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When there is a real threat, security theater kills people.
For nearly a decade, anyone driving through one of Baghdad's many checkpoints was subjected to a search by a soldier pointing a security wand at their vehicle and watching the device intently to see if its antenna moved. If it pointed at the car, it had supposedly detected a possible bomb.
The wands were completely bogus. It had been proven years ago, even before 2013 when two British men were convicted in separate trials on fraud charges for selling the detectors. The devices, sold under various names for thousands of dollars each, apparently were based on a product that sold for about $20 and claimed to find golf balls.
Yet the Iraqi government continued to use the devices, spending nearly $60 million on them despite warnings by U.S. military commanders and the wands' proven failure to stop near-daily bombings in Baghdad.
It took a massive suicide bombing that killed 300 people in Baghdad on July 3 — the deadliest single attack in the capital in 13 years of war — for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to finally ban their use.
Source: Military.com
Related: July Baghdad bombings
ADE651 Detector
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday July 26 2016, @04:09AM
This is a good example of what I hated so much about being placed under non-technical bosses.
What in the hell do I do if one of them gets his hand shaken by a con-artist?
If I fight it, I am "not a team player", and let go.
If I go along with it, the truth comes out, sooner or later, and I now have a reputation of being an incompetent fool.
And as all of us know, men with "leadership" skills are given power over men with "technical" skills. The leadership types have the trump card of authority that excuses them from knowledge of technical detail... such as whether a device like this operates under any known laws of physics.
Incidentally, those tiger rocks work great! I haven't seen a tiger yet!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]