4 ms·

How would xraying the cargo find gold? Because its denser than steel? Is that a routine inspection?

by dsq 2y ago

lucianbr 2y ago
I am curious about this as well. Maybe the details on how this was discovered are intentionally missing, so that would-be smugglers don't know how to avoid being discovered.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  They obscure in order to secure? Interesting strategy.
  - chollida1 2y ago
    > They obscure in order to secure? Interesting strategy. I mean we do it all the time. The US government has nuclear submarines so no one knows where they are in the world. We hide things all the time to keep them from others. This is a practice that practically everyone does.
    - nailer 2y ago
      There is something that has always felt off about “security through obscurity is no security at all”. There is no reason to give a malicious actor a guide to your operations.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      > This is a practice that practically everyone does. I don't find that a strong argument. I doesn't sound true, but even if it were it wouldn't make it a good idea. Furthermore, there is a difference between hiding a detail (submarine location) and hiding a process (the fact that there are submarines, that they have ICBMs, that they slink around waiting to avenge).
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        So, in this case, the process would be the existence of customs checks. The hidden detail might be "we've got an informant in the smugglers' organization".
        Y_Y 2y ago
        Sure! And it's a matter for debate, but I would draw the line somewhere between what kinds of customs checks there are (e.g. we scan everything leaving a foreign vessel with an MRI and 10% at random with a mass spectrometer) and something covert and sensitive like an informant.
      - lucianbr 2y ago
        Isn't it well known for example that banks have some rules or algorithms that flag potentially illegal activity, and those rules are secret? Revolut just tells you your transaction is suspect and it will take more time to go through, or just tells you you are suspect, and your account is being closed. They don't tell you what the rules are and which one you broke. Or if Google thinks you are cheating on ads somehow, they just ban you with no information. Intentionally, so you can't construct a cheat that avoids the cheat detection algorithms. This has been discussed at nauseam, and you're saying it doesn't sound true. More importantly, what exactly do you think "secret" in "secret service" means? Or "classified" information? Are you actually arguing that these things don't exist? Do you think while the location of secret agents is a secret, the hiring rules and the training and the infiltration strategies are public? Go try to find them.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Yes; I'm convinced most intercepts are not reported on except maybe in end of year statistics. That said, they do seem to report on large catches. I'm not sure if that's effective, given it means they will just change tactics. I see this mainly with drugs. But also, I keep thinking if they intercepted this one $100M worth of cocaine, how much did actually pass by?
kube-system 2y ago
I would guess, this was not x-ray photography, but spectroscopy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_spectroscopy There are these slick handheld units that exist, where you basically point them at something, and they tell you what elements are in something! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWPSrXB2OZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWPSrXB2OZw
pestatije 2y ago
at $2k the ounce of gold thatd be 312lb(142kg)...not easy to disguise
- csa 2y ago
  > that be 312lb(142kg)...not easy to disguise I think that’s a cube about 8 inches (~19cm) per side. Tough to disguise if carrying it solo, but maybe not so tough to hide in a cargo plane somewhat inconspicuously. The pictures in the article show them as being shaped like machine parts.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    Yeah, gold is not quite twice as dense as lead. It's weirdly heavy, but few people handle it in large enough quantities to notice.
    - manuelmoreale 2y ago
      Uncle is a goldsmith. I once held a decently sized bar of gold (I'd say 30x10x2cm) in my hand and you're absolutely right, it really is weirdly heavy in a way you'd not expect.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        If anyone wants to try it, Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, Australia does daily forgings of a gold bar. They melt it down, pour into a mold, let it cool for a minute or two, and then guests can hold it. I've got a picture of my kids almost dropping ~$300k onto the floor. https://www.sovereignhill.com.au/events/gold-pour/ https://www.sovereignhill.com.au/events/gold-pour/
- adolph 2y ago
  Seems to fit in 1 truck: 10,000,000 / 2,000 = 5,000 ounces 1 ounce = 28.35 grams 5,000 * 28.35 = 141,750 grams 1 cm^3 = 19.3 grams gold 141,750 / 19.3 = 7,345 cm^3 gold % Truck bed volume: .4% % Truck bed volume: 16% https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-xl/ https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-xl/ Base model: Cargo box volume: 52.8 cu. ft. = 1,495,129.5 cubic centimeters Cargo box weight limit: 1,785 lbs = 809,662.38 grams
toss1 2y ago
