Man Accused of Selling Golf Ball Finders As Bomb Detectors 131
CNET reports that a British businessman named Jim McCormick is facing charges now for fraud; McCormick "charged 27,000 pounds (around $41,000) for devices that weren't quite what he said they were." That's putting it mildly; what he was selling as bomb detecting devices were actually souped-up (or souped-down, with non-functional circuitboards and other flim-flammery) golf-ball detectors. The Daily Mail has some enlightening pictures.
Time for Puns (Score:2)
Anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
People are dying in wars because of reliance on these devices. He needs to go to jail...or the gas chamber.
Broader context (Score:5, Insightful)
the broader fraud in my eyes is the concept that western systems of bid & contract and multi-party democracy can work anywhere. Maybe its true on a long-enough timeline, but we're seeing short-term consequences in terms of bidding that isnt fair, contracts not based on good principles of business and knowledge (above all things capitalism requires good knowledge and assessment of the options), 'multi-party systems' that just formalise existing factions on tribal, cultural and religious lines.
What this guy did if accurately reported is shameful, criminal and wrong. I hope he'll be made an example of. I don't imagine it will make much difference on a larger scale. All thats unusual is he got caught.
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Why add "NT" to anything at all, ever? Microsoft did that, and got us all bogged down on a more reliable, but just as evil, proprietory kernel which we'd have ditched for something better* sometime between Windows 98 and Windows ME (NT4 SP4 had real-time audio!) if Win2k and XP had not come along...
*had the barriers to entry not been so high at the time - ie proprietory AAA game support!)
PS - in response to the inevitable future post by an AC:
| "NT SP4 had real-time audio!"
[citation needed]
webmistressrachel
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The wars of recent years have been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics...
FTFY: Wars have always been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics.
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What this guy did if accurately reported is shameful, criminal and wrong. I hope he'll be made an example of. I don't imagine it will make much difference on a larger scale. All thats unusual is he got caught.
What's unusual isn't that he got found out, it's that anyone cared enough to take action. As you're pointed out, the Iraq police action has been an absolute goldmine for an army of carpetbaggers who're willing to sell the victims (the Iraqis) anything they want (or at least something claiming to be what they want). The sale of assorted junk that's basically electronic dowsing rods as bomb detectors and similar has been going on for years, and it's reasonably well known to those involved. What's really unus
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Replying to my own post, should have mentioned that there are experimental techniques that can sort of sometimes detect some of the components used in bombs, lasers to induce Raman scattering in the air above locations of explosives, differential absorption light detection and ranging using backscattering from air, coherent Stokes Raman scattering to find indications of bomb constituents, and so on and so forth. All of them pretty much only work under ideal lab conditions and have awful false positive rate
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Of course, he shouldn't be alone. There are plenty of management types who happily forked over a metric assload of money for a sack of tiger repelling rocks.
Re:Anyway (Score:4, Informative)
(from the submission) The Daily Mail has some enlightening pictures.
No, they don't. They have more pictures of the area he lived than of the device. Where's a picture of the golf ball finder? Who pays money for a golf ball finder? Does it still work as a golf ball finder? Who bought them? Was it like US body armour, where the friends and family of the soldier would send it too them because the military didn't have enough, or was it an "official" purchase, and he was a military contractor? Did the device still do anything at all?
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Anyone who would buy one and send it into a war zone without testing should go to jail.
Oh please, there is no chance even of the mass-murdering politicians who started the wars going to jail.
This guy will probably be head-hunted as an executive for Northrop Grumann or Halliburton.
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This guy is small potatoes compared to real war criminals like Cheney, GWB, Obama, etc. And he obviously didn't study Haliburton's business methods in any depth.
What about the retards who were buying them? (Score:2)
Surely some boffin should've spent 5 minutes with one of these devices in a munitions locker to test if the damn thing worked?
Here we have stories of the Chinese setting up buildings full of hackers to thwart the western forces, when all they have to do is put 'this is rock repels rockets' stickers on rocks and get this guy to sell them to the UK and US military for $40,000 a pop.
Like lemmings off a freakin cliff.
Re:Anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
He sold a divining rod. Is it really any different to people selling alternative medicine, or prayer?
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He sold a divining rod.
