Need to get crackin'

[inthekitchen]

Look at all the new things they're inventing to annoy us:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/127085.html

DrugWipes, for example, are small, swab-tipped devices. Wipe the tip along a surface, or a sample of sweat or saliva, and in two to five minutes a simple indicator window reveals whether drug residue is present. Manufactured by the German firm Securetec, DrugWipes have been used by more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. since the late 1990s, and they’re increasingly popular among schools and private employers as well.

How would you ruin one of this tests? How would you protect yourself against it?

The desorption electrospray ionization scanner. It uses charged droplets to lift particles from a surface and into a mass spectrometer, which can break down and analyze the components of any substance down to the molecular level. It’s currently a desktop-sized machine, but its creators, a team of researchers at Purdue University, hope to develop a portable version that can fit in a backpack within a few years.

How could you nullify this tool of tyranny? What steps might be taken?

Police can use new devices to hunt not just for tiny traces of contraband but for larger objects. Millimeter wave (MMW) radiation is all around us. You’re emitting it even as you read this article. More important, you’re emitting it through your clothes, making it an ideal way to scan for hidden objects that distort or block those waves, whether they’re made of metal, ceramic, plastic, or some other composite material—and without any of the health concerns associated with X-rays.

I've seen patents for an MMW generator, could this cause enough distortion to fool a machine?

We need to get crackin' on ways to outsmart these intrusions.

[crazywhiteguy]

If you had a chemical you could spray on your belongings that gave a false positive, the real drugs would be hidden or at least not found. The company might explain how it works that would let you find a household chemical with a ingredient that the swab is sensitive to. By putting trace amounts of it everywhere that would be swabbed, and a lot of other places that would have been swabbed so they deem the tool ineffective for identifying positively. The only drawback to doing this is that they might assume the coating came from the manufacture of the drugs. That would give them more 'evidence' with which to charge you.

(sorry for the run-on sentence there)

The spectrometer might be able to be 'tricked' to give false positives. I really doubt that though. Theres the possibility that you could plant evidence on yourself that would suggest that your alibi checks out (having butter on your shirt when you were supposed to have been at the movies)

I don't know anything about MMW generators. Maybe it would be possible to irradiate yourself so that you have a consistent 'glow' that would lessen the risk of an object being distinguished from your body.