Yes. Gold is about 2.5x as dense as steel; gold is about 19.3 g/cc while steel is about 7.8 g/cc. So, I'd expect it to show up as significantly more opaque in x-ray imaging. I wonder if it would have been noticed if they made all the components out of gold (so they all show up with similar density) or if the operator or a feature of the imaging software would notice that the whole thing was unusually dense. I also expect that they might have noticed the units were exceptionally heavy, if all the components were gold. Not an easy problem to solve, as our protagonist smuggler found out.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  It would have been much harder to fabricate, but tungsten would be the ideal cover for this as it's almost the exact same density as gold. It's often used in fake gold bars even, where tungsten rods or slugs are cast into a bar in a way that's undetectable without either breaking it open or using a ultrasound technique. I think tungsten carbide is less dense though, so making fake drill bits wouldn't work.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    You could make fake bucking bars, commonly used in metalworking. The whole point of them is to be small enough to fit in your hand but dense enough to backstop a rivet gun, so they are very heavy for their size. Perfect form factor for gold bars, too.
  - ratg13 2y ago
    It doesn’t matter if it’s gold, tungsten, or lead.. the x-ray can’t see through it. If the x-ray can’t see through it, it’s going to get inspected as a possible place where drugs are being smuggled.
alon_honig 2y ago
They probably got tipped off by something else that triggered a deeper investigation. It is not economical to do x-ray spectrometry on every single machine part leaving HK.
- conductr 2y ago
  Or they noticed the weight of it was unusually high for what it was supposed to be
  - petre 2y ago
    Also the amateurish paint job.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    I wonder if gold will alloy with something that would reduce it down to "normal density".
    - flyinghamster 2y ago
      When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark during World War II, Niels Bohr and George de Hevesy dissolved Max von Laue's and James Franck's Nobel Prize medals (entrusted to Bohr for safekeeping) in aqua regia. After the war, Hevesy found the flask of dissolved gold undisturbed, and precipitated the gold for the medals to be recast. https://www.aip.org/history-programs/news/invisible-prize https://www.aip.org/history-programs/news/invisible-prize
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Sure, but would it still be enough to make converting, transporting, and converting it back to purer gold economically viable? I mean by that logic you could also have a couple of mules wear expensive jewelry or watches or the like; if it's convincing enough that someone wears a $500K watch as personal effect then they wouldn't be flagged for inspection. In theory anyway, I don't know how these things work in reality. I wonder if someone's financial status is pulled up at passport control. I don't believe it's uncommon for rich people to travel coach though.
fsagx 2y ago
Sounds more like a cover for parallel construction.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  Agreed. Are inspectors really looking for smuggled gold vs drugs, bombs, etc? $10 million in gold is only ~130kgs. Feels very plausible to intermingle that among of material in a cargo shipment.
Symbiote 2y ago
X-raying cargo is a routine activity on the EU's land and sea borders. I assume they do it for air freight and luggage too. Here's an example x-ray [1]. At the land borders there are large pillars which the lorry driver must drive between (and the same by railway tracks). I don't know if that's enough to detect steel replaced by gold. It would seem too small to notice. [1] https://www.smithsdetection.com/press-releases/smiths-detection-to-support-development-of-new-vapour-screening-technology-for-maritime-customs-border-control/ https://www.smithsdetection.com/press-releases/smiths-detect...
- panarky 2y ago
  That link is to vapor detection of narcotics, not x-ray. And those vertical towers are almost certainly radiation detectors.
  - voxic11 2y ago
    Pretty sure he was just linking for the picture on that page which is a full vehicle x-ray produced from a system like https://www.smithsdetection.com/products/hcvg/ https://www.smithsdetection.com/products/hcvg/ > The system’s high-performance imaging capability provides the operator with detailed radioscopic images of container or vehicle and its contents, with organic and inorganic material discrimination and colourisation based on atomic number, allowing for rapid and reliable results in a single scan. It colorizes the x-ray based on the atomic composition of the materials so this system could probably detect a bunch of solid gold parts.
rdtsc 2y ago
The parts of the turbine look too janky. It has imperfections and irregularities on the surface. So looks like a total piece of junk. Then it’s a bit odd to pay to ship that on a cargo plane. Gold is also pretty heavy so if they handled any parts they could tell, too.
- walrus01 2y ago
  I think where they screwed up was shipping something heavy and not particularly valuable or obviously necessary to send by air freight via air freight. If it had gone the slow way on a few pallets via LCL ocean freight as mundane industrial machinery it probably wouldn't have been noticed.
hn8305823 2y ago
It's a routine random inspection of commercial freight. Gold is extremely dense. It's about the same density as Uranium and Plutonium (which is a big reason why they and/or software look for it in the x-rays).