Could you please expand upon this? I'm curious what makes this bomb detector a divining rod. Is it because he knew the thing would not work, or because you believe that it is impossible to build a bomb detecting device, or something else?
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He sold a divining rod.
Could you please expand upon this? I'm curious what makes this bomb detector a divining rod.
Ah .. I was not making a metaphor. It literally is a divining rod - a stick that points, controlled by the users hand. That's why it needs no battery.
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Travel Adivsory (Score:5, Funny)
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Or in any body cavity
Re:Travel Adivsory (Score:5, Funny)
Travelling Golfers should be aware that the TSA (or UK equivalent) may not take kindly to the presence of Golf Balls in your luggage.
Like any modern government agency, they've never been fond of people with balls.
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His mistake (Score:2, Informative)
Well, has happened before. [wikipedia.org]. I guess his mistake was that the units didn't produce enough positive hits - regardless of their accuracy.
Re:His mistake (Score:5, Informative)
The device referrred to in the Wikipedia article is the one we are talking about here.
"In March of 2013, James McCormick went on trial in the UK on fraud charges".
Title not entirely accurate (Score:5, Informative)
The man was selling dousing rods which were labeled as golfball finders as bombdetectors.
They were equally successful at either task. They weren't golfball detectors any more than they were bomb detectors. The con was the dousing rod aspect of it, not the 'golf ball finder' stuff. The problem is people believing in magic, not a mislabeled golfbal detector.
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So... two wrongs make a right.
No, but three do.
Re:Title not entirely accurate (Score:5, Funny)
No. Three lefts make a right.
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But only in Britain.
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Yes.
Re:Title not entirely accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
This was not a case of people believing in magick. This was a case of someone taking a fake product, slapping fake certification labels on the outside, fake circuit boards on the inside, adding bogus 'smart cards', and selling it as a high-tech piece of hardware. It was a scam, but in this case there was active deceit that didn't need to rely on people's belief in 'dousing'; he relied on people's faith in technology and their unwillingness to crack open the case. This would have never fooled a person with the Maker Mentality. :)
Re:Title not entirely accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
This was not a case of people believing in magick. This was a case of someone taking a fake product, slapping fake certification labels on the outside, fake circuit boards on the inside, adding bogus 'smart cards', and selling it as a high-tech piece of hardware. It was a scam, but in this case there was active deceit that didn't need to rely on people's belief in 'dousing'; he relied on people's faith in technology and their unwillingness to crack open the case. This would have never fooled a person with the Maker Mentality. :)
I would agree with you in principle, were in not for the fact that the only bomb-detection equipment I could find on the web which did not require some form of direct contact with the bomb was a dog.
So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].
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I would agree with you in principle, were in not for the fact that the only bomb-detection equipment I could find on the web which did not require some form of direct contact with the bomb was a dog.
So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].
They may have had some minor effect though. Not by actually detecting anything, but when dogs or anything that the searchee believes might find something is present the searchee tends to give themselves away. There are always minor 'tells' when someone is searched or questioned. They tend to glance at the location of a bomb or act fidgety or nervous. Of course it would have been far cheaper for the Iragi military to buy the golf ball detectors (which didn't work for that either) and rebadge the devices
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Actually, no, it's the exact opposite. The dogs react to the 'tells' of their *handler*, not the suspect.
Google it.
AC
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So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].
It is also a fabulous example of how the misguided tools who think that they are libertarians should wake the hell up and realize that the mythical free market does not "magically" take care of shit like this. It was, literally, "snake oil" and the unfounded claims about it that brought "teh gubamint" into the business of regulating food and drugs. The consumers in a mass market can not be expected to be fully informed about everything in that market that they might want to purchase. And the "free market" a
I have to disagree with your conclusion, as well. (Score:2)
I have to disagree with your conclusion, as well.
So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].
It is also a fabulous example of how the misguided tools who think that they are libertarians should wake the hell up and realize that the mythical free market does not "magically" take care of shit like this. It was, literally, "snake oil" and the unfounded claims about it that brought "teh gubamint" into the business of regulating food and drugs. The consumers in a mass market can not be expected to be fully informed about everything in that market that they might want to purchase. And the "free market" assumes that such a state (fully informed consumer) exists.
