Security Has Gone to the Dogs!

It’s doggy delirium in this month’s roundup of strange security and security-adjacent news. Not all of the canines are cuddly (looking at you whiskey-sniffing dog-like thing), but the world’s most domesticated animal leapt into security news in the last month-ish.

There aren’t too many victims in these stories, but still, our standard disclaimer applies: Security is serious, and while we take a lighter touch with the stories in Strange Security, we in no way mean to diminish any pain or suffering the stories caused.

Dogs Join the Protest: In Rio: Several hundred dogs and their people protested the mistreatment of pets in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Said mistreatment apparently did not include dressing pets in goofy costumes: “Dozens of dogs dressed as alligators, fairies and superheroes…” is how the Associated Press (AP) article starts.

Dog Trained to Break the Law so Owner Can Stay Off Surveillance Cams: The municipality of Catania, Italy, has aggressively policed littering, setting up cameras to catch and fine people throwing garbage from cars. That’s how authorities uncovered what they said was a dog owner that trained a canine to carry garbage bags and drop them on the side of the road.

Guard “Dog” Trained to Find Whisky Leaks: Bicardi has unleashed those four-legged Boston Dynamics robots referred to as robot dogs to roam their warehouse searching for leaky barrels. The robots are equipped with special ethanol sniffers. The limitation is that the robodogs only patrol at ground level. Queue the truly terrifying-sounding solution to that problem: robospiders.

Dog Poop Wars: That’s not our headline, that’s the headline that ran in The New York Times. New York City houses a whole bunch of people, and a whole bunch of those people have dogs. Mix that with a snowstorm and freezing temps that keep that snow around for days, and you have this nugget from the Times: In a single block “a pedestrian had to step around 37 deposits of decaying dog poop.”

Dog Wars, Non-Poop Edition: Ok, that one is our headline. This one is a fascinating tale in The Wall Street Journal about a spat between the new president of Malawi and his predecessor, who, when he left office, took the specially trained canines in his security detail with him.

A few other strange security-adjacent stories sans canines that our editors ran across in the last month:

• Using forklifts to steal ATMs (Apparently this is a common ATM theft vector. It happened last year in Ohio, and in Nebraska before that.)
  
  
• Long Island cop allegedly on mob payroll staged fake raid that didn’t fool illicit gamblers (This one is worth your time if for no other reason than to learn that one of the gangsters was known as “Mario the Landscaper.”)
  
  
• These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world (Go to this story for the cute carousel of pangolin photos—but skip the last one, it will make you sad.)
  
  
• Pizza cutter and a fork: A bizarre bid to break Mangione out of jail (The story of the apparently disturbed man who really wanted to free the accused killer of the UnitedHealth CEO.)
  
  
• Crab heist puts spotlight on surge of cargo thefts (Also see: “Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar Learn About Double Brokering Fraud the Hard Way.”