Wednesday, February 14, 2007

IRAN: PASSIVE INFRARED SENSORS, ETC.

Nemo over at Entropic Memes has yet another brilliant post on the fake dossier put out a couple days ago by the U.S. government.

Nemo left a comment on my last post about the ubiquity of passive infrared sensors, which were fingered by the unnamed U.S. briefers as being one of the devices that supposedly proves that these EFPs are being manufactured by Iran (and only by Iran). A Newsweek story on the briefing puts it thusly:

The Iranian fingerprint, these officials claimed, was in the pieces used to manufacture the EFPs, as well as the usage of the infrared triggers. "Some components are solely found in Iran," the senior defense official said.


Now I originally read this as the senior defense official saying that the infrared sensors were the component of EFPs that are "solely found in Iran." That's not what exactly what he said, obviously, but in the dossier, the claim is made that "Passive Infrared Trigger (PIR) tied to Iran" (on page 9).

Nemo correctly points out that PIRs are widely available, and don't just come from Iran (see comment in last post below). Now perhaps the senior defense official meant to convey that the use of PIRs in roadside bombs is what is uniquely Iranian. But he didn't say that either, that I'm aware of.

Here, for example is a website of an American company that is marketing PIRs for use in Automatic Pedestrian Doors. Here is some of the text on their website:

Passive Infrared Sensors

Passive Infrared Sensors are used for the activation of Automatic Pedestrian Doors. This technology has been successful where other types of sensors have been troublesome. These sensors are not vulnerable to wind blown debris, extraneous radio signals or adverse weather conditions.

Passive Infrared Sensors detect persons or objects, which have a surface temperature difference of at least +/- 2°C compared to that of the scanned zone and which are moving at a rate of at least 10cm per second. Both movement and temperature difference are required for detection.

Passive Infrared SensorBircher-Reglomat remains on the cutting edge of IR Technology providing the Automatic Door Industry with safe, reliable sensors that come in the most compact housings available in today's market, making Bircher-Reglomat products the best solution for automatic door applications.


Kudos to Nemo, who is doing yeoman's work on this fake evidence that's being used to try to railroad us into a war with Iran.

No comments: