightful)
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Possibly, but most other products made with poly carbonate do not have the other chemical smells associated with CDs. Oh, and since I made them for five years please add baby bottles to the list.
Put this sniffer on the tubes (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:1)
This isn't new news (Score:3, Informative)
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They're also training the dogs to sniff out those new watermarks over the internet.
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Just Peachy... (Score:2)
What a waste of resources & press spam (Score:2)
BTW, this news originally came up 9-12 months ago:
http://www.betanews.com/article/MPAA_Employs_Pira [betanews.com]
What about.... (Score:1)
Zoo poo (Score:2)
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Coffee beans
I can see t
Fedex Used the Dogs (Score:2, Insightful)
Security Theater (Score:5, Interesting)
Next up: encrypted pirated disks (Score:1)
Qty 1: DVD with random data
Qty 9,999: Blank DVDs
Qty 1: Industrial-speed DVD duplicator
Random data, of course, is encrypted pirated material which looks random to anyone without the correct password
The MPAA taught these two dogs last year (Score:1)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1944531
The look on the dogs faces are saying to me: "What? Sniff out pirated media? That's so 2006."
Different dogs... (Score:1)
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070316/112645.shtml [techdirt.com]
Granted that dog's noses are quite amazing, are there enough subtle differences between the plastic my discs and, say, my phone, for a dog to tell them apart?
I guess i'll have to close down my buisiness of exporting copies of Benny and Joon to the UK.
Not the piracy you're thinking of... (Score:1)
The utility of these
So, the P2P implementation (Score:2)
What a waste (Score:2)
There goes our tax money (Score:3, Insightful)
We should have a way to selectively pay taxes to support initiatives we like, and MPAA initiatives like these should come out of Warner, and not me.
Game Theory. (Score:1)
O RLY? (Score:1)
Guilty Until Proven Innocent (Score:2)
Not only is this abuse of the modern press freedom that burning our own media means. This is yet another example of how the infrastructure rationalized by terrorism gets extended well beyond terrorism defense into serving a corporate agenda having nothing to do with national security. And recycling the p
Outgassing and sorption (Score:2)
Oh noes DOOM is approaching! (Score:2)
Well... (Score:1)
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Well, it's easy to foil them... (Score:2)
Dogs can read? (Score:1)
Shipping Guidelines (Score:2)
Garrr... (Score:2)
Of course it does! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory post (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT, customs is generally charged with detecting some very odd things, such as livestock or pets that are not normally illegal to own, but are illegal to import, and with detecting drugs. Checking for bootleg CDs has certain implications that can't be avoided in this context. First, the society is assuming that catching this particular form of copyright violation is roughly on a par with catching heroin smuggling. That's pretty damned strongly implied if we put similar amounts of money into training dogs for both (and if anything, it's cheaper to train a dog to detect several related opiates and other drugs than it is one plasticiser*). Second, discovering CDs proves nothing, unless the humans associated with the dogs can make a proper determination that the CDs aren't legal ones. That implies we (as a society) are devoting resources to training the human customs agents in telling bootleg CDs from legitimate ones, AT A TIME WHEN WE HAVE SERIOUS DOUBTS ABOUT THEIR TRAINING IN DETECTING INCOMING TERRORISTS WITH WMDS!
* I've actually helped local law enforcement train drug and explosive sniffing dogs. It's difficult fun to try and outwit a well trained sniffer dog, and I have no doubts at all they can be trained to accurately find polycarbonate plasticizers, but I really, seriously doubt it's as easy as training them for much more aromatic explosive nitrate compounds, and that is weeks or months of work. Typical training involves taking the dogs to an unfamiliar location, which means setting aside a national guard armory, old courthouse or other state owned building, often for several days, and having about 20 people previously unknown to the dogs available to plant the 'evidence'. You can't use just one or two people over and over or the dog starts using their scent markers to shortcut training. Instead you have to have several people take turns, hand off packages to each other, and otherwise mix things up so the dog trains properly on the chemical desired. That can be 20 people on a payroll all day even if they are going to actually do only 15 minutes work each, and this is far from cheap.
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Excuse me, but how is a dog supposed to sniff terrorism? WMD's, maybe, depending upon what, exactly, it is, but... Uh... No. Just no.
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Then again virtual reality would really confuse a dog that still doesn't quite understand it's own reflection isn't another dog in the mirror.
You don't understand Customs (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, Customs needs to have reasonable suspicion to search you, but not to search your stuff.
Customs has the right to inspect everything that comes through the borders, with limits (reasonable suspicion) only on people.
There is no such thing as "Unreasonable Search and Seizure" when it comes to cargo, packages, mail, or 'things that are not people'.
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What is the going rate for heroin? Is it more or less than a commercial CD? I'm seeing values of about $1.00/mg, and a dose being 10mg to 20mg. I can't say i've ever bought the stuff, nor do I know how many hours of entertainment it provides. I can not argue the distructive valu
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If you compensate your no-TV-watching by that same amount of /. hanging around...
I have bad news for you, /. is as much as detrimental to your mental health.
Keyboard typing is not in the list of exercises that will be keep your memory fit (go [cnn.com] check yourself) [cnn.com].