Now, in this case, I'll stipulate that it would not have take much effort to become informed enough to know that this $41,000 do-hickey was snake oil. Then again, the government keeps buying the equivalent of the fabled "$400 toilet seat" from vendors like Haliburton, so we're probably buggered either way.
Your conclusion is flawed here.
The "consumers" in this case were government agencies, and a free market would have required them to obtain competing bids for the equipment from two different vendors. Since the equipment doesn't exist, they would be forced to do what's called a "sole source justification", which has a higher bar in terms of due diligence to allow the justification as valid.
If they had followed the legally required process, they would not have
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It was, literally, "snake oil"
http://xkcd.com/725/ [xkcd.com]
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Pictogram (Score:2)
This would have never fooled a person with the Maker Mentality. :)
You cynics! This device is so sensitive that "in real-world situations, detection levels are in the pictogram range and below":
http://cominfosystems.com/Documents/Cominfo_ATSC_Brochure.pdf [cominfosystems.com]
Re:Title not entirely accurate (Score:5, Informative)
Story broke in 2008 (Randi), NYT (2009), and then in 2010 the BBC did more work on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Here's the original WIkipedia page, from 2009, with the links to NYT and Randi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ADE_651&oldid=323934632 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Title not entirely accurate (Score:5, Informative)
Dousing is pouring liquid over something.
The word you're looking for is dowsing.
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Thanks, I didn't know!
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Dowsing rods are indeed crap, but this was more about straight-up fraud.
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The man was selling dousing rods which were labeled as golfball finders as bombdetectors.
They were equally successful at either task. They weren't golfball detectors any more than they were bomb detectors. The con was the dousing rod aspect of it, not the 'golf ball finder' stuff. The problem is people believing in magic, not a mislabeled golfbal detector.
And the sad part is that the military bought some and never tested them. Seems unusual given all the rules about explosives and such, that they would not have at least tested them.
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And the sad part is that the military bought some and never tested them. Seems unusual given all the rules about explosives and such, that they would not have at least tested them.
Nevermind, just read that it was the Iraqi military that bought them, not a real military.
daily mail? seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
wtf is the Daily Mail doing here? It is a tabloid.
The "article" had more information about his stupid home than anything about his shady business practices or how no one noticed anything wrong with these devices.
Re:daily mail? seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
wtf is the Daily Mail doing here? It is a tabloid.
The "article" had more information about his stupid home than anything about his shady business practices or how no one noticed anything wrong with these devices.
You're supposed to look at the nice pictures running to the right side of the 'article'.
R the FA, indeed.
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It is a tabloid.
Barely.
Re:daily mail? seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
wtf is the Daily Mail doing here? It is a tabloid.
The "article" had more information about his stupid home than anything about his shady business practices or how no one noticed anything wrong with these devices.
How dare you slander tabloids by comparing the Daily Mail to them!
Why the Daily Mail is Evil [youtube.com]
Transgender teacher kills self after Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn denounces her [boingboing.net]
Fuck the Daily Mail.
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Transgender teacher kills self after Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn denounces her [boingboing.net]
Fuck the Daily Mail.
The little article about Jimmy Saville appended to the bottom of the page was a particularly disgusting piece of work. The clear intention was to portray the teacher as a child abuser.
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this ran on other papers too a while back.
people did notice something wrong with 'em.
but if you're in baghdad and need to order some bomb detection devices.. well, you might end up with something like this. I mean, westerners would govern and stop scams like this, right?
This crap is also used in Mexico (Score:2)
This scam has at least netted MX$350,000,000 for these bastards. The worst part is that one of the main culprits in this corruption scheme, the former chief of mexican Federal Police, Genaro García Luna is enjoying his impunity in USA while ordering the murder of reporters that have documented his corruption, meanwhile, this crappy devices have landed many innocent people in jail and $deity only knows how many innocents have been killed in Mexico and in the rest of the world. This is not only fraud, it
They are not even golf ball finder (Score:5, Informative)
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So the problem isn't so much someone trying to sell a dousing rod as a bomb detector. After all, your dousing rod is worth whatever the market for dousing rods will bear.
Really the problem is international governments' willingness to buy dousing rods for incredible sums without any testing to see if they're fit for purpose.
