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Dogs are very good at reading people and if the handler wants an indication they will get it; they may not even realise that they're influencing the dogs. As ot

Dogs are very good at reading people and if the handler wants an indication they will get it; they may not even realise that they're influencing the dogs. As others have said, this has been known for a long, long time. There was even a book written taking a wry look a scent dogs (and the plans for scent bees etc that were in vogue during the great war on terror) [1]. That said, dogs can be fantastic when used for finding threats rather than 'proving' what the handler already believes. They have a combination of nose and brain that we can't replicate any other way and are great for search and rescue, finding explosives and some law enforcement searching. [1] https://headspace-the-book.blogspot.com/2008/07/acpo-police-dog-training-and-care.html https://headspace-the-book.blogspot.com/2008/07/acpo-police-...

sneak 7y ago
...and yet dog alerts (encapsulating handler biases) alone are still used to establish probable cause in the US to strip people of their rights to privacy, and has resulted in jail for thousands of people who do not deserve it.
- dymk 7y ago
  It's better than absolutely no preventative measures at all
  - ksdale 7y ago
    That's very debatable. I, personally, would much rather that people in possession of drugs go free rather than the police using the dogs as an excuse to search people they don't like the look of.
    - Smithalicious 7y ago
      Yes, but I suspect you would also support lighter sentencing or even decriminalization of drugs. I don't think you'd think the same if it was concerned potential terrorists or child sexual abusers. Basically, this kind of comment usually encodes some belief on what the law should be rather than a belief about how it should be enforced. And that's just not the issue at hand here.
      - sneak 7y ago
        Well, the US has assassinated its own citizens who have been accused of terrorism (but not tried, just executed), and I think this is a bad thing, so let’s go back to the issue at hand: using subjective biases to strip people of their human rights is bad, regardless of what those biases suggest to you or anyone else about their alleged crimes.
      - ksdale 7y ago
        You're correct about how I feel about drugs, but I think the general argument applies across the board. There are times that enforcement costs are too high, given the crimes they prevent. One of the most common criticisms of airport security in the US is that the harm it is preventing is nowhere near commensurate with the burden it imposes on the populace. That may or may not be true, but it's not a belief about what the law should be, it's a belief that at some point, the price paid for additional safety is too high. Likewise with children, as a father of 4, I also understand the desire to go to any lengths to keep our children safe, but keeping them in a bubble for their entire lives, while certainly protecting them from many tangible harms, will ultimately stunt their growth. Once again, the price paid for safety can be too high. I happen to think that drug sniffing dogs are on the wrong side of the line. They probably do alert the police to drugs that would not have been found otherwise, but in my opinion, they allow the police to have far too much latitude when it comes to searches.
      - salawat 7y ago
        > I don't think you'd think the same if it was concerned potential terrorists or child sexual abusers. Maybe he wouldn't, but I would be. In the land where witch hunts are illegal, I'm one of the three civic minded Libertarians. Civil rights revocation should never be treated lightly. Period. Pragmatism must take the backseat to ideals in this regard, lest we end up undoing the very thing we're trying to protect in the first place. As much as that tends to put me at odds with my own pragmatic side, I can't argue with the direction things tend to take when we cave to the urge to sacrifice liberty for safety.
      - novok 7y ago
        TBH I wish we wouldn't think about terrorists and other 'Very Rare Criminal Types that are less likely than being struck by lightning' and instead focus on public order obvious as shit crimes as a society. The stuff that people actually care about crime wise, like their bike being stolen, or their car being broken into, muggings, etc.
  - liability 7y ago
    What kind if prevention are we talking about? Nitrate-sniffing dogs, or cannabis-sniffing dogs?
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    I feel this entirely depends on one's stance on the old "Would you rather let a guilty person go free or jail an innocent?".

sneak 7y ago

...and yet dog alerts (encapsulating handler biases) alone are still used to establish probable cause in the US to strip people of their rights to privacy, and has resulted in jail for thousands of people who do not deserve it.

dymk 7y ago
It's better than absolutely no preventative measures at all
- ksdale 7y ago
  That's very debatable. I, personally, would much rather that people in possession of drugs go free rather than the police using the dogs as an excuse to search people they don't like the look of.
  - Smithalicious 7y ago
    Yes, but I suspect you would also support lighter sentencing or even decriminalization of drugs. I don't think you'd think the same if it was concerned potential terrorists or child sexual abusers. Basically, this kind of comment usually encodes some belief on what the law should be rather than a belief about how it should be enforced. And that's just not the issue at hand here.
    - sneak 7y ago
      Well, the US has assassinated its own citizens who have been accused of terrorism (but not tried, just executed), and I think this is a bad thing, so let’s go back to the issue at hand: using subjective biases to strip people of their human rights is bad, regardless of what those biases suggest to you or anyone else about their alleged crimes.
    - ksdale 7y ago
      You're correct about how I feel about drugs, but I think the general argument applies across the board. There are times that enforcement costs are too high, given the crimes they prevent. One of the most common criticisms of airport security in the US is that the harm it is preventing is nowhere near commensurate with the burden it imposes on the populace. That may or may not be true, but it's not a belief about what the law should be, it's a belief that at some point, the price paid for additional safety is too high. Likewise with children, as a father of 4, I also understand the desire to go to any lengths to keep our children safe, but keeping them in a bubble for their entire lives, while certainly protecting them from many tangible harms, will ultimately stunt their growth. Once again, the price paid for safety can be too high. I happen to think that drug sniffing dogs are on the wrong side of the line. They probably do alert the police to drugs that would not have been found otherwise, but in my opinion, they allow the police to have far too much latitude when it comes to searches.
    - salawat 7y ago
      > I don't think you'd think the same if it was concerned potential terrorists or child sexual abusers. Maybe he wouldn't, but I would be. In the land where witch hunts are illegal, I'm one of the three civic minded Libertarians. Civil rights revocation should never be treated lightly. Period. Pragmatism must take the backseat to ideals in this regard, lest we end up undoing the very thing we're trying to protect in the first place. As much as that tends to put me at odds with my own pragmatic side, I can't argue with the direction things tend to take when we cave to the urge to sacrifice liberty for safety.
    - novok 7y ago
      TBH I wish we wouldn't think about terrorists and other 'Very Rare Criminal Types that are less likely than being struck by lightning' and instead focus on public order obvious as shit crimes as a society. The stuff that people actually care about crime wise, like their bike being stolen, or their car being broken into, muggings, etc.
- liability 7y ago
  What kind if prevention are we talking about? Nitrate-sniffing dogs, or cannabis-sniffing dogs?
- jobigoud 7y ago
  I feel this entirely depends on one's stance on the old "Would you rather let a guilty person go free or jail an innocent?".