IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 81

The first version of this article was made publicly
available in Jan. 2013 through the ArXiv preprint server
[13]. Shortly thereafter it was reviewed by the M.I.T. Technology Review [25] and it was promptly found by the
police of London. That manuscript, the analysis of the
GT200's technical data [7], the video of our test [16] and
other materials were provided as evidence in the trials
against the manufacturers of the GT200 and similar
devices that took place in London during 2013. WLM
was invited as witness in the trial against Gary Bolton.
James McCormick, manufacturer of the ADE651, was
sentenced to 10 years in jail, Anthony Williamson (XK9)
was declared guilty, Sam Tree (ALPHA6) was sentenced
to 3.5 years in jail, and Joan Tree (ALPHA6) to 300 days
of community work. Gary Bolton (GT200) was found
guilty of fraud and sentenced in August 20, 2013, to
spend 7 years in jail.
In May 28, 2013, Griselda Saenz Orta, the judge that
ordered the experimental test of the GT200, released
the defendant Juanita Velázquez after having spent two
years in jail [26].
In July 2013, just after Gary Bolton was declared
guilty, Mario Anguiano, then Governor of the State of
Colima, declared to the press that his detectors ADE651
operated satisfactorily. WLM invited him publicly to test
them [27] and he agreed. The test was conducted by
Alfredo Aranda-Fernández, Dean of Science of the University of Colima, and by Ricardo Saenz, Director of its
School of Science on Aug. 7, 2013. The results were that
the ADE651 was also as ineffective as detection by
chance, and those results were publicly announced by
the Governor [28].
In May, 2013, WLM gave Eduardo Sánchez, undersecretary of the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, spokesman
of the Security Cabinet, and currently spokesman for the
Presidency, an early version of this paper [13] and other
relevant documents, and talked about the purchase and
use of the detector, the ongoing trials in the U.K. against
the manufacturers, and courses of action to take. In July
he said in an interview that the GT200 was not used anymore to provide incriminatory evidence [29]. In a radio
interview in Aug. 22, 2013 [30], he said that their use
had not been forbidden but that they wouldn't be used at
all and that their purchases would be investigated. Nevertheless, no official statements followed this interview
and some officials have contradicted him, for example,
the Attorney General of the State of Chiapas [31]. There
have been occasional reports on the use of GT200s in
the States of Hidalgo (Oct. 2013), Chiapas (Dec. 2013),
Oaxaca (Jan. 2014), San Luis Potosí (Mar. 2014), Quintana Roo (Apr. 2014), and Chiapas (Feb., 2015) to search
for bombs. Recent terrorist attacks in the Middle East
[32] illustrate the enormous danger inherent in the use
of these devices to search for explosives.
june 2017

∕

Conclusions
In our test, the GT200 proved to be a completely ineffective detector, only as good as detection by chance,
when its operators were ignorant of where the sample
had been hidden. However when they knew the location of a sample, the device appeared to pick the correct location consistently. Thus, the GT200 is

In our test, the GT200 proved to be
a completely ineffective detector...
when its operators were ignorant of
where the sample had been hidden.

necessarily manipulated by its user to point towards
the location where he expects the sample to be hidden, although he may be unaware of this manipulation. The GT200 itself provides no information about
the location of the sample, even when used by trained
and certified operators, contrary to the claim that it
could detect and identify nanograms (and even picograms) of hundreds of substances from distances as
far away as hundreds or even thousands of meters; in
this test, we used more than a kilogram of pills containing amphetamines and four bullets, and the sample was known to be hidden in one out of eight boxes
not farther away than 100 m (presumably the sample
had previously been detected within a house from outside and was used as evidence against its dweller).
Thus, we conclude that the GT200 is worthless as a
substance detector.
Our experiment was extremely simple and straightforward; its only subtleties lie in its double-blind character and the need to safeguard the results from the
desires and expectations of the participants. It is awkward that similar experiments were not performed
before the purchase of the detectors and that the purchase contracts included clauses to avoid experiments from tak ing place. There are repor ts of
thousands of citizens imprisoned based on "evidence"
provided by this fake device. In some cases further
evidence has been provided, although that additional
evidence was questionable as it was secured during
incursions into homes without judicial warrants, not
following proper protocols. The GT200 has been
responsible for a systematic violation of human rights.
Although the use of the devices decreased after its
manufacturer was imprisoned, no reparations have
been awarded to its victims in Mexico, many of whom

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