"These dogs will help you sniff out Cybercrime"
We know that dogs can sniff out people, drugs, and explosives, but some smart K9s can now also find hidden electronics, like phones, hard drives, microSD cards, and USB drives.
Sniffing out these devices isn’t easy; only 1 out of 50 dogs tested to become an electronic storage detection (ESD) dog passes the program. This is because it’s much harder to sniff out the telltale chemicals in electronics than it is for narcotics, bombs, or people.
Kerry Halligan, a K-9 instructor with the Connecticut State Police, says that she looks for dogs that are brave, energetic, and food-motivated, which explains why all of the ESD dogs she’s trained so far are Labradors (as anyone who’s tried to eat dinner near one of these gluttonous beasts can attest). Labrador retrievers also have long snouts and big muzzles that can pick up even the faintest olfactory clues. Until they retire, all food-motivated search dogs are allowed to eat only after smelling the chemical they’ve been imprinted on in order to keep up their work mentality.
Together, these K9 teams have helped law enforcement find child pornography, uncover concealed phones, nab white-collar evidence kept on hard drives, and track calls stored on SIM cards. With the increasing prevalence of technology in everyday life, these ESD K9s should have their work cut out for them for the foreseeable future.
Read the full story from Cnet here: https://www.cnet.com/news/these-dogs-sniff-out-cybercrime/