How would xraying the cargo find gold? Because its denser than steel? Is that a routine inspection?

by dsq 2y ago

How would xraying the cargo find gold? Because its denser than steel? Is that a routine inspection?

I am curious about this as well. Maybe the details on how this was discovered are intentionally missing, so that would-be smugglers don't know how to avoid being discovered.

Y_Y 2y ago
They obscure in order to secure? Interesting strategy.
- chollida1 2y ago
  > They obscure in order to secure? Interesting strategy. I mean we do it all the time. The US government has nuclear submarines so no one knows where they are in the world. We hide things all the time to keep them from others. This is a practice that practically everyone does.
  - nailer 2y ago
    There is something that has always felt off about “security through obscurity is no security at all”. There is no reason to give a malicious actor a guide to your operations.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    > This is a practice that practically everyone does. I don't find that a strong argument. I doesn't sound true, but even if it were it wouldn't make it a good idea. Furthermore, there is a difference between hiding a detail (submarine location) and hiding a process (the fact that there are submarines, that they have ICBMs, that they slink around waiting to avenge).
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      So, in this case, the process would be the existence of customs checks. The hidden detail might be "we've got an informant in the smugglers' organization".
      - Y_Y 2y ago
        Sure! And it's a matter for debate, but I would draw the line somewhere between what kinds of customs checks there are (e.g. we scan everything leaving a foreign vessel with an MRI and 10% at random with a mass spectrometer) and something covert and sensitive like an informant.
    - lucianbr 2y ago
      Isn't it well known for example that banks have some rules or algorithms that flag potentially illegal activity, and those rules are secret? Revolut just tells you your transaction is suspect and it will take more time to go through, or just tells you you are suspect, and your account is being closed. They don't tell you what the rules are and which one you broke. Or if Google thinks you are cheating on ads somehow, they just ban you with no information. Intentionally, so you can't construct a cheat that avoids the cheat detection algorithms. This has been discussed at nauseam, and you're saying it doesn't sound true. More importantly, what exactly do you think "secret" in "secret service" means? Or "classified" information? Are you actually arguing that these things don't exist? Do you think while the location of secret agents is a secret, the hiring rules and the training and the infiltration strategies are public? Go try to find them.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Yes; I'm convinced most intercepts are not reported on except maybe in end of year statistics. That said, they do seem to report on large catches. I'm not sure if that's effective, given it means they will just change tactics. I see this mainly with drugs. But also, I keep thinking if they intercepted this one $100M worth of cocaine, how much did actually pass by?

kube-system 2y ago

I would guess, this was not x-ray photography, but spectroscopy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_spectroscopy There are these slick handheld units that exist, where you basically point them at something, and they tell you what elements are in something! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWPSrXB2OZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWPSrXB2OZw

pestatije 2y ago

at $2k the ounce of gold thatd be 312lb(142kg)...not easy to disguise

csa 2y ago
> that be 312lb(142kg)...not easy to disguise I think that’s a cube about 8 inches (~19cm) per side. Tough to disguise if carrying it solo, but maybe not so tough to hide in a cargo plane somewhat inconspicuously. The pictures in the article show them as being shaped like machine parts.
- thfuran 2y ago
  Yeah, gold is not quite twice as dense as lead. It's weirdly heavy, but few people handle it in large enough quantities to notice.
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    Uncle is a goldsmith. I once held a decently sized bar of gold (I'd say 30x10x2cm) in my hand and you're absolutely right, it really is weirdly heavy in a way you'd not expect.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      If anyone wants to try it, Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, Australia does daily forgings of a gold bar. They melt it down, pour into a mold, let it cool for a minute or two, and then guests can hold it. I've got a picture of my kids almost dropping ~$300k onto the floor. https://www.sovereignhill.com.au/events/gold-pour/ https://www.sovereignhill.com.au/events/gold-pour/
adolph 2y ago
Seems to fit in 1 truck: 10,000,000 / 2,000 = 5,000 ounces 1 ounce = 28.35 grams 5,000 * 28.35 = 141,750 grams 1 cm^3 = 19.3 grams gold 141,750 / 19.3 = 7,345 cm^3 gold % Truck bed volume: .4% % Truck bed volume: 16% https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-xl/ https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-xl/ Base model: Cargo box volume: 52.8 cu. ft. = 1,495,129.5 cubic centimeters Cargo box weight limit: 1,785 lbs = 809,662.38 grams