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Something that's obviously a dowsing rod doesn't merit testing.
It doesn't take a lot of common sense and logic to see that it's bullshit of the wishful thinking variety, and even if you lack common sense, as evidenced by being in the military, the method has been thoroughly debunked already.
P. T. Barnum's law applies, and at some point the desire to be conned and suspense of all common sense is large enough to be the responsibility of the mark, not the con man. I mean, don't sue Penn and Teller for trickin
Re:They are not even golf ball finder (Score:4, Insightful)
Our schools (and parents) do a crappy job of educating people on BS like this. Any _reasonable_ person would know it's a scam. But, I've met a lot of people who think dowsing works. Many believe in ghosts. If we started teaching kids about pseudoscience and the philosophy of science in grade school, there would be a much smaller market for snake oil salesmen.
The scam is to say this is a scam (Score:2)
This is corruption scheme. Plain and simple. The "scam" part is only a "get out of jail" card played by the ones involved in this corruption racket. In government you need to do a lot of paperwork to justify the purchase of USD$100 worth of USB sticks; to purchase this stuff at such price levels you need to be in a such level of institutionalized corruption that this should be a marker for corrupt government officers that this by far is the least bad crime they are doing, not only in the purchasing countrie
should of called them geiger counters (Score:2)
should of called them geiger counters
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should of called them geiger counters
He probably would have lumped that in as well, except it's a lot easier to test for fraud in such circumstances. Just turning on a geiger counter will get you results, from background radiation. It's a lot harder to get your hands on a bomb to test against.
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James Randi has been warning about these guys (Score:5, Interesting)
James Randi has been really after this guy and others
it's just a dowsing rod and there are several people making the same device
Here is a video of James Randi warning others about the bullshit scam of this and others exactly like it in the UK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTmqfGJhTI [youtube.com]
They finally started listening to him it seems
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That's pretty amazing, James Randi points out their incompetence good and proper, and that video is from 2010!
That was just after he (Jim McCormick) was arrested, so that part isn't so amazing. However, Randi was on the case well before then.
I'm torn on this one. (Score:4, Interesting)
On the one hand, he's scum. On the other hand, anyone who believed
He produced glossy brochures to trick potential investors into believing the devices could detect tiny amounts of explosive from three miles away , the Old Bailey heard.
shouldn't be in charge of the fry/chip station, let alone be in charge of ordering military equipment.
I doubt they really believed that. (Score:2)
I doubt they really believed that.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3577793&cid=43272025 [slashdot.org]
The ones that purchased this are simply corrupt officers getting a cut from this purchases. The "scam" is only a red herring for the public to avoid prosecution.
Stealth UAV kit.. (Score:1)
Expert craftmanship - Been making them since I was a kid...short range version just needs a piece of paper. The longer range versions are rubber band powered and all are invisible on radar. $100k each.
Not news. (Score:1)
People are stupid.
Alot of those people are in charge of important stuff like your tax money.
Re:Not news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Alot of those people are in charge of important stuff like your tax money.
It's worse. They're in charge of military decisions.
I believe dowsing works, I believe that family might have explosives, i believe we should call in an air strike.
Ask yourself this, do you feel safer with the guns in the hands of people who believe in magic?
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Re:War Profiteers (Score:4, Funny)
There's a special place in hell for these people.
Yeah, on the board.
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Vice News (Score:3)
You expect me to believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
...that a military unit purchased bomb detectors never having tested their validity?
Re:You expect me to believe... (Score:5, Insightful)
actually, the DoD and NASA and similar organizations buy totally bogus devices all the time, in order to test them. Someone gets someone in Congress excited about their state of the art, super whizbang technology that will "save soldiers lives" (an alternate form of "think of the children"). The folks in DoD already know that the device is a crock (they've seen more non-functional bomb detectors than you can imagine), BUT.. they procure 1 or 10 for testing and evaluation. And eventually write a report that says "nope, don't work at all" so that Congressman who was beating them up in a hearing about "why are you not procuring Acme Corps guaranteed Roadrunner detector to save our soldiers"
Unfortunately, ACME corp, when they get the order for the test units, sends out press releases and changes their website. "Tested by DoD" (carefully omitting the results of the test) and "DoD procures research, test, and evaluation units of Model XYZ "LifeSaver" unit. Jake Blowhard, CEO, says "This is the first of several planned acquisitions that we hope will save the lives of our sons and daughters in dangerous war zones, as well as providing skilled middle class manufacturing jobs here in East Podunk."