toss1 2y ago

Yes. Gold is about 2.5x as dense as steel; gold is about 19.3 g/cc while steel is about 7.8 g/cc. So, I'd expect it to show up as significantly more opaque in x-ray imaging. I wonder if it would have been noticed if they made all the components out of gold (so they all show up with similar density) or if the operator or a feature of the imaging software would notice that the whole thing was unusually dense. I also expect that they might have noticed the units were exceptionally heavy, if all the components were gold. Not an easy problem to solve, as our protagonist smuggler found out.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
extraduder_ire 2y ago
It would have been much harder to fabricate, but tungsten would be the ideal cover for this as it's almost the exact same density as gold. It's often used in fake gold bars even, where tungsten rods or slugs are cast into a bar in a way that's undetectable without either breaking it open or using a ultrasound technique. I think tungsten carbide is less dense though, so making fake drill bits wouldn't work.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  You could make fake bucking bars, commonly used in metalworking. The whole point of them is to be small enough to fit in your hand but dense enough to backstop a rivet gun, so they are very heavy for their size. Perfect form factor for gold bars, too.
- ratg13 2y ago
  It doesn’t matter if it’s gold, tungsten, or lead.. the x-ray can’t see through it. If the x-ray can’t see through it, it’s going to get inspected as a possible place where drugs are being smuggled.

alon_honig 2y ago

They probably got tipped off by something else that triggered a deeper investigation. It is not economical to do x-ray spectrometry on every single machine part leaving HK.

conductr 2y ago
Or they noticed the weight of it was unusually high for what it was supposed to be
- petre 2y ago
  Also the amateurish paint job.
- bombcar 2y ago
  I wonder if gold will alloy with something that would reduce it down to "normal density".
  - flyinghamster 2y ago
    When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark during World War II, Niels Bohr and George de Hevesy dissolved Max von Laue's and James Franck's Nobel Prize medals (entrusted to Bohr for safekeeping) in aqua regia. After the war, Hevesy found the flask of dissolved gold undisturbed, and precipitated the gold for the medals to be recast. https://www.aip.org/history-programs/news/invisible-prize https://www.aip.org/history-programs/news/invisible-prize
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Sure, but would it still be enough to make converting, transporting, and converting it back to purer gold economically viable? I mean by that logic you could also have a couple of mules wear expensive jewelry or watches or the like; if it's convincing enough that someone wears a $500K watch as personal effect then they wouldn't be flagged for inspection. In theory anyway, I don't know how these things work in reality. I wonder if someone's financial status is pulled up at passport control. I don't believe it's uncommon for rich people to travel coach though.

fsagx 2y ago

Sounds more like a cover for parallel construction.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
Agreed. Are inspectors really looking for smuggled gold vs drugs, bombs, etc? $10 million in gold is only ~130kgs. Feels very plausible to intermingle that among of material in a cargo shipment.

Symbiote 2y ago

X-raying cargo is a routine activity on the EU's land and sea borders. I assume they do it for air freight and luggage too. Here's an example x-ray [1]. At the land borders there are large pillars which the lorry driver must drive between (and the same by railway tracks). I don't know if that's enough to detect steel replaced by gold. It would seem too small to notice. [1] https://www.smithsdetection.com/press-releases/smiths-detection-to-support-development-of-new-vapour-screening-technology-for-maritime-customs-border-control/ https://www.smithsdetection.com/press-releases/smiths-detect...

panarky 2y ago
That link is to vapor detection of narcotics, not x-ray. And those vertical towers are almost certainly radiation detectors.
- voxic11 2y ago
  Pretty sure he was just linking for the picture on that page which is a full vehicle x-ray produced from a system like https://www.smithsdetection.com/products/hcvg/ https://www.smithsdetection.com/products/hcvg/ > The system’s high-performance imaging capability provides the operator with detailed radioscopic images of container or vehicle and its contents, with organic and inorganic material discrimination and colourisation based on atomic number, allowing for rapid and reliable results in a single scan. It colorizes the x-ray based on the atomic composition of the materials so this system could probably detect a bunch of solid gold parts.

rdtsc 2y ago

The parts of the turbine look too janky. It has imperfections and irregularities on the surface. So looks like a total piece of junk. Then it’s a bit odd to pay to ship that on a cargo plane. Gold is also pretty heavy so if they handled any parts they could tell, too.

walrus01 2y ago
I think where they screwed up was shipping something heavy and not particularly valuable or obviously necessary to send by air freight via air freight. If it had gone the slow way on a few pallets via LCL ocean freight as mundane industrial machinery it probably wouldn't have been noticed.

hn8305823 2y ago

It's a routine random inspection of commercial freight. Gold is extremely dense. It's about the same density as Uranium and Plutonium (which is a big reason why they and/or software look for it in the x-rays).