And so it goes
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Yes. Because this isn't the first time this scam has been perpetrated on a military.
The US military bought an asslode of the same kind of dousing rod for something like $60k a unit several years ago. I just hope they were thrown out and never saw the field. A lot of soldiers can end up maimed and killed trusting this untested, poorly evaluated, pseudoscientific garbage.
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The US military bought an asslode of the same kind of dousing rod for something like $60k a unit several years ago.
Facts with references, please.
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Michael Shermer noted that these devices are being sold to high schools for $900 a unit in his TED talk here [ted.com]
Unfortunately that was the reference I was thinking of, or at least the most prominent one, and it looks like it didn't make claims about military sales.
Make of it what you will, but I'm pretty sure I read about the US army buy the same kind of junk for preposterous amounts of money. I'll reply again if I find a source on that.
Re:You expect me to believe... (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, I was a little confused about who bought it.
The Iraqi military and police have bought 1500 units for a total cost of ~$85 million according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
These are ADE 651 Devices desinged to make tons of money off of gullible people, and it appears that their use has replaced physical vehicle searches in some cases, which is just abhorrently stupid and foolish.
It looks like the US military doesn't use these devices, but has bought a few to determine whether they're any good. So I've been pleasantly surprised to find the Army wasn't duped in this case
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The Iraqi military and police have bought 1500 units for a total cost of ~$85 million according to Wikipedia
Yes, I heard that as well, it was widely reported that the Iraqis actually insisted that they had evidence that it actually worked.
But, these people don't live in the same reality as you and I.
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They very well may have evidence that it works. Just low quality evidence that comes from poorly done and non-blinded tests. That's probably good enough for most people, since most people are scientifically illiterate and equate most science and technology with magic.
Most people are far too credulous, and will accept nonsense explanations for extraordinary claims as long as it sounds either vaguely "sciencey" or you tell them it must've been their god who did it.
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They very well may have evidence that it works.
No, I'm sorry, there is no way they had any evidence of any kind that this device detected bombs, because it is simply not possible. The device does not detect bombs. Period.
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I agree that there's no way that it can detect bombs.
What I meant was, if there's a 50/50 chance of a positive result for a test, and someone does 10 tests, and ~5 results are positive, most people have a strong confirmation bias that lets them think that the ~5 negative results don't count as much as the ~5 positive, so they feel it was a success overall and that it really works when in reality it did no better than chance. People tend to rationalize away the failed trials with excuses like "being in the
What about the procurement protocol? (Score:3)
It seems stunning that the British military would go ahead with a purchase like this without any field trials, especially for something as critical as a 'bomb sniffer' -- lives depend on this piece of equipment to work properly.
Madness.
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As someone above just posted, they do acquire them...specifically so that they *can* do field trials. They buy 1 or a few, and then test them...and those tests indicate that they're a hoax. But the company that makes them proudly proclaims that they've been bought by X organization or tested by Y organization, in their marketing materials.
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Then that's a procurement problem. The units should be bought by the security services who "should" be able to do a decent job of hiding who the buyer actually is, therefore preventing fraudsters like this from saying "Tested by the British Army".
As an aside, I found it very helpful that the Daily Fail showed pictures of what the bloke's house "could" look like.
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A simpler way to protect against such fraud is having them to sign an NDA with high punishment for violation, telling them they are not allowed to tell anyone anything about the purchase until and unless testing had a positive result.
Ayn Rand (Score:3, Funny)
Ayn Rand would be proud of this chap. Caveat emptor is a totally valid business model when dissatisfied customers are likely to be scattered over a 50 meter radius.
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Damnit, there goes my sig.
One sided (Score:1)
While this guy should be punished, those government officials who arranged for these purchases also deserve some punishment for their gross negligence. That there were no tests or apparent attempts at verification before purchasing such expensive pieces of equipment and sending them into a warzone is unconscionable.
This is still Iraq's most popular bomb detector (Score:1)
Caveat emptor (Score:1)
Sheer cheek (Score:2)